July 11th Session - 'My Place' with SImon Fletcher

For our July session we were very pleased to welcome Simon Fletcher, a local poet and publisher, to head up a workshop on the theme of ‘My Place.’ We also opened up the workshop to non-members of the group so we had a couple of visitors with us for the session.

Simon led a discussion on our individual ideas of ‘My Place’, and we discovered that different people interpreted the concept in different ways, from a house, a home, a country, heritage, community or even a role. We each feel in our ‘place’ in a variety of locations and situations – and sometimes it’s the culmination of everything that’s come before which creates your own ‘place.’

Then we looked at some different writers’ ideas on the theme of ‘place’, including an excerpt from Meera Syal’s Anita and Me, where she considers her mother’s Punjabi upbringing, and part of a Gabriel Okara poem, Piano and Drums, in which the poet reminisces on his homeland of Nigeria.

Our first writing exercise was to make notes on somewhere we could call our ‘special place.’ It was interesting to hear how people felt about certain locations, houses or places they’d visited. We had descriptions of places all over the world, from right on our doorstep in Wolverhampton, to Africa and Asia.

Then we expanded on this by describing the place in detail.  There were some very good preliminary pieces emerging from this second exercise. Some people stuck with the same place, and some people changed their places. After all, we’re not confined to being connected to only one place! We had some great ideas which also encapsulated more abstract ideas of ‘My Place’. Hearing the stories about places people felt close to gave the writing much more depth. It will be very exciting to read the pieces when they are tidied up!

We’d like to thank Simon for leading such an inspiring workshop – it certainly gave us a lot to think about in terms of writing about ‘My Place’!

‘My Place’ is a key part of your identity…which you might remember is the theme for our anthology! Don’t forget, you can submit your works – including any written in Simon’s workshop – to be considered for the anthology, as per the guidelines, which can be found here.

Call for submission to our anthology!

Our anthology project is now live, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and we would like to officially invite our members to begin submitting their work to us for consideration for our anthology. We have some important guidelines to run past you first, so please make sure you read the below to brush up on what the project is all about.

 

1) Please submit work on the theme of 'Identity.' You can interpret this as broadly as you like, but it may include pieces on your community, your history, your childhood memories or anything else that's all about who YOU are.

 

2) Please submit no more than four pieces of unpublished work. We really want to showcase everybody in the group so please be considerate to your fellow writers by submitting up to four pieces of work each.

 

3) Each piece can be up to 25 lines of poetry or up to 500 words of prose. Again, we need to make sure we fit everybody in to the anthology, so please keep your submissions within these lengths.

 

4) We are accepting submissions from our regular group members, as well as non-members who attend our workshops. We want to represent the talents of Blakenhall Writers, but anybody who attends one of our sessions by invitation is welcome to submit.

 

5) You have until 30th September 2015 to send us your work. You don't have to send everything at once - you can send in your pieces at any point up until that date. We have some more Identity-themed workshops lined up, including another guest facilitator in September, so make the most of the time to really clean up your pieces.

 

6) Please make sure you proof-read and spell-check your work before submitting. Although we will let you know if we find any errors in your work, it will make the editing process a lot smoother if you make those final checks on your work before submitting.

 

7) Please send your submissions to blakenhallwriters@gmail.com with 'Submission' in the subject box. Alternatively, you may hand in printed copies to Roma, Kuli or Cherry at our August or September meetings.

 

8) We will be undertaking a feedback process during editing. We want this anthology to help us all develop our writing, so Roma, Kuli & Cherry have received training in best practice for editing an anthology. Therefore we may offer suggestions for improvement on your pieces, or open them up to feedback from the group, in line with our training. Please bear this in mind when submitting.

 

9) There will be a chance to perform your work which is accepted for the anthology. Should you want to, you will have chance to showcase your work at our launch events in early 2016.

 

10) You will receive two free copies of the anthology. Members of Blakenhall Writers, as well as non-members who have a piece included in the anthology, will receive two free copies of the anthology.

 

If you have any questions let us know. We look forward to reading your pieces!

Roma, Cherry & Kuli