In partnership with the Black Country Living Museum and Dudley Library Service, we are welcoming entries to the Newcomen Poetry Competition.

 
The Museum invite you to join in and celebrate 300 years of the Newcomen Steam Engine- the world’s first successful steam engine – at their Steam weekend event which will be taking place on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th July 2012. See the world’s only working replica of the world’s first successful steam engine, Newcomen Steam Engine in action as it re-opens for the first time after a 60,000 restoration programme.

To celebrate the Museum are also hosting a inaugural poetry festival on Saturday 14th July and we are looking for poems exloring the significance of the Newcomen Steam engine. This can be anything from its dramatic appearance and innovative methods of operation, to the impact it had on working conditions in the mines and key role it played in the development of automated mechanical power and the industrial revolution.

For more information about the event on Saturday 14th July, please click here. To see the full terms and conditions for the competition, please click here.

Our Coventry Write On! Writing Squad, a creative writing group for young people aged 11 – 16, are taking part in this year’s Coventry Mysteries Festival on Saturday 16th June, 2.30pm.

Join them as they share their creative writing based on the theme of peace and reconciliation having been inspired by a visit to the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. This event is free and will be taking place in the marquee which will be situated in Broadgate.

The Coventry Writing Squad is run by professional writer Naomi Alsop with support from Rose Moulding. They meet one Saturday a month at The Belgrade Theatre and look at all sorts of creative writing. There are places available to join the group from September 2012, if you would like to join or know someone aged 11 – 16 who may be interested, please email Projects Manager, Joanne Penn at joanne[at]writingwestmidlands.org to reserve a place.

Assess where you are, identify where you would like to be and develop an action plan to turn your writing ambitions into reality.

Andrew Burton is a Freelance Art Consultant, Project Manager and accredited coach specialising in literature projects, freelance writing and marketing & audience development. Getting to where you want to be is delivered in association with The Writer’s Compass which is NAWE’s (National Association of Writers in Education) professional development service for writers. This workshop has featured at Writers’ Centre Norwich and the Essex Book Festival 2012.

To book places on this workshop, please visit our online box office: www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3137842371 or visit the Writing Workshop Day event page: www.writingwestmidlands.org/2012/03/12/writing-workshop-day/

Getting to where you want to be with Andrew Burton, Saturday 12^th May, 1pm – 3.30pm.
South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

Children’s author Juliet Clare Bell will be leading a workshop next Saturday 12^th May as part of our Writing Workshop Day at South Birmingham College.

At the end of this practical session, you should have a better idea of how to write for children, some of your writing strengths (with tips for improving), what you’d like to write and for whom, and your motivations. And we’ll be looking at where to go from here.

Juliet Clare Bell has been writing since 2003 and she lives in Birmingham. Her book The Kite Princess, illustrated by Laura-Kate Chapman is out later this year and is accompanied by a CD of the story read by Oscar nominated actress, Imelda Staunton.

There are places available for this workshop, to book please visit our online box office: www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3137707969 or visit the Writing Workshop Day event page: www.writingwestmidlands.org/2012/03/12/writing-workshop-day/

Writing for Children with Juliet Clare Bell, Saturday 12^th May, 10am – 12.30pm
South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

How do playwrights connect with audiences, invite them into their world, and bring the stage alive with possibility? Looking at the choices Chris and others have made in their work, explore how the information on the page translates to the stage.

Chris O’Connell is a writer and the Artistic Director of Theatre Absolute, founded in 1992 and based in Coventry. Since 1999, all of the company’s work has been written by Chris and Theatre Absolute has earned a growing reputation for its work, most notably through the making of Street Trilogy which thrilled audiences at the Edinburgh Festival and toured both the UK an Europe to huge critical acclaim.

There are spaces available for this workshop on writing for the stage. To book, please visit our online box office: www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3137605663 or visit the Writing Workshop Day event page: www.writingwestmidlands.org/2012/03/12/writing-workshop-day/

Writing for the Stage with Chris O’Connell, Saturday 12^th May, 10am – 12.30pm
South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

Chris McCabe will be joining us next Saturday 12^th May to run a writing workshop on writing crime and thriller at South Birmingham College, 10am – 12.30pm.

Chris is a Professor of Molecular Endocrinology at the University of Birmingham. He is also a novelist writing forensic thrillers under the name of John Macken (previously John McCabe). His series featuring Dr. Reuben Maitland have included Dirty Little Lies, Trial by Blood, Breaking Point and Control.

Places are still available for this workshop in which Chris will be leading to get to the dark heart of writing crime and thrillers.

To book, please visit our online box office: www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3137505363%20 or visit the Writing Workshop Day page on our website: www.writingwestmidlands.org/2012/03/12/writing-workshop-day/

Writing Crime & Thriller with Chris McCabe, Saturday 12^th May, 10am – 12.30pm
South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

With regret we have to inform you that one of our Persian Poets, Partaw Naderi from Afghanistan, is now unable to travel to the UK in light of difficult family circumstances.

We are of course disappointed that Partaw cannot join us in Birmingham, but are delighted that in his place we welcome Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, who writes in Farsi and is one of Iran’s leading poets. She was born in Mashhad in 1962 and now lives in Sweden.

Azita’s work includes The Suburb Of Crows (2008), Forgetfulness is a Simple Ritual (1992), Sculptures of Autumn (1986), and Eve’s Songs (1983).

Her poetry has been translated into Swedish, German, English, Dutch, Arabic and Chinese. Her new book, Under Hypnosis in Dr Caligari’s Cabinet, was published in Sweden in 2012.
 

Azita joins Shakila Azizzada and UK poets Mimi Khalvati and Sarah Maguire for a wonderful evening of bi-lingual Persian poetry. Not to be missed.

Tickets are still available for this event.  £10 / £5.

You can book at www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/2935055831 or find out more about the event at www.writingwestmidlands.org/2012/02/28/an-evening-of-persian-poetry/

Bestselling author and storyteller Cat Weatherill will be running a workshop as part of our Writing workshop Day on Saturday 12^th May at South Birmingham College called Performing Your Writing.

Cat who is the curator and host of our series of real life storytelling events at the Ikon gallery, Tell Me On A Sunday; will work with you to help bring your written work alive in performance, with confidence coaching, voice work, text preparation and professional polishing secrets.

For more information about Cat, please visit her website: www.catweatherill.co.uk/

To book places for this workshop, please click here.

Performing Your Writing with Cat Weatherill, Saturday 12^th May, 10am – 12.30pm
South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

On Saturday 12^th May as part of our Writing Workshop Day, novelist Candi Miller will be running a workshop entitled Truth, Lies & Life Writing.

Born in Zambia and brought up in South Africa, Candi has been a journalist and advertising copywriter. She now lives in Staffordshire where she teaches Creative and Professional Writing part time.

In 1994 she undertook an expedition to the Kalahari Desert to visit groups of San (Bushman) people. There she was caught up in a huge veld fire, charged by a bull elephant and enchanted by Ju/‘hoansi story-telling around a campfire. This inspired her to write her novels, Salt and Honey and Kalahari Passage- both published by Tindal Street Press.

Join Candi at her writing workshop, Truth, Lies & Life Writing at 10am – 12.30pm on Saturday 12^th May at South Birmingham College (Main Digbeth campus), Deritend High Street, Birmingham, B5 5SU- 5 minute walk from Birmingham city centre. Tickets are £25/ £20 (concessionary price)

This workshop is designed to demonstrate the power and the pitfalls of mining your own or someone else’s memories to tell a good non-fiction story. Bring along a plan or a short piece of your life writing if you want some instant group feedback.

For more information and to book tickets, please click here.

With one week to go now until the Poetry Translation Centre’s Persian Poets’ Tour arrives in Birmingham with our event, An Evening of Persian Poetry we thought we would tell you a little bit about Shakila Azizzada.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1964, Shakila studied Law at Kabul University. It was while she was studying that she also began to write poetry and stories, many of which were published in magazines. She then went on to read Oriental Languages and Cultures at Utrecht University in The Netherlands.

Her first collection of poems Herinnerin aan niets (Memories About Nothing) was published in Dutch and Dari and her second collection will be published later this year. Shakila has also written plays, several of which have been published and performed.

Kabul by Shakila Azizzada

If my heart beats
for Kabul,
it’s for the slopes of Bala Hissar,
holding my dead
in its foothills.

Though not one, not one
of those wretched hearts
ever beat for me.

If my heart grieves
for Kabul,
it’s for Leyla’s sighs of
‘Oh, dear God!’
and my grandmother’s heart
set pounding.

It’s for Golnar’s eyes
scanning the paths
from dawn to dusk, spring to autumn,
staring so long
that all the roads fall apart
and in my teenage nightmares
side roads
suddenly shed their skins.

If my heart trembles
for Kabul,
it’s for the slow step of summer noons,
siestas in my father’s house which,
heavy with mid-day sleep,
still weighs on my ribs.

For the playful Angel of the Right Shoulder
who keeps forgetting
to ward away stray bullets.

It’s for the hawker’s cry
of the vegetable seller doing his rounds,
lost in my neighbours’ troubled dreams,
that my heart’s trembling.

Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska and Mimi Khalvati

Original poem:

کابل by Shakila Azizzada

برای کابل
اگر دلم می تپد
برای دامن بالاحصار است
که مرده هایم را
در آغوش می کشد
هر چند، هیچ گاه
هیچ یک از آن دل های نامراد
برای من نتپیده است

برای کابل
اگر دلم می سوزد
برای “ویش خدا” گفتن لیلا است
که دل مادر کلان را
کلچه کلچه داغ می زد

برای راه کشیدن چشم های گلنار است
که از پگاه تا بیگاه
از بهار تا تیر ماه
آنقدر بر راه ماندند
تا همه ی جاده ها پوسیدند
و بیراهه هایش
ناگهان
در خواب های نورس من
پوست انداختند

برای کابل
اگر دلم می لرزد
برای نیمروز های کند پای تابستان است
که هنوز خانه ی پدری را
به سنگینی خواب نیم چاشتی اش
بر صندوق سینه ام بار می کند

برای فرشته ی بازیگوش شانه ی راست
که هی یادش می رود
گلوله های غیبی را بتاراند

برای گم شدن صدای
سبزی فروش دوره گرد
در خواب های پریشان همسایه هاست
که دلم می لرزد

View From Afar by Shakila Azizzada

I’m left again with no one standing behind me,
ground pulled from under my feet.
Even the sun’s shoulders are beyond my reach.

My navel chord was tied
to the apron strings of custom,
my hair first cut over a basin of edicts.
In my ear, a prayer was whispered:
‘May the earth behind and beneath you
be forever empty’.

However, just a little higher,
there’ll always be a land
purer than any land Satan could wish on me.

With the sun’s hand on my shoulder,
I tear my feet away, a thousand and one times,
from the things I leave behind me.

Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska and Mimi Khalvati

Original poem:

دورنما by Shakila Azizzada

بازخالی می شود پشتم
خالی می شود باز زير پاهايم
دستم به شانه های آفتاب نمی گيرد

نافم را
بر پايه ی عادت گره زدند
مويم را بر طشت بايگانی بريدند
در گوشم اذان گفتند:

“همواره پشت تو
همواره زير پايت خالی باد”
همواره اما
بالاترک زمينی ست
سُچه تر از نيايش ابليس

با دست آفتاب بر شانه هايم
پا می کنم هزار و يکم باره
از مانده های من

Epitaph by Shakila Azizzada

Whose dying breaths
are sleeping
in your hazel eyes?

What small child’s gaze
goes blank at your trigger?

For what young girl,
her heart in your palm,
legs bloodied, does your heart beat?

Mountain man!
What fate will tear the cliffs
from under your feet?

What woman will feel her nipples burn
for your black curls in the dust,
what mother for her son?

Tell me,
in the depths of whose eyes
will your dying breaths find peace?

Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska and Mimi Khalvati

Original Poem:

لوح by Shakila Azizzada

در چشمان ميشی ات
آخرين نفس ِ
کدام ها می خوابد؟

نگاه کدام کودک
با ماشه ات خالی می شود؟

دلت برای کدام دوشيزه ی
دل در کف ِ
ی در خون می تپد؟
کوه مرد!

کدام تقدير
صخره از زير پا هايت می گيرد؟

سياه زلفان به خاک آلوده ات
نوک پستان های کدام زن را می سوزاند؟

بگو
نفس آخر تو
ته چشمان که آرام می گيرد؟

This information was taken from the Poetry Translation Centre’s website, http://www.poetrytranslation.org/

For more information about the event An Evening of Persian Poetry and to book tickets, please see the event page by clicking here.