West Midlands based novelist David Calcutt is sharing chapters of his new novel for young people on his blog at http://davidcalcutt.wordpress.com/. David’s previous novels have been published by OUP and in the traditional manner – waiting until publication before revealing any of the text – so this is an interesting departure. As writers and readers become more confident with working on digital platforms the traditional barriers between writer and reading are breaking down, which is surely a good thing. On the down side this does make it harder to earn a living as a writer, but perhaps some balance can be struck. Anyway, do give David’s blog a look and see what he is up to.

One of the pleasures of running Writing West Midlands is the chance to help ensure that good books by good writers get a day in the sun. On Tuesday 27th April 2010 we were delighted to launch Christine Coleman’s new novel Paper Lanterns (more details from www.christinecoleman.net). This book is interesting on several counts: it is a well written good read, no doubt of that, but also is has been published by the author herself, and very professionally as well. Years ago self-publishing was looked down upon by those who published through the traditional publishing houses, but times are changing. Mainstream publishers have long since given up their monopoly on spotting good writers (if they ever had it) and smaller and smaller publishers are making an impact (Tindal Street Press have a better strike rate for successful books than any major publisher, for instance). And the means of production is moving away from being held in the hands of one conglomorate. Now a talented writer can employ a talented editor and a copy editor and a designer and with energy and a bit of luck manage to produce a book as good, if not better, than those churned out (and so many novels are churned out) by the bigger publishing houses. There is perhaps less likelihood of making enourmous amounts of money but there is more likelihood of books being successful because of the artistic skills and administrative passion lavished upon them. Good writing will surface for us all to enjoy: poor writing won’t be quite so often foisted upon us in an attempt to get a return on investment or to distort our reading tastes for purely commercial gain. This isn’t perhaps the solution for all publishing in the UK at the moment, but it will become one of a range of solutions and help break down the perception that there is only one true way to publish. Writers being by their very nature people who want to explore and make new need a means of production and distribution that wants to explore and make new. Carry on, Christine Coleman and others.

Suddenly the West Midlands is full of poetry activity. I’m not sure why, although the common factor is individuals who want to make it happen. The Polesworth Poets Trail is a case in point. Malcome Dewhirst has lead this project to use money available to the town for improvement of the environment and has had installed a fabulous series of poems, etched into metal and wood, set in stone, and placed around the town. The poetry is inspired by the fact that John Donne and Michael Drayton and others gathered in Polesworth in the 16th century but more importantly has been responded to by contemporary writers from across the country.

The Much Wenlock Poetry Festival has had a successful first outing and has reminded us once again that people are interested in poetry if you present it imaginatively and in an interesting location. And soon we will have Ledbury Poetry Festival‘s programme and the Stratford Poetry Festival and Helen Dunmore, winner of the National Poetry Competition is part of the the Birmingham Book Festival’s first Festival in a Day on 29th May. To add to this, Jacqui Rowe has launched a great series of poetry workshops to run in Birmingham, Nine Arches Press are rolling out handsome books and events to match (and we mustn’t forget Flarestack) and even as I write I suspect some enterprising enthusiast will be costing up a poetry project. I mention costing up, because money is necessary, but as these various events and projects show, there are a range of ways of getting iand using it. More on this in a future post.

And now I’m going to read another couple of poems from Jo Bell‘s collection, Navigation; eccelent stuff and long overdue for a re-print…

The end of March 2010 sees Writing West Midlands completing its first quarter of a year. What have we done and what have we achieved? Readers of our website will know that our work is loosely divided into Learn, Develop, Events, Festivals and Region and that we are keen to develop writers, grow audiences/readers, make new writing and promote the West Midlands as a creative writing region. Here’s how we have got on…

A huge amount of energy has gone into work connected to our Learn programme. This has included working with ten schools on our standard Write On programme (a total of fifty school visits by professional writers), a special programme for clusters of schools in the Black Coutnry (working twelve schools delivering over twenty four sessions) and two Original Writing Days for a cluster of schools in the Nechells area of Birmingham. We have also done some excellent work with the OCR Examination Board to explore ways in which young people can engage with contemporary and classic poetry. We launched two young people’s writing groups which meet monthly and are both well subscribed. And finally, we were involved in the National Lottery Showcase in Birmingham, sharing some new writing from children in Birmingham.

Our Events programme included a successful launch of Clare Morrall’s latest novel, The Man Who Disappeared, and a fully subscribed writing workshop with Roz Goddard. We are also planning a launch for Christine Coleman’s new novel on 27th April. Most of our events energy has gone into programming and announcing our Spring Thing – Festival in a Day, featuring a wonderful range of writers, and culminating in a performance from the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. And at the same time we are programming the October Birmingham Book Festival and already have a very exciting line-up. We also supported an event managed by the Drum.

Our Develop work included a training day for writers working in schools and arranging a sub-regional networking afternoon in Newcastle under Lyme (date to be confirmed). We have also begun to programme our Writer Networking Conference, which is likley to be on Saturday 20th November. And we have got to the first stage of our Ears Wide Open commission programme, having commissioned two writers to produce pieces of work.

To add to this we have been making links with other regional and national organisations, includign National Poetry Day (I serve on their steering group), The Arvon Foundation, and Sampad. We attended and presented at the Writing Industries Conference in Loughorough, attended an MLA training session on the Cultural Offer for Families and convened a meeting of the National Network of Writers in Schools Project Managers in Liverpool. We have been successful in our application to Birmingham City Council’s fund for independent Festivals and have submitted several other applications to grant giving trusts.

Our work with individual writers continues. We have run six individual consultancy sessions with writers, looking at their work and ambitions and offering advice and guidance. We have also worked with a number of schools to suggest writers they might work with and have offered support to some Creative Partnerships colleagues. Finally, our website has been re-vamped; it works beter and it has a more sophisticated mechanism for gathering contacts.

This isn’t an exhaustive list but it covers the main areas of work. Our next quarter is focussing on our Festival work and on creating new ways of supporting writers, although I suspect it will end up involving every aspect of our work.

Our two Young Writers Groups were launched on Saturday 30th January and got of to enthusiastic start. Over thirty young people aged nine to fifteen came to the two groups and worked with professional writers Jo Bell, David Calcutt and Leila Rasheed. A quick exit poll suggested both both participants and writers had a great time and we are all looking forward to working together over the next six months.

Nearly a month gone of the first year of Writing West Midlands and it already feels like we’ve been here forever, in a positive way! Our two young people’s writing clubs (Writing Squads but we’re going to think of a new name to avoid confusion with other groups in the country) are launching on Saturday 30th January and are both fully subscribed. Write On Online is also about to launch, with good take up but more places available. There are also a few places on Roz Goddard’s poetry workshop on Saturday 6th February and already a good crowd for Clare Morrall’s book launch on 22nd February.

Meanwhile, we are setting up two days of creative writing activities for schools in Nechalls, working with clusters of schools in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Sandwell and Dudley and with schools in Highgate, Birmingham. All this activity is under our Learn Programme banner, which includes our ongoing Write On programme.

And perhaps most excitingly, we are close to finishing programming our one day Birmingham Book Festival which will take place on Saturday 29th May 2010 (in addition to our larger Birmingham Book Festival in October 2010). The programme is very good, and details will be released later in the winter.

On 9th December, Writing West Midlands’ education programme, Write On! was part of a networking event held at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. The event was designed to allow a whole range of arts organisations based in Birmingham to talk to teachers and others involved in after-school activities. We took two writers to add imagination and verve to our little stall, Philip Monks and Mandy Ross (and won the award for most creatively active stall!). As well as talking to several dozen very interested teachers and others we managed to produce some creative writing: a poem from Philip promoted by a conversation and a series of micro-stories about the journeys people had had to get to Symphony Hall. Here they are:

Tiger Balm

for Kit  

Bought for 50 rupees (that’s about 70p) in India

I feel the tension headache

about to begin:

                        creeping up on me,
                        sinister, frowning,
                        tightening it’s headlock

The curse of admin.

I open the gold-topped, hexagonal jar

and put the balm on-
                     mint, menthol, cajuput tail
                     (no tigers involved)
and slowly, slowly
I am taken up the slope of the mountain
to the snow line-
           cool, easy,
and feel the snow peaks behind
and see, below
the lights coming on in the valley

by Philip Monks

Journey ribbons from School cluster day – collected by Mandy Ross

A Journey adventure needs something unexpected to happen but when it happens make sure you’re not expecting it- look, it’s coming…

Loaded up the car with merch… boss forgot our display stands… had to get a cab back to get them… finally got here… ate a mince pie. The End.

I came by train. Pat the duck pond over the village green, down the hill and into the station. On the train, lots of trees, people looking busy, into the city- groan- absolutely.

The bus was fifteen minutes late which wasn’t a surprise as it usually comes whenever it wants with no explanation of why and where it has been!

I drove here 12 minutes past over Hockley flyover, through the Jewellery Quarter, the shops were open, people looking for xmas presents at leisure while I was coming here.

Our music teacher drove us here. We moaned all the way but it was refreshing. I got it off my chest.

Bicycled, I swang out into heavy traffic, finessing my way between cars and buses, all the time accelerating, out of the saddle, at one with the world!

The traffic was backed up all the way to Moseley but no one spoke at the bus stop or on the bus. We were silent, resigned and late.

We rang all the fours, all the eights. We struggled the corridor with our lo-tech display materials. The taxi driver on the phone in his own language, he didn’t really want to open the book, but he did. We were stuck by the re-appearance of the big wheel. We weren’t booked in thanks to some admin mix-up, but kindly THSH gave us their table…

If you turn all the way round are you back at the place you started?

I left my house in plenty of time to get to work by 9am. The traffic had other ideas… a normal 10 minute journey took me an hour. The Pershore Road was jammed and the route into town was gridlocked. Apparently there had been an accident…

I cycled in this morning, I was wrapped up warm and listening to music. I rode quite slowly because I was knackered from yesterday’s football

Travelling through time to get here in time- in the right frame of mind, time + place + mind = creative imagination!!

Saying goodbye to 2009 is an opportunity to take stock and look forward to the future. For the Birmingham Book Festival and related projects it was perhaps our most significant year. When the Birmingham Book Festival was founded in 1999 by me (Jonathan Davidson) and my colleagues Helen Thomas and Julie Tait we hardly dared look a year ahead let alone a decade. Well, in that decade not only has the Festival flourished but an education programme has been added (Write On!) and more recently a writer-networking programme (The Writers’ Toolkit). While Helen and Julie moved on to other projects, I have been lucky (sic) enough to stay with the Festival, and have been joined by Sara Beadle as Festival Programmer (now Director of the Birmingham Book Festival) and most recently Joanne Penn (as Administrative Assistant). And, perhaps most importantly, we have have establishment of very active and supportive Board of Directors, able to help carry our work through the next decade.

The Board of Directors has already been instrumental in helping the Festival take the next, logical step – becoming Writing West Midlands and setting out to provide the best possible environment for creative writing to flourish in the region. Our two writer networking conference (The Writers’ Toolkit in 2008 and 2009) gave a mandate for this ambitious development. Both conferences demonstrated not only a need for emerging and established writers to gather together but the effectiveness of broker relationships between these writers and the wider world. As a case in point, the wonderful work being done by Mandy Ross and Polly Wright for the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust using creative writing with service users was a result of these two writers meeting at The Writers’ Toolkit Conference in 2008.

So, the future. Well, we will be developing a set of aims and objectives over the two months and sharing these through our website. But more importantly we will be simply doing new work and testing demand and effectiveness. Our Writing Squads and Write On Online projects for young writers (8 – 16 years) are a case in point. These are not prompted by policy or strategy but by a gut feeling that the future of creative writing in the West Midlands depends on supporting writers at all stages of their careers, including at the very beginning. We have managed to secure a modest amount of funding to make this happen (our thanks to the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Birmingham City Council) and we have professional writers in the region trained and eager to do this work. Both projects launch on Saturday 30th January 2010.

There will be many more new activities, we hope. Some run directly by Writing West Midlands and some brokered by us. If you have ideas, get in touch. 

Finally, we wish you a wonderful creative writing 2010!

Jonathan Davidson (Chief Executive, Writing West Midlands) and the Staff and Board of Directors of Writing West Midlands

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Welcome to Writing West Midlands.

Who?

We are a new organisation designed  to encourage, promote and actively facilitate literature development activity in the West Midlands.

On this site you will find resources and links to Events, Opportunities for Writers, information about our Education programme, (Write On!), our annual Literature Festival (Birmingham Book Festival), Advice for Writers and more.

Who is this site for?

• Writers

If you are just starting out you may find our ‘Advice‘ section helpful. There are also competitions, workshops and more under our ‘Opportunities‘ section.

If you are an established writer you might want to connect with organisations that work with writers, find out about working in schools or other settings, and find out about networking events for writers. You can find more information in the ‘Opportunities‘ and ‘Events‘ sections, and you are welcome to join our mailing list or contact us directly to tell us about your work as a writer or find out how we can help you further.

• Teachers & Schools

If you are a teacher and you are looking for ways to bring creative writing alive for your students, we may be able to help.

We run an education programme putting writers into schools, and various other education-related activities. Write On! has three core strands: Writers In Schools, Original Writing Days and an Online Writing Project for Primary and Secondary school children. We invite you to have a look at our ‘Education‘ section to see examples of what we are doing.

We are also available to give advice and put you in contact with writers and others in your area if you are looking for something a little different to what the Write On! project offers.

• Those Working in Literature Development

If you are involved in events or activities in our area that you think we should know about, please email us.

If you are looking for career development, or jobs and opportunities, please have a look at our ‘Opportunities‘ section. Please also join our mailing list.
We are inviting you to join our online community, link to our blog, participate in our polls and other research, and begin to tell us what you need from your region.

• Many others

Whether you are a Librarian, student, editor, publisher, agent, journalist, member of a reading group or practically anything else, you may still find something of interest here.

Perhaps you have always fancied participating in a writing workshop? We will list workshops going on in the region year round. See our ‘Events‘ section. Perhaps you run a writing competition and would like to pass on information about it? Email it to us and we can add it to our ‘Opportunities‘ page. Perhaps you run events, or a readers group, and would like more information about some of the many things we offer? Perhaps you just love books?

Whatever your reason for being here,  join our mailing list and never miss out. To do that go here