Dyslexic Poets: Mixed Blessings & Metaphors

To the dyslexic, words are meant to be a nightmare, but what if you have fun with them instead? Award-winning dyslexic poets Jackie Hagan and Tricia Ashworth bring to life the imaginative frenzy and topsy-turvy ingenuity of this superb disorder.

Jackie Hagan
One of the best-known performance poets in Manchester, Jackie also facilitates creativity sessions for adults with mental health needs. She has edited and appeared in numerous anthologies, had her first play Help! staged at the Contact Theatre and owns a Blue Peter badge for a bring-and-buy sale she never actually got round to organising. Her second collection of poetry, The Wisdom of the Jumble Sale, has just been published by Flapjack Press.

Tricia Ashworth
Tricia grew up in Burnley, and studied Creative Arts at the University of Northumbria. She has acted in numerous fringe theatre shows as well as appearing in an acclaimed production of her own play The Pressure Cooker at the Brighton Festival. She began writing poetry at an early age and has performed at many Manchester poetry events and readings. She was recently accepted on the Apples and Snakes Push programme with her Settee Season.

Thursday 11 February
Central Library, Committee Room, Second Floor
6pm onwards FREE
For more information please contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981
email: l.tempest@manchester .gov.uk

The Office Park - Ballopia?

I'm pleased to welcome our latest guest blogger, Paul Stevens. Paul is a Manchester-based web designer, blogger, infamous poet, twitterer and all-around good egg. He's a contributor at Chimp magazine and you may also know him from his work with the Speakeasy collective. Today he is looking at Ballardian.com, which explores tropes and motifs found in the work of the late J.G. Ballard. Take it away Paul...

The Office Park

In his later work, from 1994’s “Rushing to paradise” until the final “Kingdom Come”, J G Ballard’s mercurial attention shifted from dystopias rooted in fictional projections of the future to examinations of the contradictions, hidden agendas and stress points lurking beneath the façade of bourgeois life in the UK and beyond.

In particular he was interested in artificial communities, conurbations with all of the advantages and technologies of the urban environment and with the chaos, the flaws, the organic, spontaneous elements designed out of them. Communities built from the ground up to facilitate the smooth interface of commerce and leisure, and the mechanisms by which these contrived environments seek to contain and control what Jung referred to as “the dark hydraulic of the Id”, the very stuff of human nature, from which both our creativity and destructive urges spring.

“Super-Cannes” in particular presents the perfect late period Ballopia, set in the hills above Cannes, a business park and residential development, which serves as a cathedral to commerce, rationality and hyper-modernity. All the large European conglomerates have pitched up there with a view to hot housing the industries of tomorrow while providing the residents with a closed community free from the glitches, inequalities and imperfections of mainstream society.

What Ballard observes is that contrary to expectation, humans do not respond well to a life designed without imperfection, and become anxious, unsettled and stressed. Paradoxically the cure for this malaise lies in the uncontrolled venting of our baser instincts, and under the malign direction of the resident psychiatrist an underworld of violence and sexual degradation thrives just out of sight of the corporate towers and colonnades.

Artist Nicolas Cobb recognised the parallels between the commercial campus of Ballard’s “Super-Cannes” and the concepts behind much of the commercial regeneration of London over the last 20 years or so, and has produced a series of sculptures called The Office Park, influenced by both.

Read these!

Super Cannes

Cocaine Nights

Rushing to paradise

Millennium People

Kingdom Come

Top 10 tools for better reading

The Lifehacker blog have put together a top ten list of web, computer, and other tools to make reading easier online and off - but surely libraries should be in tip 2?

Anyway we've added some reading gadgets and gizmos of our own - found on our travels through the web.

No. 1 is the BookBook, a literary disguise for your laptop.






Next we have the Book Porcupine - which can hold 18 of your most precious books again, but a bit steep at £950!







Look as cool as Orbital - lighted reading glasses £24 from Hammacher.com



A nice simple gadget - the Thumbthing Book Holder.




What tips and tweaks do you use when you are reading? Tell us all about your own little library tweaks in the comments...

Cathy Bolton & Suzanne Batty - Lunchtime Poetry @ Central Library

Cathy and Suzanne are both founding members of Manchester's A6 Poets and recent graduates of the Sheffield Hallam Writing MA.

Cathy, who is also Director of the Manchester Literature Festival, will be launching her Ictus prize-winning poetry pamphlet, A Fool's Height Short of Heaven.

Suzanne's first full-length poetry collection, The Barking Thing, is published by Bloodaxe and she was recently commissioned to write a series of poems in response to the Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery.

Contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981 for more information or email l.tempest@manchester.gov.uk

Committee Room, Second Floor, Central Library, St. Peter's Square, Manchester, M2 5PD

Choose your favourite romantic novel of the last fifty years

2010 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Romantic Novelists Association and to celebrate the RNA, in conjunction with Woman's Weekly, is running a 50th Anniversary Poll to find Britain's favourite romantic novel published between 1960 and 2009.

The poll is being conducted in conjunction with Woman’s Weekly, libraries, reading and writing groups all over Britain. Nominate your favourite romantic novel by emailing the title and author to goldenpoll@rna-uk.org OR send to RNA Goldenpoll, PO Box 9230, Market Harborough LE16 0FG. The closing date 31st January 2010.

Special voting coupons for the top titles will be published in Woman’s Weekly during May 2010, a shortlist in the magazine June/July,and the result announced in September

Palm sized digital audio books now available at Manchester Libraries

Manchester Libraries are now now offering Playaways – the first self-playing digital audio book – adding the innovative digital format to our existing audio book collection.

A Playaway is a small audio player that comes preloaded with an entire book, regardless of length. You don’t need a separate player, and you don’t have to worry about several cassettes or CDS.

It’s perfect for people of all ages and gives you the portability to catch up with a good book wherever you are. Plus, they’re small enough to carry around in your pocket. Request them online by searching for Playaway on the online library catalogue.

Half the size of a deck of cards, Playaways can hold up to eighty hours of content on each unit. Using clearly marked buttons, Playaway gives listeners the ability to move back and forth within or between chapters and alter the speed of a narrator’s voice. It also has an automatic bookmark feature that remembers where you left off. Additionally, each Playaway weighs only two ounces and has a universal headphone jack that works with almost any type of headphone or mobility accessory.

There are hundreds of Playaway titles available to borrow, including many selections for children, bestselling adult fiction, classics, poetry and biography. Playaways aren't in stock at all libraries yet, but you can reserve them online for free from the library catalogue website and you can pick up your Playaway from any Manchester Library - we'll semd an email to let you know your reservation is ready to collect.

Time to kill? Time to enter the Young Crime Writers Competiton

Can you write a first rate crime story? That's the challenge issued to you by the Crime Writers' Association. You have up to 1000 words to get the readers hooked, although you don't have to write as much as that - perhaps you can create such a brilliant story that even 100 words will be enough to knock the judges dead...

Crime novels include a very wide variety of material - detective stories, creepy psychological thrillers, historical whodunits, spies, terrorist plots... from cops and robbers to vigilantes and robots, the choice is yours.

So write alone or write with a partner, but get writing now, because the closing date is 19 February and if your entry isn't with your local library by that date, it won't be included in the judging. Read the rules carefully and make sure you stick to them. If you're short of inspiration, why not borrow some crime novels from the library and see how the professionals do it?

In April, all short listed entrants from your area will be invited to a regional award ceremony, where the name of the winning entry from your area will be announced. That entry will go forward to the national shortlist, and the overall winner will be announced during National Crime Fiction Week in June.

If your entry is selected for the area shortlist, you will be notified no later than 5 April 2010. Good writing and good luck!

Entry Form

Freed Up 2010

FREED UP swooshes back into our lives this Thursday 21 January with hosts Dominic and Steve. Get yourselves down to the Green Room for 7.30. It's free entry!

To book a 4 minute slot to read call 0161 615 0500 and get writing on this month's theme of SHAPES. Freed Up actively encourages new writing from new and established poets. It's relaxed, friendly, informal and there's usually free cake! If you'd like to know more read Arthur Chappell's review of a Freed Up night from November 2009.

Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2010 longlist announced

The 2009 prize winner

From spies to speed dating; war-time turmoil to modern manners - a broad array of titles and authors, including a record number of men, have been nominated for the 50th Romantic Novel of the Year Award, presented by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

One hundred and fifty-eight novels, from twenty-four publishers, were submitted for the first round of judging. The long list of twenty novels, includes Erica James, Veronica Henry, Santa Montefiore, Katie Flynn, Sarah Duncan and Nicholas Sparks. A shortlist of six titles (to be announced on February 11th) will be selected and sent to the final judges and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, March 16th 2010.

The complete longlist (in alphabetical order of author):

The Very Thought of You	Rosie Alison	Alma Books
Passion	Louise Bagshawe	Headline Review
Beachcombing	Maggie Dana	Pan Macmillan
Fairytale of New York	Miranda Dickinson	Avon (Harper Collins)
Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts	Lucy Dillon	Hodder & Stoughton
A Single to Rome	Sarah Duncan	Headline Review
A Mother's Hope	Katie Flynn	Arrow (Random Hse)
A Glimpse at Happiness	Jean Fullerton	Orion
10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love	Linda Green	Headline Review
Marriage and Other Games	Veronica Henry	Orion
The Glass Painter's Daughter	Rachel Hore	Simon & Schuster
It's the Little Things	Erica James	Orion
I Heart New York	Lindsey Kelk	Harper
The Heart of the Night	Judith Lennox	Headline Review
The Italian Matchmaker	Santa Montefiore	Hodder & Stoughton
The Summer House	Mary Nichols	Allison & Busby
One Thing Led to Another	Katy Regan	Harper
The Last Song	Nicholas Sparks	Little Brown (Sphere)
Last Christmas	Julia Williams	Avon (Harper Collins)
The Hidden Dance	Susan Wooldridge	Allison & Busby

A lunchtime look at the life of Muriel Spark

Carcanet & Central Library celebrate the remarkable life of one of the twentieth century's best loved novelists.

Spark's biographer, Professor Martin Stannard and Dr. Andrew Biswell, an expert on literary biography, will discuss Spark's life and work.

Following the publication of Professor Stannard's widely acclaimed biography, Carcanet has also reissued Spark's brilliant and witty autobiography, Curriculum Vitae.

For more information please contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981 or email: l.tempest@manchester .gov.uk

Manchester Central Library
Committee Room, Second Floor
Friday 29th January 1-2pm FREE

blankpages Issue 18 available for free download

I'm a bit late with this one, but just in case you missed it blankpages issue 18 is out now and available for free download.

The first blankpages of 2010 features art from Andy Glinka. Salford rock group Samuel Sharp provide this month's mp3 sound companion andpoetry includes John Maher and Karen Lavin, coupled with yet more beautiful illustration. The visual art spotlight falls on Peter Hiett, and showcased fiction comes in the form of simple and effective short shorts from Luke Kenyon.

blankpages are always looking for new voices to feature in the monthly online magazine. To submit work to blankpages simply join Blank Media and select the "Publish in blankpages" option when you add work to your Portfolio or email editor@blankmediacollective.org. Please read the Submission Guidelines before submitting your work.

Which writer or character would you invite to your best dinner ever?

"My best dinner ever would be if I was at a secret location and I invited James Bond, and I would invite the Famous 5..." Sarah.

Each month the Manchester Book Award team pose a reading-themed question to schoolchildren across Manchester. Read lots more answers at the Manchester Book Award's Question of the Month page on Issuu.com

Now in it’s fifth year, the Manchester Book Award (MBA) is a reader development project for young people. Run by Manchester Library and Information Service, it involves young people across the city, creatively encouraging them to read and talk about books to promote literacy and a passion for reading.

Diamond Dagger for McDermid

Val McDermid has been named as the recipient of this year's Crime Writers Association (CWA) Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing.

McDermid was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ITV3 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, whose partners include the CWA, in October. She will receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award at a ceremony yet to be confirmed.

McDermid said: "I'm delighted to be admitted to this very select group of crime writers. To be awarded the CWA Carter Diamond Dagger is a distinction every writer dreams of.

"It's been an amazing 12 months—inducted into the Hall of Fame, elected to an Honorary Fellowship at St Hilda's College, Oxford and now the Diamond Dagger. But my readers can be reassured about one thing—I'm not going to rest on my laurels."

McDermid's latest novel, Fever of the Bone, will be released in paperback by Little, Brown on 18th February. Reserve Fever of the Bone or any other Val McDermid books at the online library catalogue and we will email you when it is ready to collect.

William Burroughs' stuff

The always interesting Kottke.org has posted a link to photographs of the apartment that American writer William S. Burroughs inhabited while he lived in New York - preserved since his death in 1997.

Photographer Peter Ross took some photos of some of the contents, including a worn pair of shoes, blowdarts, a bedspread and a book called Medical Implications of Karate Blows.

In an interview, Ross explains how the pictures (see here for the complete collection) explore the myth of the man through a selection of "weird, touching, and often unexpected possessions" found in Burroughs’s windowless New York City apartment.

A comprehensive guide to free ebooks

On the fortieth birthday of Project Gutenberg Zorba Press has published a comprehensive guide to free ebooks. It's actually Chapter 3 from Michael Pastore’s 50 Benefits of Ebooks. The Guide covers search engines, RSS feeds, public and university libraries and:

A. Free Ebook Websites
B. Ebook Directories: Sites That List Free Ebook Websites
C. Ebook Search Sites and Ebook Search Engines
D. Audiobooks
E. Ebooks About Aspects of Writing, Publishing, Internet, and Epublishing
F. Literature, Classic Books, Biographies
G. Nonfiction Ebooks (including Science, Technology and Computer Ebooks)
H. Scholarly Offerings
I. Children’s Literature
J. Pastore’s Picks: 1,001 Noteworthy Ebooks to Read Before You Diet

(This article is from Teleread.org)

The English Opium Eater - De Quincey and Manchester

I've just reserved Robert Morrison's new book - The English Opium Eater: a Biography of Thomas de Quincey, at the library catalogue, after reading several good reviews which I've posted below.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) has long lacked a fully fledged biography yet his friendships with leading poets and men of letters have placed him at the centre of 19th-century literary studies. De Quincey is a fascinating figure for other reasons too: a self-mythologizing autobiographer whose attitudes to drug-induced creativity and addiction strike highly resonant chords for a contemporary readership.

The son of a wealthy merchant he was born in Manchester in 1789 and was raised at the family's town house (believed to be on the site of the Arndale Centre) and at their country retreat at Greenheys, in the then rural district of Moss Side. The family name was simply Quincey but his mother had grander ideas.

He was educated at Manchester Grammar School. His school days were an unhappy period and he ran away to Chester. Later he walked to the Lake District to see his idol Wordsworth, whom he succeeded as tenant of Dove Cottage.

Manchester Libraries are the custodians of the De Quincey Collection which contains six boxes of magazine articles by De Quincey extracted from the leading magazines of the day such as Blackwood's and Tait's Edinburgh magazine. We also hold 150 editions of the works - mostly first or early editions, and numerous books about De Quincey, as well as books belonging to De Quincey and a few fragments of manuscripts, some donated by his daughters.

The impetus for many of the collections came from John Albert Green, the librarian from 1895 of the then independent Moss Side Library (demolished in the 1960s). He persuaded several local and international collectors as well as relatives of famous authors to donate their collections to this library.

When Moss Side amalgamated with Manchester Public Libraries they were moved to a Special Collections department within the Central Library with Green as its first librarian.

"Robert Morrison's biography is astute and revealing, quarrying new sources." (JOHN CAREY SUNDAY TIMES)

"I knew that I was on to a good thing with this book before the page numbers were even out of roman numerals... This was a lively life, and this is a lively Life..." (SAM LEITH THE SPECTATOR)

"Morrison writes... with a combination of perspicacity and generous puzzlement... Thanks to Morrison... the life is clearer than it has ever been." (THE OBSERVER )

Thomas De Quincey web pages by Robert Morrison

Biography of Thomas De Quincey by Grevel Lindop from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Log in with your library card)

The Orwell Blog Prize 2010

Bloggers are invited to submit 10 blogposts, first published between 1st January 2009 and 31st December 2009 (inclusive), for the Orwell Prize for Blogs 2010. The blogposts do not have to be from the same blog - entry is per blogger.

The Prize will close to entries at midnight on 20th January 2010.

Blog posts which are simply online versions of articles printed in other publications, or are links to such articles, are not eligible. Any bloggers falling into this category are advised to enter the Journalism Prize.

Those bloggers who wish to remain anonymous may enter by their public username – their real identity will not be divulged by the Orwell Prize. All entrants must have a clear relationship with the UK or Ireland - if you have any questions about eligibility or any other part of the submissions process, please contact the Administrator.

Channel 4 reveals new Book Show reading List

Sarah Waters, Nick Hornby and “The Wire” writer George Pelecanos are among the authors of the 10 titles chosen for the inaugural series of Channel 4's“The TV Book Club”.

Waters’ Man Booker-shortlisted The Little Stranger will be the first title on the show to be discussed by celebrity hosts Jo Brand, Gok Wan, Laila Rouass, Dave Spikey and Nathaniel Parker, with Hornby's Juliet, Naked and Pelecanos' The Way Home alongside less well-known titles such as Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Play Book and Roma Tearne’s Brixton Beach. The list is dominated by the big publishing houses, with two from Random, four from Hachette, and one each from Harper, Penguin, Macmillan and Bloomsbury.

The 10-part series of “The TV Book Show” begins on digital channel More4 on Sunday 17th January, with repeats on daytime Channel 4.

The titles in full:

17th January: The Little Stranger Sarah Waters (Little, Brown)
24th January: Blacklands Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
31st January Sacred Hearts Sarah Dunant (Little, Brown)
7th February Juliet, Naked Nick Hornby (Penguin)
14th February Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese (Random House)
21st February The Rapture Liz Jensen (Bloomsbury)
28th February Brixton Beach Roma Tearne (HarperCollins)
7th March The Way Home George Pelecanos (Orion)
14th March Wedlock Wendy Moore (Orion)
21st March The Silver Linings Play Book Matthew Quick (Macmillan)

Save money and reserve any of these books for free at the online catalogue. We will email you when your book is ready to collect. You can also add your own book reviews and email reading suggestions to your friends directly from the catalogue.

Approaching Poetry - free Open University Course

Do you want to get more out of your reading of poetry? The Open University's Approaching Poetry course is designed to develop the analytical skills you need for a more in-depth study of literary texts.

This course is part of the OpenLearn website and gives free access to Open University course materials. You'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.

During the Approaching Poetry unit you will learn about rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, poetic inversion, voice and line lengths and endings. You will examine poems that do not rhyme and learn how to compare and contrast poetry.

Colm Tóibín Wins Costa Prize

Colm Tóibín is one of the most highly regarded Irish writers of his generation, loved by his readers and admired by his peers, but when it comes to major book prizes he is something of a bridesmaid. He so often nearly wins them but doesn't – until, that is, he was named winner of the Costa novel of the year award...

Guardian item

More in The Independent

BBC

Costa Book Awards

Want to write poetry but never manage to start?

Have you always wanted to try to write poetry but never quite managed to start? This free Open University course is designed to illustrate the techniques behind both the traditional forms of poetry and free verse. You will learn how you can use your own experiences to develop ideas and how to harness your imagination.

The 12 hour introductory What is Poetry? course looks at the possibility of using your own experience, but also the power of imagination, and of utilising different personae in your poems.

You are also introduced to the basic terminology and practical elements of poetry – the line, line-breaks, stanzas, couplets, tercets, quatrains and other stanza lengths, rhyme, rhythm, caesura and metre.

Celebrate five years of Poets and Players

Poets and Players, www.poetsandplayers.co.uk, is known for its imaginative programming of established poets and musicians who perform alongside newer writers.

Originated by Linda Chase with Chris Davies, Poets and Players began 5 years ago in Didsbury, but was soon invited to put on events in Whitworth Art Gallery and other venues across Manchester.

'Passionate and broad-minded' ~ 'mix of different arts means that there is a real sense of event' ~ 'wholly brilliant' ~ 'beautiful venue' ~ 'drawing big (sometimes huge) crowds'

To celebrate 5 years, the team of poets who work behind the scenes will perform with Musical Director Chris Davies.

Poets: Linda Chase, Jeffrey Wainwright, Alicia Stubbersfield, Kathryn de Belle, Caroline Hawkridge, Keith Lander, Tim Philips, Edmund Prestwich, Andrew Rudd and Joy Winkler.

2.30pm on Saturday, January 23 in Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6ER
(opposite the Royal Infirmary). Admission Free.

Succour 11 - call for submissions

Succour magazine are inviting submissions for the Spring Summer 2010 issue, but the guidelines for submissions are a little different from previous issues. For the Spring/Summer 2010 issue, submissions should adhere to a pair of conditions.

Condition 1: All submissions should be written on Saturday February 6th, 2010.

Condition 2: What you write should not be an attempt to execute an idea – for a story, for a poem, etc – that has previously occurred to you. Rather, we would prefer you to write whatever happens to come into your head at that particular time.

The idea for this issue was inspired by 20 Lines a Day by Harry Mathews, in which the author sets out to follow a rule Stendhal once set himself, to write ‘Twenty lines a day, genius or not’. Mathews undertakes this project in an attempt to overcome ‘the anxiety of the blank page’; it becomes part of his writing practice, his way of starting off, getting in the zone, before going on to whatever his main writing project may be.

Submissions will be accepted from Saturday February 6th 2010 until Monday February 8th 2010 – allowing a couple of days for typing up etc. The maximum word count is 400 and all work should be sent to: submissions@succour.org
Good Luck!