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The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award
If you are 11-17 years of age, the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award opens up exciting opportunities for your writing to be recognized and given the chance to flourish.
Since it began 13 years ago the award has identified some of the most exciting new voices in contemporary poetry. These include Caroline Bird, who after winning the award had her first collection of poetry published aged just 16, Jay Bernard whose first collections Your Sign is Cuckoo girl was published in 2008, and Richard O’Brien who set up the highly successful e-zine Pomegranate with other young writers. Many past winners can also be seen performing their work at festivals across the UK such as Latitude and the Big Chill.
It doesn’t just acknowledge this new talent - it provides an opportunity for this talent to flourish. There are two prizes available for the fifteen overall winners. The 14-17 year olds get the chance to attend a week long residential course at The Hurst in Shropshire, one of the prestigious Arvon Centres, where they will be tutored by this year’s judges Jane Draycott and Luke Kennard. The younger age range winners (11-14 year olds) will receive a visit to their school from a professional poet, followed by distance mentoring. The Award also incorprates a year-round programme of activity aimed at encouraging creativity and literacy in schools, providing poet-led residencies, mentoring and a range of free resources including lesson plans and poetry book sets. It also champions and celebrates committed schools and teachers across the UK
Deadline for entries 31 July 2010
www.foyleyoungpoets.org
posted 20.07.10
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Re-Painting the Picts
In 'A New History of the Picts' Stuart McHardy moves from folklore and mythography into history, taking the "fabled" Picts with him.
McHardy's key point is that the Picts – or more likely 'Pechts' without reference to painted or tattooed – are simply the indigenous inhabitants of Scotland, closely related in origins and culture to the Brythonic or British Celts encountered by Julius Caesar and the Scots of Dalriada. Originally 'Pechts' or 'Picts' may have applied to all the inhabitants of modern Scotland north of Hadrians Wall but later came to mean peoples north of the Forth-Clyde line.
McHardy also gives preminces to Ewen Campbell's 'scotching' of the myth of an Irish migration, or invasion of Dalriada, placing the Scots of Argyll as equally part of a continuous post-glacial settlement of Scotland, though in this case closely linked by sea transport with Ireland.
All of these early indigenous peoples operated as kin based societies and McHardy fiercely resists anachronistic application of 'kingship' with its implications of hierarchy and centralised government. Not until emergence of the kingdom of Northumbria as an invading power and subsequently Norse incursions, does he see such developments in Scotland and even then kin based social dynamics continued in parts of Scotland until the eighteenth century.
This framework dispels a mist of pseudo-mystery from the Picts, and McHardy urges more systematic investigation of neglected Pictish sites to fill out a realistic picture. The Romans by contrast have enjoyed attention disproportionate to their actual influence, in what McHardy regards as a suspicious imperialist re-writing of history by later victors. While diminishing the Romans, McHardy identifies the Christian Church and the Norse migrations as key agents of change, and in this he is surely correct.
Altogether this is a well-argued and coherent book in which the author's occasional polemical tendencies are restrained, in favour of opening up new questions and suggestions for open-ended enquiry.
'A New History' is a very valuable contribution to historical debate and cultural understanding. It also serves to bring issues often reserved to specialists to a general readership. Luath Press provide a handsome and readable format and we must look forward to Stuart McHardy's promised follow-up – a new study of Pictish symbol stones.
Donald Smith
The Scottish Storytelling Centre
posted 08.06.10
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Humbert Ak'Abal in Scotland
The noted Guatemalan Mayan poet Humberto Ak’abal is making his first ever visit to Scotland, and indeed to the UK, in May 2010. This remarkable poet writes both in Maya’kiche’ and Spanish. Drum of Stone, a selection of his poems translated into English and Scots by Rosemary Burnett and James Robertson, is being published by Kettillonia to mark his visit. You are warmly invited to hear Ak’abal read at one of these events:
ULLAPOOL BOOK FESTIVAL, Saturday 8th May, 11.45am: Reading at Ullapool Village Hall. To book tickets contact www.thebooth.co.uk or phone 0788 091 7532. Visit www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk for more information.
EDINBURGH, Wednesday 12th May, 6.00pm: Reading at Scottish Book Trust, Sandeman House, Trunk’s Close, High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1SR. No charge for entry, but in order to gauge numbers please contact james@kettillonia.co.uk or phone 01828 650615, if possible by 10th May, if you intend to come.
GLASGOW, Thursday 13th May, 5.15pm: Reading at Department of Scottish Literature, 7 University Gardens, University of Glasgow G12 8QH. No charge for entry but numbers are limited so please contact james@kettillonia.co.uk or phone 01828 650615 by 10th May if you intend to come.
ABERDEEN WORD FESTIVAL, Sunday 16th May, 10.30am: Reading at King’s College Centre, Aberdeen AB24 3FX. To book tickets visit www.abdn.ac.uk or phone 01224 641122
For more information about Ak’abal and Drum of Stone
please visit www.kettillonia.co.uk or www.drumofstone.co.uk
Humberto Ak’abal’s visit to Scotland is generously supported by the Tom Wright Trust.
Kettillonia gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Scottish Arts Council in the publication of Drum of Stone and in facilitating Humberto Ak’abal’s appearances in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
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Global Nation? Defining Scotland’s Festive Identities
Dr Donald Smith teases out some of the inside stories, and peers into a potentially turbulent yet open future for Scotland's capital city and its Festivals in a period of global crisis. What might it mean for Scotland to be a truly global nation, and are its’ Festivals crucial to the project or freeloaders?
Thursday 4 March
Lecture and Q&A 6pm - 7pm
Drinks reception 7pm - 8pm
Edinburgh Napier University
Lindsay Stewart Lecture Theatre
Craiglockhart Campus, Edinburgh, EH14 1DJ
Please RSVP to events@napier.ac.uk or (0131) 455 6027
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CLACHARAN: Stepping Stones
The Swiss-Scots Connection
Ancient connections between Switzerland have been revived by a new collaboration between photography and the ancient art of storytelling.
At the Botanic Gardens of Berne an innovative exhibition combining the photography of Anja Tanner of Berne, Switzerland and the storytelling of George Macpherson of the Isle of Skye in Scotland are united in a visual and oral display.
The exhibition is the result of nearly one year’s discussion and two months interaction between Anja and George, in which stories were told on site in Skye and photographs were taken of the background area. These stories and photographs are now combined in an exciting and entrancing exhibition called “Clacharan” (Stepping Stones) which refers to the joining up of two distinct art forms and also to the way of stepping from the ancient tradition of storytelling to the more modern art of photography, and stepping from the visible world of photography to the invisible and abstract world of story. In this exhibition the two forms combine in a highly entertaining fashion.
The idea for the event came from Anja and George and it is supported by the Arts Council of the Canton of Berne. The exhibition is booked to appear in Basle next autumn and is also available to be presented in Scotland in 2010 or 2011.
For any enquiries, please write to Donald Smith (donald@scottishstorytellingcentre.com)
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