OLD NEWS

We have moved! This LWC News Site is now an integral part of the Leicester Writers' Club website. Go to www.leicesterwriters.org.uk to see the latest posting.

Independent Booksellers' Week

This week, 30th June to 7th July, is Independent Booksellers' Week. Anyone who has anything to do with writing, or reading, understands the importance of the Independent Bookseller. Our friends at The Bookshop, Kibworth have lots of events going on check them out at:
the bookshop kibworth
facebook: The Bookshop Kibworth
twitter: @kibworthbooks  

Open Season at LWC

It has long been a tradition that Leicester Writers' Club opens its doors to non-members for the summer.
     Throughout July and August we welcome guests and visitors to our manuscript evenings for the nominal fee of £2 to help toward the room rent. If you are attending classes and will miss their inspiration as they close over the summer, or if you usually write in private and wonder what it would be like to share, or if you are interested in writing and are just curious to know what we have been doing in that room for the last 50 years, we'd love to see you there.
     Leicester Writers' Club meets every thursday 7pm to 9pm (with a break in the middle) at the Leicester Adult Education College on Wellington Street.      

Launch Invite

Congratulations Kate Ruse on the launch of your antholology, Corridors. For details of the bash, see the beautiful invitation below.

Launch Invitation

SOUNDSWRITE PRESS
Invites you to the launch of a new poetry pamphlet:


Negotiating the Days is a poetry sequence of Lizzie's experience from initial diagnosis of anal carcinoma to her 5-year follow-up appointment.
Cathy Grindrod has written about it: This is an important collection which reminds us what poetry is for. In a world of noise and nonsense which 'screams' through hospital windows, these poems speak to us quietly and directly of what happens when 'the world has shrunk' to what really matters.

SATURDAY 16 JUNE 2012
3 pm to 4.30 pm
Atrium of CHRISTCHURCH CLARENDON PARK

105 Clarendon Park Road, Leicester LE2 3AH
(close to the junction with Queens Road, with Nat West bank on the corner)

Free entry

PAMPHLET PRICE: £4
www.soundswritepress.co.uk

£1 from the sale of each copy will be donated to MACMILLAN CANCER SUPPORT

Congratulations!

Jean Chapman has been invited by the Romantic Novelists Association to be an honorary Vice President in "grateful recognition" of all she’s done over the years and "as further inducement, no duties are involved".

Jean is thrilled and commented: “Wow, I have looked at the names of previous incumbents and feel I move into very elite company - mind most of 'em are dead!”

LWC has long benefitted from Jean’s professionalism, humour and kindness and awarded her a lifetime membership for her extraordinary service to the club.

Mark Goodwin Workshop

Enter the Garden Poetry Day
by Mahsuda Snaith

I always thought poetry was like a silver service dinner party – it was for other people. Mark Goodwin’s Enter the Garden Poetry Day shattered all my concepts about what poetry is, who it’s for and, most importantly, who can write it.

Margaret Penfold’s beautiful home with its sprawling garden was an ideal setting for the day.  Armed with a cup of tea and notepad we were ready to jump in, but Mark began in the house, ‘filling us with poems’. He read from scores of anthologies and pamphlets, until images and feelings whizzed around the room.  I managed to catch hold of ‘arrow mouthed’ and ‘doll sized memory’ and scribbled them in my notebook before they escaped.  Without realising it, I was already collecting.

The beauty of the workshop was how Mark got us to work together, making poems out of randomly articulated words, as well as sharing our own individual work in a supportive environment. He encouraged us to tell lies in order to find greater truths, to let our minds find the patterns and hear the beauty in words juxtaposed. When we did enter the garden we were primed with imagery and metaphor. Pine needles became hair for stroking, bark peeled off trees in jigsaw pieces. Welsh poppies hung their heads under the weight of raindrops and pink blossom clung for life on another person’s tresses. I was officially stung. Everywhere I looked there was poetry. The colour of a book spine was now burnt orange. The vines of a trailing ivy were curling into smiles. How wonderful to discover that poetry is not a dinner party for the elite, but a buffet for the whole world.

Many thanks to Margaret Penfold and Jayne Stanton who helped to make the day happen and to Mark Goodwin who’s warm and passionate encouragement has helped one lost poet find her voice.