Posts

Showing posts from May, 2017

Interview _ Grant Denkinson

Image
Grant Denkinson is an Open Access and Research Data Advisor at the University of Leicester's David Wilson Library. He is also a qualified psychotherapist and is one of the contributors to Purple Prose (Thorntree Press LLC, 2016), a new book about bisexuality in Britain. In this interview, Denkinson talks about writing, sexuality and Purple Prose : How would you describe Purple Prose ? Purple Prose  presents different forms of writing about various aspects of being bisexual, such as being a bi person of faith and so on. Each chapter curates a number of personal experiences, collected thoughts and even tentative advice, together with quotes, cartoons and poems. The chapter I co-curated with Juliet Kemp covers bisexuality and non-monogamy. The bi community I've been part of has been talking about how you can be bi and happily monogamous, non-monogamous in various ways, or not in relationships at all. Relationships of all kinds we could think of are spoken about in  Purp

Leicester Libraries to host Poetry Translation Workshops during the 2017 Festival of Learning

Image
Do you live in Leicester or Leicestershire? Can you speak more than one language? Or, are you learning another language? These free, poetry translation workshops taking place in libraries, from May 23 to May 27, are for you. Journeys in Translation and the Leicester Library Service are holding a series of poetry translation workshops as part of the 2017 Festival of Learning. The workshops are open to all and will suit anyone who is bilingual, multilingual or who is learning another language. They offer participants the chance to read, discuss and look at how 13 poems from the anthology, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) might be translated from English into other languages in an informal, relaxed and supportive atmosphere. No prior translation experience is required. The workshops will be held on: May 23 at St Barnabas Library , from 1pm till 3pm,  May 24 at Belgrave Library , from 11am till 1pm, May 26 at St Matt

Interview _ Kathleen Bell

Image
Kathleen Bell is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at De Montfort University. Her poems, micro-fiction and short stories have been published in magazines and journals that include PN Review , New Walk and Under the Radar and in anthologies that include Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016);  Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) which she co-edited with Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan ; and A Speaking Silence (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2013). Her poem, "Testament: in an Embankment Garden" won the  Nottingham Poetry Society ’s 2016 Open Competition which was judged by award-winning poet Liz Berry, and her poetry chapbook, at the memory exchange (Oystercatcher, 2014) was shortlisted for the Saboteur awards. In this interview, Kathleen Bell talks about poetry, micro-fiction and Journeys in Translation . How would you describe the writing that you do? I can’t remember a time when I didn't write

Interview _ Pam Thompson

Image
Pam Thompson is a poet, performer, reviewer and university lecturer. Her poetry has been published in a range of small press magazines and her publications are: Spin (Walden Press, 1998), Parting the Ghosts of Salt (Redbeck Press, 2000), Show Date and Time (smith|doorstop, 2006), The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2008), and Hologram (Sunk Island Publishing, 2009). She is one of the organisers of WORD! at The Y Theatre in Leicester. In this interview, Pam Thompson talks about poetry and Journeys in Translation. How would you describe your writing? Very varied. I supposed a lot of my poetry is disguised - or not so disguised - autobiography. I experiment formally a lot and I enjoy it when something unexpected arises from those experiments. I agree with the poet C. D. Wright who said: "Poetry is a necessity of life, it is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” Poetry is about connection too. I like the fact

Interview _ Cynthia Rodríguez

Image
Cynthia Rodríguez is based in Leicester and regularly performs at spoken word events that include Anerki, WORD! , Find the Right Words and House of Verse . She had also performed at Poetry is Dead Good, Too Deep for a Monday, Write Minds Wiff Waff, QTIPOCALYPSE at Rough Trade Nottingham, Coventry Pride , The Chameleon, and the LGBT Laureate night at The Phoenix in London. In addition to spoken word, Rodríguez has collaborated with musicians such as David Dhonau and the BootLeg Jazz Trio, and has performed as a featured act at Moonshine Word Jam, the jazz and spoken word evening hosted by Mellow Baku and Lydia Towsey. Her work has been published in zines that include the Mouthy Poets Queer Zine edited by Dean Atta; the anti-xenophobia Do Something edited by Selina Lock; and Anerki and Sean Clark’s Interanerki . In late 2016, two of her poems were included in Welcome to Leicester , edited by Emma Lee and Ambrose Musiyiwa for Dahlia Publishing. Rodríguez is also a singer and

Interview _ Tony R. Cox

Image
Novelist and short story writer, Tony R. Cox was a reporter at the Derby Evening Telegraph in the 1970s, and a Business Editor at the Nottingham Evening Post in the late 70s before moving to public relations and running his own business-to-business consultancy. He is the author of the crime thriller novels, First Dead Body (The Choir Press, 2014) and A Fatal Drug (Fahrenheit Press, 2016), both of which are set in Derby. First Dead Body has been described as encapsulating "the life of 1970s reporters when lunches were often long and liquid and it was the norm to meet contacts in pubs like The Dolphin, The Exeter Arms, The Wagon and Horses." While in First Dead Body , the action takes place in Derby, in A Fatal Drug , an investigation into the discovery of a mutilated body reveals a spiral of gangland drug dealing and violence that stretches from the north of England to the south of Spain. In this interview, Tony R. Cox talks about his writing. When did you start wr

Interview _ Flair Donglai Shi

Image
Flair Donglai Shi 施東來 is a DPhil in English candidate at Oxford University, a critic in comparative literature (Chinese and English), an occasional short story writer, and a translator. When did you start writing? This simple question is also perhaps the hardest. Since I started my university journey, my academic language has always been English. Yet before that I was living in my hometown, a somewhat remote small city deep in the mountainous province of Zhejiang 浙江, China, and my only language was Chinese. When I was young I was definitely more interested in writing than reading. I got top scores in my Chinese language and literature class but I rarely read outside the curricula. At that time, around the early 2000s, there was a culture of increasing openness in China, and the sentimental, individualistic and urban popular writing was having its moment in the country. So I started writing around themes of loneliness, isolation and dislocation and published a number of short s