Words with music

Alongside “Exploding Poetry” Bank St is running some readings. Last week I organised a reading for students of the MA Writing from Hallam University. It went very well. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the readings themselves were absolutely excellent.

Next week there are two readings: George Szirtes on the 4th, and on Friday the 5th, the Tuesday Poets, the writing group I belong to. There’ll be nine of us, as Seni Seneviratne is at an international poetry workshop in Egypt. If you don’t know the group, we are: Jenny Hockey, Margaret Lewis, Beverley Nadin, Cora Greenhill, Sally Goldsmith, Fay Musselwhite, Lisa Wallace, Val Binney, Noel Williams and Seni Seneviratne.

In Sheffield’s Off the Shelf 2009 our audience filled the Fusion Café. We had to turn away thirty more people. Forge Today reviewed that evening as: “a unique insight into human experience, becoming more than an evening of poetry readings but in many ways a fully formed living anthology”.  Between us we have four collections, two pamphlets, one CD, one shortlist for an Eric Gregory award, around 20 competition successes, publication in more than 60 magazines and several poems on Radio 4.

6.15 to 8.00: Friday 5^th March

At: Bank Street Arts Centre

Admission Free

There’ll be some familiar works, but many new ones.

If you’re looking for info on my upcoming exhibition “Exploding Poetry”, you’ll find it at: http://explodingpoetry.wordpress.com/

This blog is about my progressing literary achievements, but not much is happening at the moment as all my attention is on getting the exhibition up and running. And, at the moment, though there are some big glitches, it’s looking good.

As well as the exhibits themselves, we’re hoping people will continue to contribute as the exhibition develops, so it will grow over the month.

Sentinel Literary Quarterly is an online cultural journal with a multicultural remit, that runs regular poetry and now also short story competitions (see http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/slq/3.2/index.htm) An email tonight told me I’d won the latest, with a poem called “Instamatic”.

It’s at: http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/slq/3.2/poetry/noel-williams.htm

I seem to be doing something right at the moment. The Sentinel Poetry movement have also recently published Champion Poems which contains one of mine, “Undine” . See:  http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/champion_poems.php