Our spring events season brochure is out, looking very springy and fresh, but more importantly is the info contained – the nectar, if you’re wanting to take the metaphor a little further. No? Well, Let’s drop it.
And cut to the chase of the highlights – for me at least. I’d be interested to hear what catches your eye.
So, needless to say I’m very much looking forward to the launch of Vanishing Act – the latest Flax anthology. Not just for the content of that, but for the fun we plan to have around presenting it. We’ve come up with some different ways for the audience to hear the work, playing with how we receive the spoken word through different senses. And sorry, but I’m not sure how much more than that I want to give away. It’ll be good. Trust me. I’m the editor …
Also anticipating You Are Here, which looks like a stella poetry idea – threading together top class poets on a single theme – Daljit Nagra, Colette Bryce and Jo Shapcott reading work around identity. I have no idea how it’ll be stitched together, but the producer, Julia Bird talks about it on Eyewear. I understand the underlining premise is to create a dramatic performance out of poetry that was initially written for the page.
And in the novel corner, it has to bethe spooky night starring Tom Fletcher (last seen in Before the Rain) and Nick Royle who is a wonderfully erudite reader of his work, engaging performer and all-round funnyman – well, maybe not all round, but certainly he’s got a sharp eye, both for wit and for the wierd. They were introduced by a Flax mentoring scheme a few years ago, so should bring an informal camaraderie to the night.
That’s just three out of the twelve events running from March to June. And of course these are specific to my tastes. More on other people’s tastes here and elsewhere … keep your eyes peeled.
All our lovely flax publications in one place… click on any of the publications to browse it in full.
On the last Saturday of the festival Flax is launching Flax019 – Mostly Truthful. Our first non-fiction prose anthology.
As the submissions started to come I did wonder what the hell we’d done. It felt like the resulting anthology could be a hugely unfocused sprawl of ideas. Other non-fiction anthologies all had themes. Desastre!
But, as usual, we were saved by the supreme quality of the writing. There isn’t a linking theme to the eight pieces (by four writers), but the anthology flows from one piece to the next, exploring place, history: personal and social, and individual motivations within them.
The launch will be stamped with the usual Flax pleasures – conviviality, passion, ideas and a tasty mouthful of some little treat or other.
We have the usual range of experience: big to small, but all the writers offer a very personal and honest insight to a slice of their existence, and I am sure hearing them read these pieces will bring them closer again.
As usual I have loved working with the writers on the development of this anthology and am very much looking forward to having the four of them in the same room together to meet each other (some already know each other, some don’t) and help bring the anthology into being.
I met with Nicholas Royle the other week to talk with him about his role as mentor / agent to Thomas Fletcher, one of the writers who appeared in Before the Rain Flax007.
I recorded the conversation we had outside the Brewery in Kendal. So bear with the wind effect and distant sounds of children playing.
What follows is Nicholas reflecting on what the mentoring process entailed for him and Tom and what made him want to represent Tom
PART ONE
Nicholas also has a fair bit to say on what made him think about becoming an agent a few years ago.
PART TWO
And he’s very clear on what being an agent means to him. Clear enough to get me thinking about my position as editor here at Flax.
PART THREE
Thanks, Nick, for both your time in talking to me and in your enthusiasm for new writing. Both are much appreciated.
I was a little nervous about the launch last week, given that it was following the wonderful launch of Unsaid Undone at Carnforth train station, which was a lovely relaxed affair in the gorgeous tea rooms.
However, I needn’t have been. With Harrogate Brass Band (not in person, sadly) setting the proceedings off, we (or at least I was and hope others) were propelled into a space of strength, melancholy and uplift.
Which is exactly the kind of resonance the poems within The Crowd Without also have. All the poets gave highly personalised readings of their work, which emphasised the distinctions between their work.
From the lyric narratives of Segun Lee-French, via the exhuberent celebrations of nature of Polly Atkin, the quieter rhythmic observations of Ruth Allen, the sobering commentry on mental health from Chris Culshaw, the unsettlingly sad humour of Andrew McMillan we ended the evening with the askew world of childhood as seen by Jennifer Copley.
Coo, what a lot of adjectives.
The auditorium was also a star worth mentioning – it manged to provide a warm, informal space for the poets to project their work, and to chat with the audience. It was the first evening we’d had use of the bar and (despite my freezing the white wine) people clearly enjoyed the sliding between the two spaces during the interval, giving a sense of expanse and digestion for the poems we were told.
And with it being the last event/anthology with Martin Chester in situ as designer for Flax, I’m glad it went off so well and was a fine showcase for his brilliant work.
The Crowd Without, Flax018, our most recent digital anthology, is now live and ready for download. http://tinyurl.com/mz7uo5
Packed with delicately written poetry, this anthology features new work by poets from around the North West, including Segun Lee-French, Polly Atkin, Ruth Allen, Chris Culshaw, Andrew McMillan and Jennifer Copley.
And it features a lovely bison on the cover, doesn’t get better than that.
Unless, you happen to be in or near Lancaster tonight at 7.30, in which case you can see the the lovely writers reading their work live, at the Auditorium at the Storey (formerly the Storey Institute). See you there.
cover for flax018
This photo is an indication of how well the Flax picnic went (despite siling rain) – last Saturday – one take and all twelve faces are smiling, looking at the camera and appear reasonable, rational human beings!
We had a lovely afternoon listening to the brilliant range and quality of work from Flax writers. Nearly all the publications were represented by writers (including the forthcoming poetry anthology, due out in June).
It was an event to make me proud of the writers we’ve published, and underlines our attempt to support and trumpet the writers we work with. And this is returned by the strength of the relationships with the writers.
So, from top down (and left to right as we go): Ian Seed, Mark Carson, Gill Nicholson, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Elizabeth Burns, Polly Atkin, Marita Over, John Siddique, Andrew Michael Hurley, Pauline Keith, Jennifer Copley and David Borrott.
Would also like to thanks Andrew Forster from the Wordsworth Trust for all his help in making the day as dry and jolly as possible. Good to have an opportunity for reflection and self-congratulation!
We launched the seventeenth Flax publication last night. Excuse me while I bask in a warm glow of achievement. Although not that I’ve done much of the work – the writers have to take the credit there.
It was an inspired idea of Martin’s (the designer) to hold the event at the Brief Encounter tea room at Carnforth Train Station.
They even had the sniffer dogs out for us – an unexpected VIP in the audience? I never spotted them. Not that I was looking – the writers were all mesmerising in their delivery and brought their stories alive. And embedded their voices more firmly into the anthology. Just the smallest inflection and weighting of a pause can make me reconsider my interpretation of what’s going on between the lines. I look forward to reading the stories again after the experience.
I also really enjoyed the buzz of the audience. People had come from all over the north (honest!), made a day of it, via the Midland Hotel, or the Carnforth Bookshop. There was a real sense of a vibrant writers’ community coming together. Great stuff!
And if you weren’t there, here’s a taster of what you missed
Flax017 launch at the Bried Encounter Tea Room, Carnforth
Andrew Michael Hurley
Annie Clarkson
Brindley Hallam Dennis
Marita Over
With thanks to David Andrew for the pics
We’ve had all the Flax017 writers in the office now for their photoshoots, recording and biographical profiling (not a genetic engineering session, honest) and boy, did I enjoy it. It’s one of the perks of editing Flax that I get a few opportunities to meet and chat with the writers we publish. And talking with the writers about their motivations for writing is always fascinating.
Annie Clarkson, for example, finds “writing about childhood evokes so much emotion in me as a writer and a reader. It is a time where everything is ahead of us, and yet our whole lives are impacted on by what happens in these years.” I love that idea of writing pivoting around childhood – that meshing of past and future. John Siddique was wonderfully passionate once I got him going on his new book, Recital, saying how he saw the book as being the part of the shamanic tradition of poetry, and how it was his way to contributing to the spiritual regeneration of England. His story, Prism, that’s going into Flax follows the same nerve. It was also great to catch up with a writer we’ve previously published, Andrew Michael Hurley. His short stories are like crystals. And it was great to hear he’s set himself the challenge of writing a novel. I take my hat off to anyone who embarks on that voyage. Especially when making the transition to it from short story writing. It’s like clambering out of a rubber dingy onto one the yachts in the Vendee Globe.
Also fabulous was to meet two writers for the first time. Marita Over is a beautifully accomplished poet, and has taken to writing short stories. Needless to say, Bread, which will be appearing in Unsaid Undone (the next Flax anthology) is a delicately written story dealing with a disquietening subject. The fifth writer is also a poet. Brindley Hallam Dennis’s contribution is an extract of a novel in progress. His enthusiasm for writing is boundless – covering scripts, poems, short fiction and this novel. He claimed it’s the only thing, apart from washing up, that provides a deep sense of satisfaction.
So Valentine, Schmalentine … Romantic love is, of course, lovely, but the love that comes from respect and admiration for people’s passions deserves not just a day but year-round acknowledgement
So today in the office we had John Siddique who completes the current set of contributors to “Flax017: Unsaid, Undone”.
And so here is John’s picture to make up the full compliment…
Litfest
