alice2gallagher Creative Writing, Uncategorized

Don’t Worry, Be Yappy. Beth’s Butcher’s Dog Magazine Internship.

You hear of societies and extracurriculars to boost your CV before you get to university, but I could never have contemplated something like this. This opportunity, pulsing in my email inbox, to intern for The Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine…

I’ve spent 10 weeks in the doghouse, and I never want to leave. Alongside Nadia, our other lovely BD intern from Northumbria Uni, we have had our hands on everything Butcher’s Dog from the tail up.

Continue reading “Don’t Worry, Be Yappy. Beth’s Butcher’s Dog Magazine Internship.” →
billylinguist Creative Writing, English, Uncategorized, writing, literature and cultural studies

Fiona Shaw: ‘Outwalkers’, ‘Tell It To The Bees’ and Yaddo

 

fionashaw

We are delighted that our colleague Fiona Shaw has been nominated for 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal for her novel Outwalkers  You can find the full list of nominations here

To add to this, Fiona has also been awarded a month’s residency at the prestigious Yaddo artists’ retreat, whose prior residents have included James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Katherine Anne Porter and Jeffrey Eugenides: https://www.yaddo.org/about/history/

tellittothebees

Meanwhile, the film version of Fiona’s novel Tell It To The Bees has been appearing at festivals, including at Cannes and the Toronto film festival

We are very happy about this well-deserved recognition of Fiona’s work

Tony Williams Creative Writing, English, writing, literature and cultural studies

Lisa Matthews wins Welshpool poetry competition

author-photo-lisa-matthews

Final-year PhD candidate/PGR researcher Lisa Matthews has been announced as the winner of the 2018 Welshpool Poetry Festival competition. The event took place over the weekend of 8/9 June, and festival judge Andrew McMillan said of Lisa’s prize-winning entry:

‘Gaze’ is a poem that I’m still working out each time I read it; the definite nature of the title is misleading, it’s a kaleidoscopic, shifting poem which keeps returning the reader to a place of uncertainty. Each time we return to it things appear slightly clearer, we see a little more, but then the ground moves beneath us again. It’s as if we are looking at the world through a diamond.

Lisa’s doctoral research at Northumbria explores the role of prose poem sequences in transforming life experience into poetry; and ‘Gaze’ is a prose poem triptych taken from an emergent practice strand.

The news is timely as Lisa’s fourth collection, Callisto, has just been released by Scotland-based publisher Red Squirrel Press. Callisto is made entirely of interconnected prose poem sequences and Gillian Allnutt has described Callisto as a “courageous book, clear-eyed, unflinching”. For more details about Lisa and her writing/research visited her academic profile and writer’s portfolio.

To read Lisa’s prize-wining poem ‘Gaze’ visit the Welshpool website, where you can also view Andrew McMillan’s full statement about the selected poems, and get more information about this annual festival.

billylinguist Creative Writing, English, English Language and Literature, history

Bridges and Oceans (well, one ocean)

building bridges

It’s a busy week for Humanities colleagues at Northumbria.  With assessment boards over, we’ve been reviewing the delivery of modules and programmes this academic year and preparing for next.  There are lots of good things to celebrate, including lots of great achievements by students and staff, and we have lots of good ideas for next year.

Tomorrow, we have two important events happening on campus.

First, we are being visited by school subject leaders and teachers of English and History for our Building Bridges day.  We will spend the day discussing some of of our teaching and other activities and exploring ways we can work together to develop resources and activities to support teaching and project work.

One focus of the day will, of course, be how things have changed recently, including the effects of GCSE and A Level reforms.

lynnemurphygallery

After that, Lynne Murphy will be giving the Northumbria Annual Linguistics Lecture, exploring differences between British and American English.  Bookings for this quickly got close to our initial capacity so we adapted things so we can accommodate a bigger audience. It’s not too late to book a place:

Separated by a Common Language? Northumbria Annual Linguistics Lecture

We’ll tell you more about how things go after tomorrow

billylinguist Creative Writing

On The Farm

thesecondbody

(It’s behind a paywall but) there’s a fascinating piece by our colleague Daisy Hildyard in the current issue of the London Review of Books:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n11/daisy-hildyard/on-the-farm

The piece relates to Daisy’s most recent book The Second Body which is published by Fitzcarraldo.

Daisy is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Northumbria, working on a project which involves shadowing people, from scientists to butchers, who know about animal’s lives.

The project, her novel and this article are all fascinating.