Another bright idea by Rainy City Stories

24th October

Talk of the Rainy City seems somewhat out of kilter today as bright sunshine streams into the new Cornerhouse Annexe through its floor-to-ceiling windows. The turnout is still keen on the penultimate afternoon of Manchester Literature Festival, where Rainy City Stories was launched two years ago. Having already submitted a poem to the website and taken part in one of the regular writing workshops run by the project, I’m looking forward to gleaning further Writing About Place tips from this discussion between some of the more well-known contributors.

Festival Director Cathy Bolton provides a brief background to the “interactive literary cityscape”, then hands over to the panel’s chair; author, Nightjar Press publisher and MMU lecturer Nicholas Royle. Nick is flanked by novelists Jenn Ashworth and Clare Dudman, and kicks off by inviting each in turn to step up to the lectern and read extracts of their work.

Jenn’s first novel, A Kind Of Intimacy, takes Lancashire fishing town Fleetwood as its backdrop, while her second, Cold Light, moves down the coast to Preston. Telling the story of two teenage girls, Jenn explains the importance of outside settings and space in this novel, which is due out next summer. Too young for pubs or clubs but too old for staying at home and keeping out of trouble, the characters take to hanging about in parks and other public places where they can drink and snog in peace. Jenn draws a link between the wildness of the teenagers’ behaviour and the wildness of the nature reserves (“where urban people go to look at grass”) they inhabit.

A little further afield, Clare’s novel, A Place Of Meadows And Tall Trees, is set in Patagonia, and her reading follows the story of Welsh settlers Silas and Edwin. Physical descriptions of the scenery play a big part in Clare’s narrative, with the two men trekking to a place where a perilous precipice overlooks a large lake extending into the distance. She describes a tangible tension, with man pitted against the environment, almost as if the landscape is a character itself. She also admits that perhaps she has an ulterior motive for choosing far-flung places as settings in her books: research provides her with the perfect excuse to go and visit!

Nick reads part of a novel that he is in the process of building up from a short story idea. The narrator, like Nick, teaches creative writing, lives in Nick’s house (albeit with a slightly different layout), sees what Nick sees and goes where Nick goes, which, in this case, is down onto the disused railway line that runs along the back of Didsbury Village. Nick instils in us his love of abandoned places – here the train track, but also dilapidated buildings: “It’s as if the story is waiting to happen; as if you disturb the stories as you explore.”

Each of the three writers is obviously attracted by wilderness in one shape or form, and the discussion which follows takes this as a starting point. Jenn finds wild places dramatically interesting because they are often where people get up to no good; Clare says wild landscapes allow for more interaction and give you the opportunity to let your imagination run free. From this, they discuss how place can be more than just a setting for a story; that it can also suggest a mood or a character.

All agree that it’s important to go to the place that you are writing about in order to immerse your senses and fully appreciate the sights, smells and sounds that can’t be experienced any other way (Clare recounts how, when researching a novel set in Greenland, she got lost but found her way back to the settlement by following the howling of the dogs the villagers kept, and how she wouldn’t have known this otherwise). By having this first-hand knowledge and feeling of a place, you can then evoke it and not merely depict it.

by Sarah-Clare Conlon

Sarah-Clare is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. She is the co-creator of Ask Ben & Clare, author of the award-winning Words & Fixtures, and regular contributor to Manchester Blog Awards 2010 Best New Blog 330 Words.

In the presence of future greats – Is There A Novelist In The House?

23rd October

We’ve not even got started yet and the windows have steamed up, so many bodies are crammed into the not insubstantial Waterstone’s Events Room for Is There A Novelist In The House? This is the culmination of the First Chapter Competition run in association with Crocus Books, the publishing imprint of Commonword and Cultureword. The contest aims to give a leg-up to budding novelists in the north of England, with £250 up for grabs for the winner and advice to all seven finalists to assist them in getting their first novel published.

Having submitted a two-page synopsis plus their novel’s first chapter, the shortlisted entrants now have to pitch their idea, in just five minutes and in front of this packed house, to Jane Rogers (author and Sheffield Hallam University Professor of Writing), Dan Franklin (digital editor at independent publisher Canongate Books) and Zoë King (agent at Darley Anderson). No wonder they look nervous...

First up is Benjamin Judge, coincidentally the MLF Blog reviewer of this event last year. Having had short fiction published through the likes of Bewilderbliss, Rainy City Stories and Manchester Blog Awards winner 330 Words, Ben calls his writing “speculative”. Indeed as he reads an extract from All Creatures Great With Chips, sci-fi of the Douglas Adams ilk springs to mind, with protagonist Casey delivering the wrong kind of flamingo to an evil mansion owner on Stork island. The panel is impressed with Ben’s imagination and likens his humour to Man Booker winner The Finkler Question.

Quite a contrast is Nicola Timms’ gritty tale, which she describes as “women’s realism”. A rebuilt Sheffield is the setting, and even a character, in This City Of Steel We Live, which follows the trials and tribulations of care-worker Sarah Smith and her “mix’n’match family”. Nicola draws on the strength of Yorkshire folk and her own experience with social services, but it’s the lack of sentimentality in the narrative (along with her recital from memory) that goes down well with the judges.

Newspaper editor Andrzej Wieckowski offers up a historical novel. Three Days In September recounts the German invasion of Warsaw during World War II through the eyes of Polish soldier Piot and his comrades. Obviously Andrzej was never there, but his story is so rich in detail, it seems authentic. He acknowledges that he’s done a lot of research into both the battle and the background, listening to then re-imagining the stories of older people in the Polish community. Jane, Dan and Zoë love this idea of finding a hidden corner of history to explore and make his own.

Former advertising copywriter Gary Parkinson has already surreptitiously promoted Scarecrow by scattering postcards about the room; his next trick is to introduce the book to us by reading out a “letter” from the main voice, Lily Brakes. The play on words doesn’t pass unnoticed as he reveals a plot thick with abuse, incest and horror in the Staffordshire fields contrasting sharply with the poetic prose. He likens the style to The Lovely Bones, and the crafted language is one of the things the panel likes.

Deborah Mann’s concept is intriguing: Eve, a schoolyard bully abused by her father, goes on to marry a violent husband then have a number of affairs with both sexes. Eve eventually finds the perfect lover, although this person’s gender is never revealed; perhaps so the spell remains unbroken, perhaps, as Deborah says, because the important thing is that this relationship finally works. The judges think Deborah is brave to tackle such subjects and find “genderlessness” an interesting premise.

Mothers Beloved by Susie Stubbs, editor, appropriately, of Creative Tourist, is set in Laos in southeast Asia, and puts a teenage girl, Nantip, centre stage. Visiting the country a number of times has paid off, and Susie’s descriptions of people and place are compelling. She hopes the book will appeal to “anyone who has ever felt like an outsider”, but the narrative, complete with mysterious visions, is probably its real selling point. The feedback for Susie is that her research really shines through and that incidents in the story unfold well, making the reader want to read on.

Finally, Katy Massey introduces The Book Of Ghosts as “not a scary haunted house-type novel” but a story about the effect of bereavement on a multiracial family and the ghosts witnessed by one of them, Sophie. Katy explains it is somewhat autobiographical, with a distinctly northern voice like her own, and shows that “the dead can be written back into existence”. The judges find this “instantly likeable”, and enjoy the two backdrops of the monied 1980s and the recent economic crash.

After a nail-biting 20-minute break for deliberations, Jane, Dan and Zoë return to praise all the finalists - “Everyone was outstanding” - and name this year’s winner as Susie Stubbs. Congratulations!

By Sarah-Clare Conlon

Sarah-Clare is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. She is the co-creator of Ask Ben & Clare, author of the award-winning Words & Fixtures, and regular contributor to Manchester Blog Awards 2010 Best New Blog 330 Words.

Magma is a hot ticket for poets and poetry fans

20th October

I have it on good authority that certain factions in the poetry world can be a little, shall we say, unapproachable. The editors and writers of the poetry quarterly Magma couldn’t be further from this description. A very smiley Clare Pollard briefly explains the purpose of the magazine – to support and publish new as well as established poets – and encourages any writers in the audience to submit work for consideration.

She then welcomes Jacqueline Saphra to the “stage” with a précis of Jacqui’s poetic career: her award wins include first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition and her collection The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (Flipped Eye) follows the pamphlet Rock’n’Roll Mamma (Flarestack). We are treated to seven very varied pieces, from the short and sweet My Mother’s Vocation (humorously rhyming “parts”, “hearts” and “foreign tarts”) to the slightly longer ode to “tall as totems” asparagus, Last Harvest. She also reads Seventeen And All That Shit, a piece about perceived ugliness that appears in the November issue of Magma Poetry, tying into its theme of beauty.

Next up is Alan Buckley, working towards his first collection after Shiver (the tall-lighthouse) was named the Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice for summer 2009. He opens with Peaches, which has already appeared in Magma and includes some lovely language; “doped with syrup” one such example. A second Magma appearance is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which Alan explains, in one of many snippets of anecdotes, is a found poem (this one from the blurb on the back of a DVD boxset).

The third reader is lecturer Sarah Jackson, who gives us Vanishing Twin from her pamphlet Milk (Pighog Press), shortlisted for the prestigious Michael Marks Award last year. I really enjoy the incredible imagery of Clam, rustled up during a writing retreat in Scotland, particularly the line “snapping the clams like children clapping”. The more recent It Shined, written while on holiday in Brittany, she divulges, is rather more disturbing, as is the similarly grammatically challenged (a current obsession for Sarah) The Most Quiet, although the wordplay here keeps it from being too intense.

Clare Pollard (herself a distinguished poet, with three collections through Bloodaxe under her belt, including Look, Clare! Look!) returns to the front of the bright and airy new Cornerhouse Annexe (a sorely needed space and much used since its opening) to discuss Magma Poetry further with co-board member Jacqui and to field questions from the floor.

The MLF events I've squeezed into so far (packed houses all round) have incorporated as much fascinating production detail as they have incredible reading, and this was no exception. We discovered that the magazine was the result of a night class and is run as a collective, with a board and rotating editors, all volunteers. This helps keep the project fresh and provides different voices, different angles and different opportunities each edition for budding contributors. “We’re a broad church,” says Clare and indeed the March issue, edited by Julia Bird, takes the theme “knock it down”; Clare has picked “journeys” to guide the one she helms for June. The magazine relies on submissions, of which it receives a staggering 2,500 at each foray, and, to stand out from the crowd, Clare suggests being arresting, entertaining and amusing. “I like a joke,” she laughs, and we all join in, much enthused by how down-to-earth the approach taken by the team behind this leading literary tome is.

by Sarah-Clare Conlan.

Sarah-Clare is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. She is the co-creator of Ask Ben & Clare, author of the award-winning Words & Fixtures, and regular contributor to Manchester Blog Awards 2010 Best New Blog 330 Words.

Words and pictures make for an inspired lunch date with Pascale Petit

19th October

Where could be a more appropriate setting to host the event Poems After Frida Kahlo than Manchester Art Gallery; home to some of the painter’s work during last year’s controversial Surrealist show Angels Of Anarchy. Practically all the seats have been filled by the time I arrive just before the 1pm start; everyone is obviously very eager to hear Pascale Petit read from her new collection, What The Water Gave Me (shortlisted two days later for the TS Eliot Prize For Poetry).

Originally envisaged as a pamphlet, the project snowballed and the resulting book encompasses 52 poems, all “spoken” in the Mexican artist’s voice and all taking the title of a Kahlo work (some paintings have more than one poem, hence 1, 2, 3 and so on). Petit, when asked during the Q&A session at the end why she embarked on such an undertaking, explains that while she was studying for an MA in sculpture, her tutor drew similarities between her studio and Kahlo’s famous Blue House (La Casa Azul) in Coyoacán. Petit also feels drawn to her fragile yet powerful character, and is obviously intrigued by her tragedy-stricken early years and somewhat eccentric adult life, right down to her crazy cremation.

Petit’s eyes are alive as she admits how jealous she is of Kahlo’s menagerie, which included a deer, a goat, parrots and the spider monkeys that put in an appearance in Self-portrait With Four Monkeys. “There are so many anguished paintings,” says Petit, “but this is a happy one, I’ve decided.” The language contained within the accompanying poem underlines this: one line describes the monkeys picking up tubes of paint of the “juiciest colours” with their tails; another ends “Release the flames of the bird of paradise flower”.

The naturalistic imagery is immense (“candelabra cacti” a particular example that sticks in my mind), as is the use of colour to conjure up both emotion (“white pain”) and setting: “watermelon greens, chilli reds, pumpkin orange” sum up the Mexican landscape perfectly. It’s obvious the material world had a huge effect on Kahlo, and this is emphasised by Petit reciting her poems with the related painting looming large on the screen behind her. The Broken Column shows Kahlo’s body reflecting the cracks in the lava field desert, near where she lived south of Mexico City, and this, in turn, is reflected in the physical words chosen for Petit’s accompanying piece.

By the end, I’ve lost track of how many poems we’ve heard and how many paintings we’ve seen, but I’ve learnt a lot about the life and loves of Frida Kahlo and I’m struck by how personable the talented Pascale Petit is. She is as much inspiring as she was herself inspired.

by Sarah-Clare Conlon

Sarah-Clare is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. She is the co-creator of Ask Ben & Clare, author of the award-winning Words & Fixtures, and regular contributor to Manchester Blog Awards 2010 Best New Blog 330 Words.

Chorlton Book Festival stirs the suburbs

Manchester Literature Festival is apparently not the only book festival in town – our festival blogger Clare Conlon picks her highlights at this month's Chorlton Book Festival...

Less than a week after Guo Yue and Clare Farrow wrapped up the Manchester Literature Festival with their magical Children’s Bookshow bookend, the city isn’t ready to close its dustcovers just yet. Even The Guardian has picked up on the bookish buzz of the place with an article about Manchester’s Literary Renaissance by Manchester University lecturer and MLF trustee Jerome de Groot, which the city’s literati and Twitterati have been proudly disseminating (see The Manchizzle and The Art of Fiction blogs for starters). In it, Manchester is described as ‘one of Europe’s most creative and dynamic cities’, so it’s no surprise that even the sleepy suburbs are a hotbed of talent.



Yesterday, down in the south of the city, the fifth annual Chorlton Book Festival got off to a flying start with the local launch of Too Many Magpies, the new novel by Didsbury-based author Elizabeth Baines. When she’s not a prizewinning prose fiction and script writer, Baines likes to tread the boards, so she had her 20-strong audience hooked as she treated them to two excerpts from the haunting story set in an imperfect future heavily influenced by the local area. An acclaimed short story writer, she also read from one of her more light-hearted pieces – the tale of a writer getting a script mentored, it was well received by those gathered (many of whom were writers themselves) in the relaxing environs of Chorlton’s Lounge bar.

Baines’s fellow Salt author Robert Graham will be appearing at the Festival later in the week, reading from his latest collection of short stories, The Only Living Boy, in the cosy Lloyds Hotel. Heartwarming and quirky, Graham’s work draws inspiration from the people and places of Manchester, and one of the anthology’s stories, Fruit Or Vegetable, revisits the principal characters of his novel Holy Joe, which is largely set in Chorlton, where he lives. Graham also teaches at MMU Cheshire and is the author of a number of creative writing guides, including How To Write Fiction (And Think About It), and his workshops and readings are always well attended.

Not surprisingly, the lovely old Chorlton Library building is playing a big part in the festival, hosting a number of events over the 13 days (click here for the full programme). It will provide the backdrop next Tuesday as Manchester-based crime writer Bill Rogers reads from his thriller The Cleansing, which follows a killer clown who is haunting the city’s streets. Rogers may also have a few real-life local horror stories to reveal – having worked as a schools inspector in the Chorlton area, who knows what tales he has to tell!

As well as novelists, short story writers, poets, playwrights, historians and non-fiction authors, Chorlton Book Festival will this year include bloggers, so even the most modern forms of writing are explored. Didsbury-based writer and blogger Adrian Slatcher works for the Manchester Digital Development Agency, advising arts organisations on how best to use social media to improve their online presence. As part of the festival, he will be presenting a workshop on social media for writers, showing how the web can be exploited for writing, marketing and publishing purposes.

Also bringing the festival bang up to date is a poetry slam, compered by street poet and MLF's own Call Busker Mike Garry, whose latest work includes Mancunian Meander and features the unforgettable verse: Gorton girls / Know all the words / To songs by Chaka Khan. The best performance will win £50 and the contest (one of a number of events aimed at young people) is open to anyone aged 13 to 19.

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Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog in the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

Paint A Vulgar Picture: The Smiths return to Salford Lads Club

It's a wet and windy Saturday night as the taxi draws up beneath the iconic frontage of the Salford Lads (and also now, girls') Club. Once inside the legendary venue, we dash along the echoey tiled corridors and into the Dutch barn-style Concert Hall, where Peter Wild is introducing tonight's event. It's the launch of Paint A Vulgar Picture: Fiction Inspired By The Smiths, hosted by Wild, who edited the collection (he has previously worked on similar projects for The Fall and Sonic Youth), and featuring readings by some of the authors who submitted short stories to the volume.

Wild decided to put the book together, despite certain reservations ('The last thing I needed was hordes of Smiths fans camped outside my house telling me why my plan to have writers use Smiths songs as the jumping-off point for an anthology of short stories was not a wise one'), largely because he's a big fan of the band and also because there are so many allusions to authors within the lyrics that a literary project inspired by the group seemed like an obvious thing to do. Of lead singer-cum-poet Morrissey, Wild enthuses: 'Reader! The man is a reader!'

Paint A Vulgar Picture, itself taking the name of one of the band's songs, is an anthology comprising stories influenced one way or another by the Manchester foursome and provided by various writers, both established and up and coming. Contributors include Mike Gayle, Scarlett Thomas, Mil Millington, Chris Killen, Kate Pullinger, Matt Beaumont and Helen Walsh.


This evening, we are treated to readings by James Hopkin, Jeff Noon and Catherine O'Flynn. Hopkin, first up, presents: 'A radio edit, if you like, of my story, Jeane.' It takes as its point of reference the B-side to the original seven-inch single of This Charming Man, and its Northern voice bears its own charm: mentions of Joy Division, Tetley tea and The Britons Protection are bound to find friends among the onlookers tonight.

Jeff Noon is on next, and it's something of a homecoming for the Droylsden-born writer after being in Brighton for coming up to a decade. His tragic tale of Johnny Boy and William tends towards violence and (as Noon himself admits) Sylvia Plath, but his animated delivery keeps us pinned to The Queen Is Dead, despite the shouting kids and blaring patrol car sirens outside.

What Was Lost author Catherine O'Flynn tells us, in her lilting Midlands accent, how The Smiths provided the soundtrack to her teenage years, and her school-based story, You've Got Everything Now, feels very real with its description of Millsy and Banks and the bullying of fellow pupil and enigma Quinn.

The three writers now come together for a question-and-answer session, revealing, among other points, their favourite Smiths songs (O'Flynn: I Know It's Over; Hopkin: Frankly Mr Shankly) and whether they work while listening to music (Noon: 'I can't actually write without it.'). We're tempted to finish off the free drink and 'retro nibbles', but venture instead to the special Smiths room set aside by the extremely friendly Salford Lads Club volunteers in a former squash court. It's a fitting tribute to end an evening of fitting tributes.

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Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog in the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

MMU's Manchester Fiction Prize Gala delivers few surprises but a lot of good writing

The first Manchester Fiction Prize kicks off with a pop as the champagne is uncorked at the gala reception this Friday night. Already there's a buzz of excitement and anticipation filling the immense Town Hall room where the six shortlisted writers and their guests are gathered.

Once the statutory group photos have been taken, we make our way to the plush Lord Mayor's Parlour up the corridor. Here James Draper of Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School fills us in on the background to The Manchester Fiction Prize and its umbrella award, the Manchester Writing Competition. The brainchild of Carol Ann Duffy, Creative Director at The Writing School when she's not busy being Poet Laureate (which she is tonight), the Manchester Writing Competition alternates annually between poetry and fiction, and aims to celebrate excellence in creative writing and act as a launchpad for up-and-coming writers. It's open to new and established writers internationally, with £10,000 awarded to overall winner and a bursary for study at MMU awarded to an entrant aged 18 to 25 as part of the Jeffrey Wainwright Manchester Young Writer Of The Year Award.

The first-ever Fiction Prize received a staggering 1,700 entries and, reveals Draper, 'Collectively the stories contained four million words, more words than the Bible – I know because I counted them!' The submissions (all brand-new short stories of no more than 5,000 words in length) were judged by novelists and short story writers M. John Harrison, Sarah Hall and The Writing School's Nicholas Royle (these last two both read examples of their work: Hall gives us The Agency; Royle presents Very Shortly), who whittled them down, first to an 'unofficial long list' of 30 or 40, then to the final six.

So, in alphabetical order, each of the six shortlisted writers takes to the stage and reads from their entries (full stories will be published on the Manchester Writing Competition site). First up is Peter Deadman, with a touching childhood tale of swimming, cycling and communism during the long summer holidays. Next, 24-year-old Michael E. Halmshaw reads from They Cover Him With Leaves, a dark but funny description of two immigrants, Petrov and 'Frank'. Edinburgh-based Vicki Jarrett's story of 'mental cases' in a chippy is a definite page-turner, while the ultra-confident Toby Litt (pictured), author of a clutch of novels including Adventures In Capitalism, gives us a very well written but rather offensive piece called John And John. Australian author Jennifer Mills couldn't be with us, but her brother, Alex Mills, reads from Prospect, her intriguing study of rising rain waters in the New Mexican desert, and last up is Alison Moore, who presents the sad demise of married couple Dorothy and Wilfrid in Static.

Hall and Royle step forward again (Harrison is unfortunately ill and has been unable to attend), envelopes at the ready. 'Judging this competition has been very hard work, but enormous fun and enormously inspiring,' says Hall. 'The short story is one of the most exacting forms of writing and the stories on the shortlist are all wonderful examples of this form. The judges' decision was very difficult.' She announces the winner of the Young Writer Of The Year Award as Michael E. Halmshaw then reveals the winner of the Manchester Fiction Prize 2009 to be Toby Litt. Neither comes as a big surprise, although all the work presented tonight has been interesting enough to warrant a full read.

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Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog in the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

Manchester Blog Awards

It's Wednesday night and time for the long-awaited and much-Twittered-about glittering prize-giving ceremony of the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards, held in conjunction with the Manchester Literature Festival, Arts Council England, Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) and creativetourist.com.

The show is being held in the newly spruced Band On The Wall, where the tables, set out cabaret club style, soon fill up with the brightest and best from Manchester's burgeoning social media scene. The soundtrack is provided by the reborn (for one night only!) Bloggerpalooza mp3 bloggers, while compere for the soiree is self-proclaimed Manchester media princess Maria Ruban, squeezed into a very tight, very red dress and hitting something of an impasse trying to extract catchphrases from a rather unforthcoming audience. Various shortlisted bloggers present their favourite posts, including Emily Morris of My Shitty Twenties, Dave Hartley of Dave Hartley's Weblog and Katherine Woodfine of Follow The Yellow Brick Road, while author and judge Jenn Ashworth also reads an extract of her work.

Eventually, it's prize-giving time and the mic is handed over to Manchester Blog Awards organiser Kate Feld, who came up with the idea for the event in 2006 'in response to the growing numbers of writers, artists and photographers in the city who use blogs to publish their work online'. Kate expresses her delight at the record number of entries this year (topping 200) and explains that the panel of judges included (as well as her good self): author and columnist of The Guardian Naomi Alderman; Dave Carter, head of MDDA; Richard Fair of BBC Manchester; Mike Noon of Arts Council England North West, and author (and last year's winner of the Best Writing On A Blog category) Jenn Ashworth.

So, without further ado, here's the list of (and links to) the winners and runners-up at the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards. Drum roll, please...

Best City and Neighbourhood Blog: Lost in Manchester (anonymous). One of the judges said: 'Sometimes it's easy to forget to look at what's right under your nose. I love its unashamed raw passion for Manchester.'
Runner-up was The Manchester Zedders (Liam Purcell and Marie Pattison).

Best Personal Blog: My Shitty Twenties (Emily Morris). One of the judges said: 'Moving, thoughtful, funny and wise. Sometimes heartbreaking, always uplifting.'
Runner-up was Cynical Ben (Benjamin Judge).

Best New Blog: Words & Fixtures (Clare Conlon). One of the judges said: 'It was the only blog out of the twenty-four shortlisted that made me laugh out loud.'
Runner-up was Songs From Under the Floorboards (Andy Wake).

Best Writing On A Blog: My Shitty Twenties (Emily Morris again). One of the judges said: 'It's almost impossible not to get drawn into the story that this blog tells.'
Dual runners-up were I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car (Richard Vivmeister Hirst) and Dave Hartley's Weblog (Dave Hartley).

Best Arts And Culture Blog, sponsored by creativetourist.com: Run Paint Run Run (Ella Wredenfors). One of the judges said: 'Opinionated, heartfelt and pleasantly rough-around-the-edges, a blog with an infectious enthusiasm for art.'
Runner-up was The Manchester Hermit (Ansuman Biswas).

Blog Of The Year: Lost in Manchester (still anonymous). This was awarded to the blog with the highest aggregate score in the competition. One of the judges said: 'Quirky, original and focused, with an eye for detail. Putting the extra into extraordinary.'

Well done to everyone involved, and long may the tradition continue!

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Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog at the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

Photo by Brian Slater

An unprecedented audience with the Faber New Poets (October 19)

It's quite a crowd that squeezes into the curved, wood-panelled room inscribed, aptly, with the names of past Chairmen of the Cultural Committee. And as the four Faber New Poets take their seats at the front, they look ever so slightly caught in the headlamps at the sheer number that has turned out to hear them. Despite it being a Monday lunchtime, and despite these being rising stars not established ones, it's a full house and, rather than be turned away, a good number of onlookers choose to remain standing at the sidelines or crouching on the floor.

We're in the Central Library, to which Cultural Services Manager Libby Tempest now welcomes the guests and explains how it's something of a tradition for the venue to offer a platform for new literary talent. She promptly hands over to Faber & Faber Commissioning Editor, Matthew Hollis, who introduces the project and the people involved, namely: Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Fiona Benson, Jack Underwood and Heather Phillipson. He also explains the fifth person in the row: guest poet Emma Jones, who battles a runny nose to read from her most recent collection The Striped World.

Manchester is the last stop on the week-long Faber New Poets tour; an idea, says Hollis, that is 'perhaps more rock than poetry', but one that offers a great opportunity for the four young poets to showcase their work to new audiences. The 'roadshow' also aims to promote the foursome's newly published pamphlets of poems, launched to coincide with National Poetry Day a couple of weeks ago.

As well as the pamphlets, the Faber New Poets have received editorial input, a mentorship with the poet of their choice and a bursary to let them concentrate on their writing. This lucky lot are the first batch in the new initiative, which receives funding from the Arts Council and also marks the prestigious poetry press' 80th anniversary. One by one, the two boys and two girls step up to the lectern and recite five or six pieces each. There's quite a range of voices, and while some are stylistically and thematically grounded in the fairly traditional, some are more unusual, including the Scottish-accented Free Dialect Poem With Every Collection by the swaggeringly confident Toby Martinez de las Rivas, who is first up.

Fiona Benson follows, presenting a collection of nature-soaked poems delivered in a rather serious way and a 'fuck' that cuts like a knife. Next is Jack Underwood, the youngest and funniest with his between-poem banter and offering, Maths. Heather Phillipson comes last, baring her soul with talk of streaking round north London and serving up an ode to her favourite coat, stolen at a party.

The four round off proceedings by reading from each other's pamphlets: Toby from Heather's, Fiona from Toby's, Jack from Fiona's and Heather from Jack's. 'We've been together a long time and have got to know each other's poems, and we thought – this being the last day of the tour – it would be nice to choose and read each other's work,' says Toby. He's right – it gives the event further depth and shows how the four have grown together as writers.



Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, has been shortlisted for the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

Out of the darkness comes enlightenment through Michael Schmidt's poetry

All glass, metal, wood and exposed brickwork, with twinkling lights and background jazz, the Epernay Champagne & Cocktail Bar is a suitably urbane setting for the launch of Michael Schmidt's Collected Poems. There's a hum of Saturday-evening chatter from the other end of the establishment, as this side of the bar hushes, all eyes facing front.

After an effusive introduction by his editor and 'dear, dear friend' Peter Sansom, Schmidt takes to the floor and begins reading from the new collection, starting with his earlier work, including 'From Mexico' and 'A Dream', and moving on towards the here and now. In dark trousers and a light blue open-collared shirt, his attention to detail is obvious in his super shiny shoes, while his warmth comes across through his soft, grey corduroy jacket and round smiling face.

But his body is betraying him and the butterflies are perceptible, despite having a lengthy career behind him (his first collection, Black Buildings, was published in 1969, when he also started up Carcanet Press) and even though he holds the post of Professor Of Poetry at the University of Glasgow. His left leg is jiggling, and he shifts the tome from one hand to the other as he reads aloud from it. Some of the words get muddled, and his delivery, in his smooth Scottish-cum-American accent, is ever so slightly stilted.

Then we realise why: this usually confident man can't actually see the text in the failing light! 'I'm sorry if I'm holding my book in a funny way,' he explains. 'It's because there's a street light casting a certain light.' He is handed (what else?) a candle in a champagne bottle, but the hot wax drips inconveniently, and a kind soul steps forward with a torch. The effect is rather like reading under the covers as a child, and it adds to the intimate feeling of the event. He struggles on, but eventually gives in: 'I'm sorry, my eyes are going out now.' It's as good a time as any to take a break, he says, 'while I organise some better illumination'.

Despite the difficulties, Schmidt is very engaging, and frequently raises a laugh as he explains his poems. I mention the obvious warmth that emanates from him to some of his fans and fellow poets in the interval, and am met with enthusiastic nods all round. As the second half gets under way, the well-turned-out turnout (not everyone manages to get a seat) hangs on his every word, heads reverently tilted to one side. Schmidt, you can tell, does enjoy the devotion despite his jangling nerves, and treats those congregated to some 'poems that have come most recently': firstly 'Desire', chockablock with boat metaphors, and another ('I'll just do one more as my battery is running low'), based around Shakespeare's Yorick; one of a number referencing fellow writers.

As he switches off the torch and steps away from the mic, Schmidt looks visibly relieved that the 'most extraordinary launch event ever' is over. But sometimes it's nice to see people in a new light.



Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, is shortlisted for the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

A fashionably late Fay Weldon talks feminist characters and dystopian futures

Three quarters of an hour after Fay Weldon was due to appear, the by now understandably twitchy festival folk finally announce: 'Fay Weldon is in the building!' Cheers and applause fill the vast but spartan main hall of the Friends Meeting House, and it no longer matters that Weldon is late (held up from Dorset by Friday afternoon motorway accidents and a wayward GPS): you couldn't stay mad for long with such a charming woman.

So it's off the road and straight on stage for the cheerful 78 year old; a riot of colour in a diaphanous fuchsia scarf and velvet jacket all golds, reds, pinks and greens. She makes her apologies – 'I'm never late. Well, only once before, about 15 years ago, but there was a free bar and everyone was so drunk, they didn't notice!' – then, half-moon glasses perched on her nose, squints down at the text to read from her latest novel, Chalcot Crescent. Her breathless delivery may be a result of all the rushing about she's been doing, but once she's sat down and in discussion with Kaye Mitchell of The University Of Manchester, she does seem a lot calmer.

Indeed, as she fields questions about characterisation (Chalcot Crescent's Frances is the sister she never had, and who she has even pretended to be on occasions), feminist literature (from Iris Murdoch to Germaine Greer) and unreliable narrators, the storyteller in Weldon really takes over. Frequently, she wanders off on a tangent, weaving in tales of adventures (such as being invited to the World Intellectuals' Conference in Moscow in 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev announced that the Cold War was at an end – Weldon promptly informed the Foreign Office; they didn't believe her), before eventually heading back on track and returning to the original point. Hers is a keen mind, this much is clear.

Weldon's interest is certainly piqued by serious issues, and Chalcot Crescent addresses subjects such as mind control (even if it is through modified meat loaf), a totalitarian government and the economy. 'I studied economics, not English literature,' she says, by way of explanation. Her career, too, extends beyond just (!) the 29 novels she has put out since 1967. She has written plays, screenplays, autobiography, essays, journalism and, perhaps most famously, advertisements, having worked as a copywriter to support her first son when she was a single mother back in the fifties. She does admit, however, while chuckling: 'I do find writing non-fiction a bit trying.'

On being a novelist, she says: 'Writers aren't taken seriously – not in Britain, I mean; in Europe and the rest of the world.' She also laments, while at the same time jokes: 'I have a terrible feeling that the good times for writers have gone – but at least they were good while they lasted!' When questions are opened up to the floor, a worried student queries this pessimistic prognosis, and Weldon, ever warm and reassuring, replies, 'I teach creative writing at Brunel. Writing is still used to pass on enthusiasm and excitement, warning and so on. But it may be the end of the traditional novel.' To be a successful writer, she also divulges, it's handy if you're the odd one out. Born in England, she then spent her early years in New Zealand before returning to the UK aged 14. 'I never really belonged,' she explains, 'but an outsider is a very useful thing for a writer to be. Patterns of absurdity become one's natural subjects, so the dystopia is there... but it doesn't mean you can't have a laugh!'



Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, is shortlisted for the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.