On the hottest day of the year so far, we sent Chronicler Milo (9) to report from Swindon’s Festival of Literature’s Children & Families Day. Continue reading
First off, a massive congratulations to all who took part in the Swindon Slam! this year (and every year). Everyone who took part wrote a credible piece of poetry and for some it was pouring their souls out on stage. In competitions if you win, or come in the top three, it’s the best feeling in the world, but if you lose it can be very demotivating. So I’m going to say, keep going! You are fantastic, want to hear more!
There were 15 amazing competitors this year, which equalled 29 diverse poems under three minutes or less – including those by comperes – mostly performed with aplomb.
Yes there were poems about beverages and love and references to dead famous poets, and poems about poems or not writing poems or taking part in competitions with poems (like this one).
There were also poems about war, bombings, addiction, the environment and Professor Brian Cox (of course). Continue reading
Chronicler Milo (9) reports from Swindon’s teenage poetry competition, Youth Slam.
‘I deliberately chose a wind-up word,’ said professional idler Tom Hodgkinson and I suspect the other author this evening, psychopath specialist Kevin Dutton, had done the same.
Tom is the first to admit that his ideas are nothing new, just culturally unpopular since the protestant/puritan work ethic. Though he’s used the words idling, loafing and laziness what he really means is daydreaming, contemplation and creative boredom, or just doing stuff you want to do rather than being ‘condemned to toil by outside forces’ – ‘no shit jobs’. Which is something else both speakers had in common – very quotable.
Not that he’ll be pinned down into a definition, this would be anti-idling. One woman asks if playing app game Candy Crush is the best use of her retirement. Tom says, ‘I’m wary of having an approved list of idling activities’ and then describes how his magazine, The Idler, praised MP Nigel Mills for playing the game in a parliamentary committee. Continue reading
Comedy night at Swindon Festival of Literature – the evening that gives your brain cells a chance to recover after events featuring deep thinkers and political heavyweights.
So this Swindon Festival of Literature evening involved a spot of dancing to a cheesy tune, being stuck in a car park, and a wild-ish haired professor. Sounds like a good plot for a book.
Which leads into the first event’s theme, Poetry Swindon 78s, where the Richard Jefferies Museum’s writing class used scratchy old 78 RPM vinyl records as a creative prompt. At Swindon Central Library, we heard the tunes and the writers read their work.
Nairobi, a bubbly 1958 Tommy Steele number, became a Cold War spy tale by Ben Holloway. Ben’s nervous rapid delivery and breath-catching apologetic gaps suited the memories of a paranoid molehunt.
I had enough time to catch Anna-May Laugher’s Ready for the River from a 1928 track by The Rollickers – ‘Want to drown my troubles / and leave just the bubbles’. I was glad I bought the accompanying 78s book and could get to know this poem: a five-part account of a river, a living thing, accepting and eating anything thrown in it – dead things, oar cuts, memories – before it is consumed by drought.
Regretfully, I crept out and then spent 10 minutes stuck listening to the bleep of a Swindon car park help button (‘hanging on the help button’ flash fiction coming up) before I could head up to the Arts Centre, which meant I missed the first half of Roger Scruton. So apologies if crucial information is notable by its absence. Continue reading
©Calyx Vince Cable at the Swindon Festival of Literature
There are two kinds of politicians: the quiet, steady-hand-on-the-rudder type, and the charismatic ones, who can seem appealing, but whose run-away mouths can often get them into trouble.
Serious and deliberate in his delivery, Vince Cable – who certainly falls into the former camp – nonetheless allows himself a joke at the expense of the latter.
“I see I am one of two speakers with a political background,” he tells the Swindon Festival of Literature tonight (Tuesday). “At least I don’t need to be looking around the audience to see where the Mossad people are.”
Ken Livingstone will be appearing next Tuesday.
This one is straight from the mouths of babes, well a nine-year-old, any how. This is the first family-friendly Magic Monday of 2016 (kicking off as part of the Swindon Festival of Literature), where kids and their families are welcome to run around the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate Water, Swindon.
We first parked in Coate Water. As we crossed the mud-filled car park there was some logs on the grass on the side of the road. I decided to jump from log to log. Then they ran out. So I followed my mum and Sydney (my little sister) into a freshly cut field. I quickly ran across the field with Sydney close at my side. She said she was a monster and was trying to catch me. So sprinted off with Sydney behind me shouting, ‘Milo, Milo!’ I left everyone behind (my mum and Sydney) and rushed inside the gate. Continue reading
Swindon Festival of Literature goes off with bang. Photo (C) Calyx Pictures
The rowdy drunks were disagreeing outside the club, one massaging her sore feet after in a night in heels, whilst birds were joyfully greeting International Dawn Chorus Day. Co-op workers were setting up store and I explained to a disbelieving Chronicler Milo that in years gone by, almost everything would have been shut on a bank holiday.
And so we walked to the launch event of the Swindon Festival of Literature in Lawn Woods, greeted by the rich smell of paraffin from the flaming batons as they bounced between jugglers, against a Swindon vista at a grey sunrise. The merry band of Jake’s jugglers had grown this year to include the Cat’s Pyjamas, and have recently returned from teaching circus skills to street kids in Nicaragua. Continue reading
Literature lovers of Swindon beware – the book-readers of Birmingham are after your Festival tickets.
Swindon’s 23rd annual Festival of Literature was launched in the courtyard of Swindon Library yesterday (Thursday) – the day that tickets went on sale.
And by 8.30am, revealed Festival organiser Matt Holland, the box office had already received ticket enquiries – some from as far afield as the Midlands and Home Counties. “Don’t be beaten by people from Birmingham and Basingstoke in getting tickets,” was his dire warning. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 