Archive | Swindon Festival of Literature RSS feed for this section

Why do so many of us believe in angels – and what does it say about us?

8 May

Why do so many of us believe in angels?

In this post-truth age, I wasn’t all that surprised when I read that a third of people in the UK believe in angels, and that one in ten say they’ve experienced ‘the presence of angels’.

The findings, so far as I can tell, come from a YouGov poll conducted in March 2016 – just a few months before the referendum that delivered us Brexit.

It was published at a time when the then-justice secretary Michael Gove was trying to persuade us that “people in this country have had enough of experts” – those analytical and methodical enemies of the people. It was feelings, not facts, that mattered.

So yes, angels, why not?

Continue reading →

Tags: , ,

Books, babies and blogging with Slummy Mummy, Jo Middleton, and Young Adult author, Karen Gregory

8 May Jo Middleton

Jo Middleton is much like her writing: instantly likeable, witty and fun. A former marketing employee, Jo quit and followed her dream of becoming a freelance journalist. With little to no experience, she noted down editors’ names from magazines and asked them what they would like her to write.

Her first writing break came writing for South West Holiday Parks and shortly after she started a blog to increase her portfolio. As a single mother of two, she embraced the adage write what you know and wrote on the subject of parenting. And so Slummy Mummy was born.

Talking about her writing journey, Jo acknowledges apologetically that for many it is not easy, but ten years on from her choosing to start a blog it is understandable why she has been successful.

Jo’s writing is honest, on receiving her first free product of hand cream to review she wrote, “keeps my hands soft and moisturised, but smells like cabbages and old peoples homes.” Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Love Factually – an honest assessment of love or an antidote for the sickness?

8 May

When Laura Mucha, author of Love Factually, The science of Who, How and Why We Love, was asked why she wrote a book about love, she answered: “because I just didn’t understand love.” And in honesty, who does?

Raised from a young age in an all-woman household (by her mother and grandmother), Laura was not privy to relationships and took to quizzing those around her to help develop her understanding. As an adult, after a cardiac arrest which caused her to face her own mortality, she chose to return to the question of love and write a book about it.

Love, according to Laura comes in different forms: lust, romantic love and companionship. And partners, too, can be secure, avoidant or anxious in relationships – a state which is heavily influenced by our upbringing. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , ,

Let’s Go Wild – Isabella Tree

8 May Isabella Tree © Fernando Bagué

Isabella Tree’s event, on her book Wilding, was all set for a cosy evening at Lower Shaw Farm’s ‘centre’, with forty or so people, cups of tea and talk of restoring a bit of balance back to the countryside.

However, the allocated tickets sold out. More were made available, and they sold too. There was no choice but shift the venue to the cowshed, with seating for a hundred. Still the tickets sold… benches were added, and more chairs dragged from all corners. By the time the talk was about to start, the cowshed was packed tighter than a, well, than a cowshed. An intensively farmed cowshed. And that’s where Isabella Tree comes in.

Isabella Tree in the Lowers Shaw Farm cowshed © Fernando Bagué
Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Running for friendship and survival – with Omer Homer and Bella Mackie

7 May Bella and Omer

When it comes to running, it seems most of us fall into two camps; running to escape thoughts and feelings or running towards a goal.

Omer Homer, a training Para Olympian hopeful, firmly falls into both. He runs to win but acknowledges that running has made him a different person. Omer started running in 2017, his target to win the Swindon Half Marathon – an ambitious goal given Omer had never run before, had no former training and has severe injuries from an encounter with an exploding landmine. However, Omer completed the Swindon Half Marathon in just 1hr 22min 49 sec and ranked in the top 1% of runners.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Morning Song – Dawn Chorus

6 May Farmyard Circus
Danny

The sweet melody of the bagpipes started the show,
a great way to begin the Dawn Chorus,
the 26th in a row.

Farmyard Circus

The Farmyard Circus, with hoops, bats and prong
ignited by a fiery wick,
I never knew the wonders that could be made,
from a flaming stick.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Goodbye lit fest, hello to the all-new Swindon Spring Festival

21 Mar

Spring Festival Launch

Darine Flanagan, Matt Holland, Sara Jane Arbury, Casey Jane, Rahman Khatibi, Tony Hiller, Swindon mayor Junab Ali Image courtesy of Fernando Bagué

More than 175 years of Swindon’s rich cultural heritage has inspired a new festival of arts and culture, which was launched in the town today (Thursday) before a crowd of enthusiastic supporters.

The Swindon Spring Festival is an extension of the popular Festival of Literature, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.

Twelve months ago, festival director Matt Holland told us of his desire to expand the lit fest into “an all-encompassing combined arts festival.” Continue reading →

Tags: , ,

Festival Chronicle contributor turns spotlight on Swindon for new book

26 Jul

Angela Atkinson with her book Secret Swindon

Angela Atkinson with her book Secret Swindon

A new book revealing Swindon’s hidden gems will be officially launched this weekend by one of our own writers.

Festival Chronicle contributor Angela Atkinson turned her passion for the town into a blog, Born Again Swindonian. And having attracted a following from around the world, the blog has now spawned a book – Secret Swindon.

Continue reading →

Tags: ,

Festival Finale – Things WILL only get better

21 May

SwindonLitFes_2018_0020_Jacob_Hi_Ho&Darine_Flanagan_previewAt the finale of the Finale of the Swindon Festival of Literature, circus performer Darine carried Jake and the festival into a new era – next year it morphs into Spring Swindon Festival of the arts.

One could be forgiven for feeling reflective. Laura, of musical act the Glow Globes, observed, “Is it a little melancholy tonight because it has been 25 years and things are going to change?”

A film showed us the growth of the festival from a programme of twelve events to over fifty. “Who told us festivals to look forward to this week include the Cannes Festival and Swindon Festival of Literature?” festival director Matt Holland asked in a short audience quiz. The answer was Radio 2. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , ,

Change the pictures, change the world – Kate Raworth and Doughnut Economics

21 May

Kate Raworth

Kate Raworth

Kate Raworth wanted to change the world. She tried it in a village in Zanzibar. She tried it in the UN, and then at Oxfam.

But her days as an economics student came back to haunt her. How could a ‘social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services’ (Wikipedia) be so far removed from ‘real-world economic challenges’? In all her forays into social justice, she banged herself against an economic brick wall. It’s impossible to create lasting change when the system itself is wrong.

Kate decided the main problem was the wrong pictures. Surely money, you may ask? But no, pictures – with a glut of blank spaces for people to fall into. University economics 101 uses a series of very memorable diagrams by a young US professor, Paul Samuelson, drawn after the second world war. These pictures, Kate said, sit at the back of visual cortex and influence our thoughts.

Just as memorable (read: creepy) was his aim for them: he wanted to ‘lick the blank slate of the mind’. You may recognise their simplistic black marks – the ones where a line starts at the bottom corner of the graph and zooms off to the top (GDP and unlimited growth); or a toilet door-style man whose only concern is how much things cost and how much he has to spend; or those hump back hill ones where some people lose out at the start before everyone starts to win; or where horrible waste is made, but don’t worry because prosperity will clean it up.  Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →