Hot Chocolate Short Story

Short story of up to 1,500 words in which the central theme is: 

Hot Chocolate - eating it, drinking it, or anything else.

PRIZES
1st prize £200, publication here and a tin of Fortnum & Mason’s hot chocolate.

A Runner Up will receive £50 and a tin of Fortnum & Mason’s hot chocolate.

RULES
Your entry must be a maximum of 1,500 words.

Entry fee is £3 per story

All entries must be received by 28 February 2013

JUDGES Judges are Choc Lit authors Margaret James, Sue Moorcroft and Linda Mitchelmore.

Link here

Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition 2013

This is for a good cause, even if you don't get anywhere.

All proceeds to two London Homeless Cold Weather Shelters
(And you know how much these are needed in this winter weather)

• Poems up to 40 lines.
• Single poems £2.50, 6 poems £10. You can pay by cheque (almost quaint now) or Paypal
• Closing date 14 February 2013
• Poetry must not be previously published.
• Judge: Anne Stevenson.  

Link here

Prize: Pamphlet publication collection of winner's poems - 50 free copies plus a reading

The publisher is WardWood, an up and coming publisher.

Note that they are judung a pamphlet collection on the basis of a single poem, which I think is a daft idea.

Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2013 Short Story Competition

I had a fantastic week on an Arvon course. It is pricy though. You can win a week with this free to enter competition. Tempting.

Win £500, plus a place on an Arvon writing course of your choice

Enter a short story (for adults) of no more than 2,000 words, on the theme of 'freedom' and email it to shortstorycompetition@bloomsbury.com with "WAYB13 competition" as the subject line.

Deadline: 15 February 2013

The Arvon Foundation runs four historic writing houses in the UK, where published writers lead week-long residential courses. Covering a diverse range of genres, from poetry and fiction to screenwriting and comedy, Arvon courses have provided inspiration to thousands of people at all stages of their writing lives. Find out more and book a course online at www.arvonfoundation.org

All entries must be original unpublished prose of 2,000 words or fewer.

Link here

Eason Story Time

Saturday 26 January @11 am

Every Eason store in Ireland

Link here

Eason Story Time is back. As part of Eason’s "Get Into Reading" campaign, a specially selected children’s book will be read at 11am every Saturday in every Eason store in the country.   On the website below are the dates and book titles from now until June. Here's the next two months: 26 Jan: The Lonely Beast by Chris Judge 02 Feb: Adams Pirate Treasure by Benji Bennett 09 Feb: Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman & Ben Cort 16 Feb: Stuck by Oliver Jeffers 23 Feb: On the Road with Mavis & Marge by Niamh Sharkey 02 Mar: Jack and The Flumflum Tree by Julia Donaldson 09 Mar: My Mum by Anthony Browne 16 Mar: Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle 23 Mar: Brave Beast by Chris Judge 30 Mar: Smartest Giant in Town by Julia Donaldson

The Burning Bush Issue 4

I have a poem in the new issue or the online magazine, The Burning Bush.

Link here

also some other wonderful poets including 2 Poetry Divas.

Three Divas in a Burning Bush sounds like the first line of a poem or short story.

Grants in Laois

Laois have a Tyrone Guthrie bursary which I highly recommend and covet.

Laois County Council Arts Service – Awards and Opportunities | Call for Applicants

Closing date: 28th February
Laois County Council Arts Service invites applications for the following awards and opportunities to individuals/groups and organizations from County Laois.

- Arts Act Grants 2013
Provision has been made by Laois County Council for the payment of grants to arts organisations and individuals who meet the artistic and financial criteria set down by Laois County Council and who provide adequate information on their proposed activities. Maximum amount payable will not exceed €1000.

- Tyrone Guthrie Residency Bursary Awards 2013
A Bursary is available to enable a Laois artist to spend one week working at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan. The bursary is open to artists in all fields and is selected on previous achievements and project/s in hand.
In 2013 a special Bursary for Printmakers is available and will enable two print artists to spend a week sharing and working in the new Print Studio at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. One of the artists must be an experienced printmaker and preferably a member of a recognised print studio.

- Artists in Schools Scheme 2013
Grants are available for artists’ residencies in schools, to include all art forms. This scheme gives primary and post primary schools the opportunity to select and work with professional artists and explore new arts media.

Details and application forms regarding the above schemes are available on request from: The Arts Office, Laois County Council, Áras an Chontae, Portlaoise, Co. Laois. Telephone: 057 8674342 email: artsoff@laoiscoco.ie or can be downloaded from the website: www.laois.ie.

Grants - Cavan

Cavan County Council ARTS AWARDS Application Form is now available for download. 

For projects taking place between April 2013 and March 2014 

Deadline for submission of completed application: 21st February 2013
 
*Please read the guidelines and application checklist before completing this form*
 
Link here

Westmeath grants

Westmeath County Council Arts Grants 2013.

Westmeath County Council operate 3 arts grants schemes annually as detailed below.

Individual Artists Bursaries

This fund provides funding to individual professional artists based in Westmeath who earn a proportion of their annual income through their artistic endeavours. Westmeath County Council will offer bursaries, each year, in respect of the professional development of individual professional artists practicing in any of the artistic disciplines outlined in the County Arts plan.

Arts in Community Scheme

The Arts in Context Residency scheme provides specific project funding to artists to enable them to work with any school or community group for arts projects across disciplines. Funding issued by Westmeath County Council will go directly to pay the artists fees and the school or group must supply and materials required for the project. This scheme is to encourage meaningful collaboration between a selected group of individuals and an artist working on a particular project over a particular duration of time and to allow the group an opportunity to engage with an artist directly on a specific project. This scheme gives employment to an artist working with a group over a given period and it allows the group to gain specific skills and expertise in the area of the arts.

Arts Act Grants

Westmeath County Council offers grant aid to community, voluntary or amateur arts groups or organisations, which will stimulate public interest in the arts, promote the knowledge, appreciation and practice of the arts or assist in improving the standards of the arts. In this Act the arts are defined as painting, sculpture, architecture, music, film, drama, dance, literature, design in industry and the fine arts and applied arts generally.

Deadline 1st March 2013
Link here

Grants - Kildare

Kildare County Council Arts Service invites applications from individual artists and arts collectives and community groups for the following grant and award opportunities

• Arts Act Grant scheme
• Artist in Schools Residency Bursary Award
• Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award
• Drama League of Ireland Summer School Bursary Award
• Film Bursary Award
• Recording Bursary @ Platform4 Audio and Digital Media Studio
• Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency Bursary Award
• Youth Arts Residency Bursary
• Emerging Visual Artist Solo Exhibition Bursary Award
• Local Publishing award
• Irish Youth Choir bursary (as auditions are in Jan / Feb, please register your interest immediately by contacting the arts service)
• NYCI Certificate in Youth Arts (accrediting body NUI Maynooth) bursary. Course dates will be announced in summer 2012. (Register your interest by contacting the arts service)

Application forms available from www.kildare.ie/artsservice

Further information available from

Kildare County Arts Service, Riverbank, Main Street, Newbridge, Co Kildare

Tel: 045-448328; Email: arts@kildarecoco.ie, or service

Closing date is strictly 12 noon TUESDAY 19^th March 2013

Waterford City Grants

Waterford City Council Arts Grants 2013 cover quite a lot of ground.

Deadline 30 January 

Production of quality Arts Programmes:

Professional Theatre / Performance Production
Professional Creative Collaboration Production
Amateur / Voluntary Group Production
Youth / Pre-professional Production
Marching / Concert band programme
Concerts Programme
Hospitals/Disability Arts Programme

Audience Development/Inclusion:

Primary Schools Exploring Arts Performance Programme
Secondary Schools Exploring Arts Performance Programme
Transition Year Exploring Arts Programme
Youth Social Inclusion Arts Exploration Programme
Intergenerational Inclusion Arts Programme

The Artist and the City:

Professional Development Grants
Tyrone Guthrie Artists Awards (Creative residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre)
Publishing Purchase Scheme
3rd Party Support Scheme
Specific Bursaries: Youth Choir Bursary, Youth Orchestra Bursary, Music Network Bursary, AIMS Bursary, All Ireland Drama Festival Bursary

Link here

Grants! First one in - Offaly

It's grants season. Do you have a project or perhaps education requirement that could use the extra cash? Your local authority have money for that exact purpose, supporting artists. There are quite a few I've found and I'll post them up over the next few days.
And if you find any more, let me know.

Note that the funds are even more limited so make a strong case. They like community engagement for example.And toot your horn. 

Offaly County Council Arts Act Grants for 2013

Applications are now invited by Offaly County Council from community groups and individuals involved in the arts for funding for projects in 2013.

The grant scheme is open to organisations such as drama and musical groups, town bands, choirs, voluntary community organisations and individual artists proposing projects within the community.
Funding is limited under this scheme and priority will be given to specific projects which are innovative, produce maximum community impact and provide professional arts and cultural experiences and applications should not be made without thought given to the above goals.

Application forms and guidelines can be downloaded from www.offaly.ie/arts or requested by email from arts@offalycoco.ie or over the phone on 05793 57400.

The closing date for all applications is Friday February 15th 2013 at 3pm.

e e cummings a poet's advice to students

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a neurological condition whereby stimulation of one sense is jumbled up in the brain to create the effect of another sense.

Or as Wikipedia says,

a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway

So a person with Colour Synesthesia preceives numbers or letters as having an inherent colour.
5 could be purple or D could be black
Some have it from sounds so a French horn could be light green or a high soprano, white, sometimes with movement too.

Another one that is new to me is perceiving letters as personality types, e.g. U is pleasant but unexciting, F is frazzled, nervous.

Why is this relevant to writers, emerging or otherwise?

Synesthesia has been a source of inspiration for artists, composers, poets, novelists, and digital artists since the Greeks (the ancient ones, not the bankrupts of Europe).

When you are describing something, in a poem or fiction, dialogue or whatever, spice up that description by using a synesthetic adjective.

a spiky ring tone
a faithless wine
verdant sunshine
loud table lamp
ruby tuesday
a grumpy door

The artists Kandinksy was a synesthete, as is David Hockney, the writers Joanne Harris and Nabakov, musician Duke Ellington, Physicist and personal hero of mine Richard Feynman, composers Lizst and Rimsky-Korsakov.

I know of at least one Irish writer who has some aspects of it. Anyone reading this?

Galway Rape Crisis Centre's Dead Good Poetry Competition

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre in association with Over the Edge are now accepting entries for the Dead Good Poetry Competition. The competition is open to all original and unpublished poetry and will be judged by Kevin Higgins and Clare Daly TD.

The winner will receive €300, while the second and third prize winners will receive €200 and €100 respectively.

The entry fee is €10 per poem and entrants may submits as many poems as they wish.

Poems may be sent to:
Dead Good Poetry,
"The Lodge"
Forster Court,
Galway

or sent as an attachment to; deadgoodpoetry2013@gmail.com.

Deadline: March 31 2013.  

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust

This sounds like an interesting competition. Note that the fee is to cover the administration and maybe also to fund the project but there's no mention of cash for the prize, just the glory.

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries for an exciting new poetry competition.

CRITERIA: 

• poems entered in the competition should be no more than 30 lines long. 
• They must be the original work of the entrant. 
• Poems previously published in magazines or poetry collections are eligible.
• Do not put your name on the poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet.
  

PRIZE

• the winner will have her or his poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway as part of the 2013 Poems For Patience. The poems after exhibition on the Arts Corridor are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University Hospitals.
• the winner will be invited to read her of his winning poem at the launch of the 2013 Poems For Patience at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in April 2013.
• the winner will be provided with accommodation in Galway for one night during the 2013 Cúirt International Festival of Literature
• the winner will be given a copy of their poem printed as a Poems for Patience poster
• the winner will be asked to submit six poems for consideration for a Featured Reader at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library.

ENTRY FEE: to enter one poem the fee is €10. If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is €7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, to enter three €22.50 and so on.

Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust.

Entries should be sent by post to Margaret Flannery, Arts Director, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, Galway University Hospitals, University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. 

THE CLOSING DATE is Friday, March 1^st 2013.

The competition judge is Kevin Higgins. 

Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Michael Longley, Vona Groarke, Jane Hirschfield, Tess Gallagher and many more. 

P J O'Connor Radio Play Competition

Have you got a good ear for dialogue? Can you tell a story? Why not try a radio play?

RTE Radio Drama is inviting radio plays of 40 minutes in duration - with a first prize of 5000 euros for the winning script, as well as runner up prizes of 4,000 and 3000 euro respectively.

Deadline is Friday the 28th February 2013.

Link here

They have lots of advice on layout and how to structure a radio play. The writer should be Irish or resident in Ireland.

The main advice I have is
- Listen to some radio plays and get an idea of what works and what doesn't
- Read it out loud!
- Don't have loads of characters - too confusing
- Grab your listeners early and don't let go

Free to enter. One entry only, Irish residents.

The prizes are big, like € thousands.

The Poetry Project

A rather huge name for this project...set up for The Gathering, another huge name.
Guess who's not in it? Me. I wonder if there are any immigrant voices represented in this insight into contemporary Ireland?

Worth signing up for anyway.

(Forgive the high falutin' language. It reads as if it were written for the American market.)

To celebrate Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union, this exciting digital post can be sent to you until July 2013. Twenty-six poems and twenty–six video shorts will offer you a unique insight into the creativity of contemporary Ireland.

Ireland’s poets are famed around the world, and our contemporary artists are renowned for their creativity and vision. Each poem is a taste of the best of Irish poetry now, while the short videos (none are longer than three minutes) offer a parallel way of looking at things. Brought together, the results will intrigue you, move you, and maybe make you look at the world in a different way.

The Poetry Project was set up by the Kinsale Arts Festival in partnership with Poetry Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy. The poems were selected by Gerard Smyth, Poetry Editor of The Irish Times and Joseph Woods, Director of Poetry Ireland; and the video works were selected and commissioned by Gemma Tipton, from the Kinsale Arts Festival and Patrick T Murphy, Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

The entire project will be shown together in a unique premiere event at the Kinsale Arts Festival July 5th to 14th 2013

The Poetry Project has been supported by Culture Ireland

Sign up to receive your free poems and videos at

www.thepoetryproject.ie

Hanna Greally Literary Competition 2013

You may have heard there's a theme for 2013 of The Gathering in Ireland, mostly with an eye to Tourism. There's lots of events set to welcome visitors next year.

SiarScéal Festival in Roscommon is joining in.

Theme: The Gathering

Competition Guidelines

• All entries submitted must be the author’s own unpublished work in the English language.
• Entries are limited to three Poems/Prose, stories per person
• Poems will be no longer than 60 lines. Short Stories/Prose no longer than 500 words
• Entries submitted must be typed and titled.
• Entrant’s name/address/contact number/details and Poem/Story/Prose title must be written on a separate page-not to appear on the same page of the Poem.
• Closing date for entries will be Friday 15th February 2013

CATEGORIES

• Local groups/writers, national schools from 10 years upwards, secondary & third level students
• National writers/groups, and the ‘Irish’ abroad or those with Irish links

Mayor of Roscommon Cllr. Tom Crosby will present the winners with the Awards. The winners will be invited to read during the Festival Launch.

The Ger Hanily Memorial Cup will be awarded for the poem with the best sense of ‘Pride of Place’

Please forward Competition Entries to: 

SiarScéal Festival c/o Richie Farrell, County Librarian, Roscommon County Council Library Services, Abbey Street, Roscommon, Ireland

Visit: www.siarsceal.com for more info.

Submission Fees: €10/£10/$10 for up to three submissions; school entries: €2. If you would like to pay via PayPal use the button below and quote your receipt number or transaction reference with your entry submission.

Magma Call for Submissions

Clothes

In the introduction to her anthology of clothes poems Out of Fashion (Faber, 2004), Carol Ann Duffy wrote ’[these poems] examine, in their different ways, how we dress or undress, how we cover up or reveal, and how clothes, fashion and jewellery are both a necessary and luxurious, a practical and sensual, a liberating and repressing part of our lives. I hope that the anthology forms an entertaining dialogue between the two arts of poetry and fashion’.

This push and pull between cover up and revelation, necessity and luxury is what we’d like to see in your clothes poems for Magma 56, whether you’re writing about dress uniforms or haute couture, morning suits or suits of armour. Tell us about your little black dresses and your lucky pants, your wedding dresses and your weeding gloves and we’ll send the best of your poems down the catwalk of Magma 56.

Give us a twirl. Non-clothes poems also welcome.
Julia Bird (@juliamarybird) and Helen Mort (@helenmort), Editors, Magma 56

The deadline is 28 February 2013. 

Please see the Contributions page for details of how to submit your poems.

The White Review Short Story Prize

Here's a new Short Story Competition, a big 'un.

The White Review Short Story Prize is an annual short story competition for emerging writers. Made possible by the generous support of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the prize awards £2,500 to the best piece of short fiction by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland who has yet to secure a publishing deal.

The judges will be looking for short stories that explore and expand the possibilities of the form. We encourage submissions from all literary genres, and there are no restrictions on theme or subject matter. We would only emphasise that the prize was founded to reward ambitious, imaginative and innovative approaches to creative writing.

In addition to the £2,500 prize, the winner will be published in a quarterly print issue of The White Review. The winner will have the chance to meet with jury member and literary agent Karolina Sutton to discuss their writing, plans for future work and possible routes to publication.
Up to seven shortlisted writers will have their work published online and receive feedback from the editors of The White Review.

More info here on quietus

Deadline: 1 March 2013