Monday's Poetry Bus

Like many I found this hard. From Bill the Bus Driver to chop up sentences something like runner beans.

My sentence was from a short story by Kevin Barry from There Are Little Kingdoms. Have you read it? You should. (do you think it is coincidence that the initials spell out TALK?)

Foley wrapped his soft hand around the boy's and then ...

He gobs on the tarmac, missing at his dusty brogues,
squeezes until the boy’s fingerbones clatter like chopsticks in the drawer,
He pretends not to notice the tears that splash into the canal,
leans back and unpeels the other hand from the barrier,
bending the pinkie back until it snaps.
He holds on tight and they jump.

Picador Poetry Prize

Emerging Poets with a UK, channel Island, Isle of Man or Irish address should seriously think about submitting to Picador. There's only one publication prize but there's exposure for all shortlisted poets. And it's free.

The Picador Poetry Prize will recognize and publish the best new, previously unpublished poetry in the UK. It will be awarded for a representative selection of a poet's work, rather than a single poem.

The winning poet will be offered a small-but-perfectly-formed publisher's advance, and will have their first collection edited by Don Paterson, Picador's Poetry Editor. Their book will then be published on the award-winning Picador Poetry list, alongside some of the finest contemporary poets in the English language.

Judges: Don Paterson, Jackie Kay, John Stammers, Sarah Crown

They want a sampler of ten pages of poems.

Website www.picador.com/poetry/prize

Deadline: 1 September 2010 17:30 GMT.

Entrants who are shortlisted must provide a manuscript containing at least 20 pages of poems 

Entrants must be 18 or over on 1 April 2010 and a permanent resident of the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man or the Republic of Ireland.

Advice on the website includes the classic

If you don't actually read poetry, but fancy having a go anyway, don't.

and also

Amaze us. Move us to tears. Put the fear of god into us. Enlighten us. Fascinate us. Derange us. Blow our minds. Have us fall on the floor clutching our sides. Shed some light or dark on where we come from, what we are, where we're going. Shock us into a moment of clarity and wakefulness. And be accessible or challenging, be clear or chaotic, be formal or free, be loud or quiet - but above all be bold, make it sing, and keep the stakes high.

No pressure then!

Early Bird Entry Offer for the International Aesthetica Creative Works Competition

Art and culture magazine, Aesthetica, is inviting all artists, writers and poets to submit their work for the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition 2010.

Now in its third year, the Creative Works Competition is dedicated to celebrating and championing creative talent across three disciplines: 'Artwork & Photography', 'Poetry' and 'Fiction'.

Three winners, one from each category, will each receive £500 prize money and the winners and finalists will be published in the Creative Works Annual. Other prizes will also be available.

Deadline: 31 August 2010.

Earlybird offer Deadline: Friday 4 June

Fee: Translates to 13.83 Euro to Ireland. Very steep

To enter the competition and receive your free digital annual please click here.

To find out more about the Creative Works Competition, please click here.

Waterstone’s Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition

Missed this one earlier. From the lovely Diva in making Eimear Ryan.

2,000 words or less (shouldn't this be fewer? call yourself a bookshop)
Writers have to be "over 18 and haven’t had fiction professionally published before"

What does that mean exactly? What kind of fiction? A short story in a mag? That's paid?

Judged by: Waterstone’s booksellers; the Books Quarterly and Waterstones.com teams; Arvon Centre Director Claire Berliner; Editorial Director Will Atkins of Pan Macmillan and its top Macmillan New Writing discoveries, James McCreet, Ann Weisgarber and Brian McGilloway:

Prize: Publication in the October issue of Books Quarterly; a publisher’s lunch at Pan Macmillan; £200 worth of Pan Macmillan books; a week-long creative writing course at the Arvon Foundation.

Fee: Free
Deadline: 1 July 2010

See the website.

They say:

Entrants cannot have had fiction professionally published previously: specifically, ‘professionally published’ meaning in book or eBook format produced by a professional publisher and available to the general public for a charge. This definition excludes self-published books or stories published in newspapers or magazines, but includes anthologies.

Over The Edge, Galway

Over The Edge are looking again for the New Writer of the Year.

Open to both poets and fiction writers.

Prizes: The best fiction entry will win €300. The best poetry entry will win €300. One of these will then be chosen as the overall winner and will receive an additional €400, giving the overall winner total prize money of €700 and the title Over The Edge New Writer of The Year 2010. The 2010 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year will be a Featured Reader at a reading to be scheduled in Galway City Library in Winter 2010/11.

More information here. Entries will be judged anonymously.

Criteria: fiction of up to three thousand words, three poems of up to forty lines, or one poem of up to one hundred lines.  
Fee: €10. Multiple entries is €7.50 per entry e.g. two entries will cost €15, three entries €22.50 and so on.

To take part you must be at least sixteen years old by September 1st 2010 and not have a book published or accepted for publication in that genre.

Deadline: Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010.

A longlist will be announced in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010. A shortlist will be announced at the Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library on Thursday, August 26th. The winners will be announced at the Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library on Thursday, September 30th, 2010.

This year’s competition judge is James Martyn. James is from Galway.

A masterclass in performance

From the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. There are lots of other performances of this on Youtube. Watch a few others and spot the humongous difference a good performance makes.

More Links

Really interesting post about how publishers use Amazon reviewers, posted by one of my favrouite bloggers that I don't know in person, The Intern.

How to Write a Movie from Frank Cottrell in the Guardian. Good tips, some quirky but applicable to much writing.

30 famous authors who were rejected, some repeatedly, some rudely. The problem with these type of articles is they're supposed to make you feel better if you've been rejected (see recent tweets) but all I can think is how many thousands and thousands of writers have been rejected repeatedly and rudely because they're rubbish at writing. Although who in their right mind would reject The Princess Diaries? I love them.

World's 5 richest authors in terms of money.

Writing a short stories, sections by numbers from The View from the Blue House

Extreme face down

Dermot Bolger suggests here that the recession can be good for the arts.