Time and Tide- Clydebank- audio

In the tidying up of the website, it has come to our attention that some of the Time and Tide material from Solstice Shorts 2019 performances never got uploaded – I blame lockdown! Starting to edit the video from this year reminded me to search it out. Result!

Here are the Clydebank performances, in audio. Still looking for where I hid the Maryport recordings.

You can still buy the book (please do, it spent lock down in closed bookshops, and we sold almost none.)

Performers

Beth Frieden
Stefana Margarint
Seonaid Stevenson
Carla Woodburn
Jane Aldous

Arrival by Valerie Bence

Casting A Daughter Adrift by Emma Lee

Church Mary Sounds the Sea by Jenny Mitchell

Clearance by Christine Ritchie

Crossing the Black Water by Reshma Ruia

False Light by John Richardson

Fisherman’s Daughter by Claire Booker

Half A Dozen Oranges by Mandy Macdonald

How Women Came to Tristan Da Cunha by Claire Booker

Points of Interest by Olivia Dawson

Sea Lessons by Ness Owen

The Arctic Diaries Bird Wife by Melissa Davies

The Arctic Diaries Halibut by Melissa Davies

The Watchers by Elizabeth Parker

We dig the pig by Angel Warwick

Stories

The Fisherman’s Wife by Linda McMullen

Listen, Noah’s Wife by Roppotucha Greenberg

Words From the Brink publication day!

Today is publication day for Words from the Brink our Climate Fiction and Poetry collection for Solstice Shorts 2021. We’ve been sending books out early to make sure they arrive in time for Christmas, and there is still time to do that, so feel free to place an order!

We will be launching the book at the (online) festival on 21st December at 6.30 with readings from actors of the whole book, plus original music, a quick hello for Komal Madar, the artist whose painting we used for our cover, and a couple of open mic sessions too.  Get your Tickets (there are some free ones…)

If you would like to take part in the open mic please contact us and let us know, you can do that from the ticket site.

Solstice Shorts Festival is Time-themed, and with its origins in the importance of marking the turn of the year, the shortest day.

In ancient times, this was a moment for holding of breath as the sun paused and seemed to wobble in the sky – will it ever get light again? What must we do to convince it to do so? And from this came the tradition of burning the yule log, and bringing evergreens into the house.

To get you in the mood, here is a piece of music, May the Long-Time Sun, from poet Robert René Galván, who gives a new meaning to the word multi-talented with this three part performance. Robert René recorded this for last Solstice, so very appropriate!

And there was also the question, What can we do while we wait? 

Tell stories! Make music! Recite poetry! Make art!

We will have been doing that for eight years come this Solstice; and when we meet in real life we do the other essential Solstice thing – we feast.

Solstice Cake

Of course we can’t quite manage that online. So we thought we’d make serving suggestions and let you create your own feast to eat while you watch and listen! (you can get the recipe for Solstice Cake as part of your ticket if you want.)

Watch out on social media for recipe suggestions and imaginary cookery book titles. Follow #SolsticeFeast, and join in with your own favourites.

Of course, this year we have our minds on the brink – the danger our planet is in. There is a bit of me thinking that feasting is a wildly inappropriate bit of fiddling while Rome burns. But that is another thing about the Solstice Feast – we acknowledge the hard times coming; it is the feast before the famine, the last blow out before the tightening of the belt (how many more clichés can I get into this paragraph??) So we will feast, but we will also mark the cost with our stories and poems.

 

 

Arachne Press at Gloucester Poetry Festival – 30th October

Following hot on the heels of National Poetry Day, Arachne Press is delighted to announce we will be at Gloucester Poetry Festival later this month with a number of the poets we have published over the last 9 years.  Join us for our showcase online to hear these poets read from their work, and a brief Q&A afterwards.  Readings from (in order of appearance):

Jennifer A McGowan

Jane Aldous

Rob Walton

Kate Foley

Math Jones

Ness Owen

Emma Lee

Jeremy Dixon

The event is free, but ticketed.  You can register here.  If you can only use a voice line to dial in, please see the Gloucester Poetry Festival page for this event (scroll to the bottom of the page), here.

to celebrate we have bundles of 3 books by the authors available until just after the event – take a look

Upcoming Events – Summer 2021

Launch of Incorcisms by David Hartley, and 100neHundred by Laura Besley – May 27th 2021 

You can get tickets here, free; or for £8.99 to include a copy of ONE of the books; or for £17.98 to include a copy of BOTH books.  Books will be sent post free.

The evening will include readings by, and chats with, Laura and David, and they will also be joined by the narrators of their respective audiobooks.  Also, THERE WILL BE CAKE (BYO): we’d like you to join us in celebrating the launch by baking (or buying) cake to eat during the event, and drinking lemonade (the reason behind lemonade drinking will be made clear on the night!).   

There will be Q&A opportunities throughout the event, and even a chance to write your own 100 word story.  So put your thinking caps on, and start making a note of all those burning questions about flash/short story/micro fiction or anything else you may wish to know about these writers and their work.  And dust off those notebooks and pens.

You can also (pre-)order the books now from our Webshop.

Arachne at Brockley Max Online – May 30th, 31st and June 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2021

This year we are running THREE events at this brilliant community arts festival, as well as hosting an evening of readings by Writers of our Age (WooA).  All events can be booked through Eventbrite (see individual links below).

May 30th, 16:00 BST – Keeping Up With Paper and Pencil

Catch Clare Owen, author of our recent YA novel, Zed and the Cormorants, in conversation with Sally Atkins, who did the beautiful illustrations for Clare’s book.  Entitled Keeping Up With Paper and Pencil, Clare and Sally will discuss creating vivid characters through words and images – so one for both writers and artists.  They’ll share their notebooks, sketches, extracts from the novel and new ways to get characters up on their feet and ready to sprint off the page. 

You can get tickets here, free; or for £10 to include a copy of the book.

May 31st, 19:00 BST – Short, Flash, Poem? 

Join Arachne authors Laura Besley (100neHundred), David Hartley (Incorcisms) and poet Rob Walton (This Poem Here) for an evening of readings and discussions dealing with issues around their chosen literary forms and touching on questions such as, do authors know what a piece will be when they start writing it?  When is flash a prose poem?  Do poems sometimes change into stories? How dark does fantasy have to be to qualify as horror, and is it allowed to be funny?

You can get tickets here, free; or for £8.99 to include a copy of ONE of the books.

June 2nd, 19:00 BST – Imagined Spaces – A Writer’s Approach to Place

Join authors and ex-Brockley residents, Lily Peters and Jackie Taylor for readings and discussion around the use of ‘place’ in their forthcoming titles with Arachne, Accidental Flowers (Lily) and Strange Waters (Jackie).

You can get tickets here, free; or for £9.99 to include a copy of ONE of the books.

June 3rd, 19:30 – WooA – Back in the Water

Join Writers of our Age (WOOA), a well established, published mix of local writers, for readings of specially written stories under the heading ‘Back in the Water’.

You can get tickets here, free.

ARACHNEVERSARY Dusk

Cherry Potts talks (to Ness Owen, briefly) about the most ambitious Solstice Shorts Festival ever – Dusk – A Wave of Words Across the UK travelling at the Speed of Dark as dusk fell, to twelve sites from Ellon in Aberdeenshire, to Redruth in Cornwall on the shortest day of the year.

You can buy the book from our webshop

use code ARACHNEVERSARY to claim a diiscount in August only.

Check out our series bulk buy offers

ARACHNEVERSARY – Shortest Day, Longest Night

Solstice Shorts Festival Founder Cherry Potts talks about the 2nd and 3rd festivals and the book that resulted, Shortest Day, Longest Night. Features music by Ian Kennedy & Sarah Lloyd, Annalie Wilson, Vocal Chords, Zac Gvirtman, and stories/poems by Mario Duarte, Tim Cremin, Bob Beagrie, Sarah Evans, performed by Ray Newe, Saul Reichlin and Katy Darby. BSL interpretation by Martin Fox-Roberts and Paul Michaels

You can buy Shortest Day, Longest Night from our Webshop.

Use the discount code (for August only) ARACHNEVERSARY

or have a poke around in the special offers for bulk buy series options.

 

Solstice Shorts Festival 2020: Tymes Goe By Turnes

In case you missed the live announcement yesterday, here are the successful submissions for this year’s Solstice Shorts Festival, which will be held on 21st (or possibly 22nd) of December. It’s a leap year. We have to decide how pedantic we will be.

A Corona virus influenced theme of TYMES GOE BY TURNES,  the stories, poems and songs are in response to the poem by sixteenth century poet, Robert Southwell.

Frustrated by working under lockdown and worried that the 2020 festival might not happen, Arachne Press decided to continue as though everything would be alright, and asked writers to something that responded or reacted to or was inspired by a sixteenth century poem that editor Cherry Potts has always found comforting in a crisis: Robert Southwell’s Tymes Goe by Turnes; or that responded or reacted to or was inspired by some concept in it.
The poem observes the ebb and flow of fortune, nothing stays bad for ever, nor anything good – so get on with it while you can. And they have. Oh, they have. This isn’t exactly a response to Covid-19, but there’s an echo there – in Katie Margaret Hall’s epic train journey, New Orleans To Vancouver, and Jackie Taylor’s Rewilding; but there is also concern for the environment, and relationships and lives in need of nourishment they are finding hard to find.
As with Southwell’s poem there is a fine balance between dread and hope.

Solstice Shorts Logo copy

Poems
C L Hearnden, 179cm
Claire Booker, Piano Lessons, and Bringing in the Fruit
Elinor Brooks, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Cat
Jane Aldous, Sirius
Julian Bishop, Slow Burn
Karen Ankers, In Dark
Katie Margaret Hall, New Orleans To Vancouver
Kelly Davis, The Saddest Birdes a Season Find to Sing
Laila Sumpton, Cronos
Lynn White, In the Rocks
Ness Owen, Beach Clean
S.B. Merrow, For Ellen
Sean Carney, A Memory Forgotten

Stories
Brooke Stanicki, A Felled Tree
Jackie Taylor, Rewilding
Jane Mclaughlin, Sketchbook
Keely O’Shaughnessy, When Naked Plants Renew
Linda McMullen, Deep Blue Sea
Margaret Crompton, Turner’s World of Twirls
Neil Lawrence, Return
Patience Mackarness, Roots
Pippa Gladhill, Twelve Point Plan

Songs

Kevan Taplin, Dancing with The Green Man (In 4:4 Time)
Rebecca Askew, Times Go by Turns
Sharon Lazibyrd Martin, Sea of Fortune

We don’t yet know quite what form the festival will take, we have to assume for now that it will be on  line, but possibly live and from multiple sites. We are still investigating venues etc. against it being possible to have a physical performance and audience, or at the very least making the videos as exciting as possible.

Arachneversary Solstice Shorts Sixteen Stories about Time

Arachne editor, and Solstice Shorts Festival founder, Cherry Potts, talks about the original idea, the epic first season, and the book, Solstice Shorts:Sixteen Stories About Time. Plus an announcement about the 2020 festival, Tymes Goe By Turnes.

You can buy Sixteen Stories, and other Solstice Shorts anthologies from our Webshop.

For a discount, use the code ARACHNEVERSARY at the checkout.

We also have special bulk buy offers on Solstice Shorts books in the special offers section

Its the actual Eighth Anniversary PARTY (Book Launch) for No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book (Part One)

It’s here – weeks of planning, recording, editing, uploading (and a bit of cursing) and finally we have an online book launch for No Spider Harmed in The Making of This Book.

(You may not be able to hear it but thousands of spiders are twanging their webs and stamping their feet in celebration.)

You can buy the book from our website, (or a bookshop, but we see more of the money if you buy direct, and if I’m feeling generous, you might get a random badge too)
We are also having a sale (this book not included) Add ARACHNEVERSARY at checkout to get your discount and check out the special offers button too.
If you want an ebook your usual supplier will have it, We recommend Hive for ePub.

The file for the launch ended up being so HUGE I had to split it, so there is a brief interval and the other half is at 9.02pm* BST. Just time for a comfort break or to refill your glass.

*on here it’s 2 minutes later than on YouTube to give the file a chance to go live for the premiere, they have this really annoying countdown!)

First half features

introduction by head Arachnid, Cherry Potts with BSL translation by Marcel Hirshman.

Kate FoleySpin
A. Katherine BlackEven People who’d been Accidentally Turned into Giant Murderous Mutant Spiders (extract)
Greg Page as Incy Wincy
Daniel Olivieri Revenge One JSTOR article at a time
Jackie TaylorGoodbye Spider
Carrie Cohen as Ms Muffet
KT WagnerAcross the Void
Marcel Hirshman performing Jennifer Rood‘s Spider Queen, in BSL
cover design Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier used repeatedly! Dancing spider gif created from photo by Martha Nance

Long/short list for Tymes Goe by Turnes- Solstice Shorts Festival 2020

We’ve finished reading for Solstice Shorts, Tymes Goe By Turnes, and we have a (long) shortlist, with a smattering of old hands returning, and plenty of new talent for us to choose from.

Solstice Shorts Logo copy

Adrienne Silcock
Alex Reece Abbott
Amanda Bermudez
Brendan McLoughlin
Brooke Stanicki
Chloe Hearnden
Claire Booker
David M. Alper
Edward Schmidt-Zorner
Elinor Brooks
Helen Rowlands
Isobel Roach
Jackie Taylor
Jane Aldous
Jane McLaughlin
Judy Darley
Julian Bishop
Karen Ankers
Katie Hall
Keely O’Shaughnessy
Kelly Davis
Kevan Taplin
Laila Sumpton
Linda McMullen
Lisa McLoughlin
Lynn White
Mandy Macdonald
Margaret Crompton
Marka Rifat
Neil Lawrence
Ness Owen
Patience Mackarness
Pippa Gladhill
Rebecca Askew
S. B. Merrow
Sean Carney
Sharon Lazibyrd Martin
Stephen Wade

We are at the moment assuming this will be an online festival this year, with our usual date of 21st December.

At the moment funding is fairly unlikely so being on line may be an advantage. We will be doing a crowdfund as even on line there will be costs. There is the advantage that if they want to our overseas writers can get actively involved. If magically a live event on the ground is possible, we will do that as well, we are good at moving fast when we have to, but not anticipating it currently.

We aren’t sure about the book yet either, selling off the back of an online event is tricky, but we’ll know more after the launch of No Spider Harmed on the 8th August. There will be a book, it’s just whether we need to race to get it ready for the festival or not.