Events at our Cover Art Exhibition – BSL tour, Diaspora Poetry/Art conversation

Arachne Press: Ten Years of Book Cover Art, continues until 15th February
Tuesdays to Fridays 11-5 and Saturdays 11-4
Stephen Lawrence Gallery University of Greenwich
10 Stockwell Street, Greenwich London
SE10 9BD

More information about the exhibition can be found here

As part of the exhibition, we have two LIVE IN PERSON events at the gallery

Tuesday 7th February 6.30 BSL interpreted curator tour with Cherry Potts and Deaf artist, Nina Thomas.

Recently, we have been choosing cover artists who share the experience of our authors, and for our Deaf anthology, What Meets the Eye, we asked Nina Thomas to provide the cover. Her complex, multi-layered photographic creations perfectly captured the theme of Movement that we chose for the book.

Join us for a BSL interpreted wander around the exhibition and find out about books, book covers, art, and putting on an exhibition.

BSL interpetation provided by Paul Michaels

 Details and  Free tickets

Tuesday 9th February 6pm Routes, Imagining the Diaspora with artist, Suman Gujral and poet, Rhiya Pau:

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Suman and Rhiya met when we chose Suman’s Story Plate for the cover of Rhiya’s poetry collection Routes. Both are inspired by their families’ journeys and the diaspora more generally.
Join them for a poetry reading, art sharing, discussion of where their work intersects, and a short hands-on workshop making poetry boats, which you can take home, or leave to be displayed in the gallery.
You might want to bring a favourite pen, relevant newspaper articles or family photos printed onto (both sides of) paper that will easily fold.
Free tickets

NOTE!! Stephen Lawrence Gallery is in STOCKWELL STREET, not to be confused with Stephen Lawrence Centre or Building also in Greenwich.

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series part 2

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

Our second saturday, and we have two events.

First at 11am we have Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret presented by Elizabeth Hopkinson.

Elizabeth Hopkinson

We’ve published  Elizabeth in our 2018 women only Liars’ League anthology We/She and our 2019 Solstice Shorts anthology Time and Tide, and our 8th anniversary anthology No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book.
Outside Arachne publications, Elizabeth has written loads of stories which have been published in anthologies and magazines. More recently she has published three books of revisionist mythology, Asexual Fairy Tales, More Asexual Fairy Tales, and Asexual Myths & Tales.

Later in the day at 3pm, we are introducing the call out for Joy//Us, an anthology of LGBTQ poetry, which will be presented by Arachne editor Cherry Potts and Poet, Jeremy Dixon who will be the co-editor; and poet Rick Dove. We publish lots of LGBTQ writers but it feels like time to actually showcase that, and give a bit of focus to the work we are creating with our LGBTQ authors and poets.

Cherry Potts

Cherry Potts (me!) is the founder/owner of Arachne Press, which she started in a fit of anger after a fall out with her then publisher (a case of I could do it better myself... which I could, but my goodness, I didn’t realise it would be such hard work). She has published an epic lesbian fantasy novel The Dowry Blade and 2 short story collections Tales Told Before Cockcrow and Mosaic of Air, and has numerous stories in anthologies and magazines.

Jeremy Dixon

Jeremy Dixon has been published by us consistently, from a single poem in our very first poetry anthology The Other Side of Sleep, and in Solstice Shorts anthology Dusk,  and our bilingual anthology A470, via three poems in Liberty Tales, to a poetry pamphlet In Retail,  to Jeremy’s first full collection, A Voice Coming From Then which we publishedin August 2021 and WON the poetry category for Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry. Jeremy is a great supporter of Arachne, providing workshops and hand made books for our crowdfunds.

Rick Dove

Rick Dove is joining us to give an additional example of our existing cohort of LGBTQ writers. We published a poem by Rick in Where We Find Ourselves, a long three part family history, which so delighted me I went in search of a biography of Ricks Great Aunt, the first black woman to sing on the BBC!
Rick is a mixed-race, London based poet whose work draws narratives, and styles, from wide influences, always takes a keen interest in both societal and personal change, and how these cardinal forces interact as we grow. A regular performer on the London poetry scene since 2015, Rick has been published in numerous poetry zines and the national press. His first pamphlet, Haigha’s Noosphere Canticles, was published in 2017 by William Cornelius Harris Publishing, and his debut full collection Tales From the Other Box, was published by Burning Eye in 2020. In July 2021, Rick became the UK Poetry Slam Champion for 2021.

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

Tonight, our Three Takes on Place, started as three separate event proposals, perhaps given our propensity for what is apparently known as ‘psychogeography’ (not entirely sure what it is, but if the cap fits…).

Diana Melissa & Sherry

We’ve published  all the authors in at least one of our Solstice Shorts anthologies, and Diana is also in our bilingual Cymraeg/English poetry anthology A470. They all have work forthcoming – Melissa Davies’s The Arctic Diaries in April this year, and Diana Powell’s Ravellings and Sherry Morris’s Another Motherland on a promise for our next-but-one funding bid.

The writers live in Cumbria, Wales and Scotland, and Melissa (Cumbria) writes about Norway, and Sherry (Scotland) writes about her native America, Ukraine (where she lived for a while) and her adopted scotland, and Diana writes about Wales. And I don’t mean travel writing, I mean poetry and mythology and humour and that weird stuff that we are so fond of that is hard to categorise. With such a wide ranging spread of places to write and talk about, I asked how they felt about collaborating, even though it would mean whatever fees they made would be shared.

They have put so much work into this event, and decided to make it a donation option, so its as cheap as you need it to be.

There really is something special about our authors, they are so keen to share their ideas and generous with their time.

Arachne10 Anniversary Festival Week 2

Week 2 of the festival, continuing our author-led readings discussions and workshops, and this week we have online events on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday afternoon and evening.

Please register via Eventbrite to attend!

Fri 13/01/2023
7.30pm
Three Takes on Place
readings and discussion from
Diana Powell, Melissa Davies & Sherry Morris
free/donation details and tickets

Saturday 14/01/2023
11:00-13:00
Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret workshop
Elizabeth Hopkinson
£8 details and tickets

and at 3pm
Joy//us – LGBTQ poetry reading, open mic and discussion
Jeremy Dixon, Rick Dove & Cherry Potts
free/donation details and tickets

Sunday 15/01/2023
11:00-12:30/13:00
14 great pickup lines, a poets guide to sonnets workshop
with Jennifer A McGowan
£10 details and tickets

and at 3pm
Barddoniaeth Cymraeg Gweithdy Cyfieuthu/ Welsh poetry translation workshop
with Lowri Williams
participatory workshop on translating Welsh poetry into English
Nod y gweithdy hon yw cyfieuthu cerdd Cymraeg i fewn i’r Saesneg, drwy trafodaeth/cyfieuthu mewn steil grwp
pay what you can £3/5/8 details and tickets

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Online Festival

To celebrate our tenth anniversary we are having an online festival throughout January 2023, mostly weekends and Thursdays, although a couple of Tuesdays and Fridays have snuck in.

We invited our authors and friends to run the events they wanted to see, to set their own prices and number of tickets. It’s quite an eclectic mix, readings, discussions and workshops for writers, and about writing, or the business of being a writer. We invite you to join us! Visit the Eventbrite Collection

Saturday 07/01/2023 11:00-13:00 Cath Humphris
Why Flash Fiction? (Writing Workshop)
12 places, donation recommended £5
details and tickets

Saturday 07/01/2023 17:00-19:00 Readings from authors
Hiatus eBook Launch
95 places, FREE
details and tickets

 

Sunday 08/01/2023 19:00-21:00 David Turnbull
Longevity In Fiction: Time Bestowed, Time Stolen (discussion)
30 places £6
details and tickets

 

 

Thursday 12/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Jackie Taylor
Writing the Climate: Questions for Writers (discussion)
12 places free/donation
details and tickets

 

 

Friday 13/01/2023 19:30-21:00 Diana Powell, Melissa Davies & Sherry Morris
Three Takes on Place (reading)
95 places free/donation
details and tickets

Saturday 14/01/2023 11:00-13:00 workshop Elizabeth Hopkinson
Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret (workshop)
12 places  £8
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 14/01/2023 15:00 reading/open mic/discussion Jeremy Dixon & Cherry Potts
Joy//Us LGBTQ Poetry
40 places  free/donation
including 10 open mic spots of 3 mins each – max 2 poems!
details and tickets

 

Sunday 15/01/2023 15:00-16:30 Lowri Williams
Translating poetry from Welsh into English (workshop)
suitable for advanced learners of Welsh and native speakers.
10 places – pay what you can £3/£5/£8
details and tickets

 

 

Tuesday 17/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Kavita A Jindal
Emotion as Ignition (workshop)
20 places £20
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 12:00-1:30 Neil Lawrence
Resilient writers (workshop)
10 places £20
details and tickets

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 15:30-17:00 DL Williams, Lisa Kelly, Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford
Deaf Poetry and BSL translation
20 places Free/Donation
details and tickets

 

 

 

Tuesday  24/01/23 18:00-19:30 The Business of writing– The Society of Authors This is very kindly being run for us by two of the coordinators of the  Society of Authors Poetry & Spoken Word group: Johanna Clarke and Mathilde Zeeman

free tickets

Thursday 26/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Nikita Chadha
The Empire Writes Back: “Space, place and belonging” Interactive lecture/workshop
15 places £10
details and tickets

 

Friday 27/01/2023 18:30-20:00  Seni Seneviratne
Using family history/photos as inspiration for poetry (workshop)
20 places £12-£20
details and tickets

 

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 11:00-13:00 discussion/reading Clare Owen
Cormorants and #cornishgothic: creative ways to write about YA mental health.
15 places £5
details and tickets

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 15:00-16:30 workshop Saira Aspinall
Marketing on a tight budget for writers
12 places £10
details and tickets

 

 

Oxford Poetry Library with Tarot Cards

Thanks to everyone who turned out to launch How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) at the Oxford Poetry Library, and thanks to Phoebe and team for hosting.

Here’s a couple of photos and recordings to give a flavour of the evening.

Introduction

How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager)

Jennifer is launching again in London on 1st November at Keats House with Anna Fodorova, our other October author, with her novel, In the Blood. Free, cake, soft drink etc as usual! Get your tickets

And will be taking part in an online event with our friends In Words on 29th November. To register for this one you need to contact irena(at)in-words(dot)co(dot)uk and she will send you the link in good time.

 

A Voice Coming from Then On Tour

This Autumn we’re taking A Voice Coming from Then on tour in Wales, to celebrate the collection winning the English Language Poetry Category in the 2022 Wales Book of the Year Awards. Join us at one of the events below for readings and conversation with poet Jeremy Dixon (and occasional guests).

Links to tickets for all the events will be updated as they become available.

COMING UP

29/11/2022 Typewronger, Edinburgh details
30/11/2022 Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh details

If you would like any more information about any of these events, please contact outreach@arachnepress.com.

CATCH VIDEOS HERE SOON FOR EVENTS THAT HAVE ALREADY HAPPENED

IN THE MEANTIME HERE’S A TASTER

05/10/2022 The Hours, Brecon
06/10/2022 (National Poetry Day)  Waterstones, Carmarthen
06/10/2022 (National Poetry Day)Waterstones, Cardiff
13/10/2022 Cardiff Central Library Hub, joint event with George Sandifer-Smith

All the events above are free.

 

A Pocketful of Chalk Online Launch

We went the for the whole gamut of launches for A Pocketful of Chalk, outdoors, in a barn, in a museum and on line! Here’s the online version, a triumph of technology that took a lot of setting up – those downs are beautiful, but they interfere with Claire’s internet signal. A lot of testing and rearranging of kit was involved, and turning off of interfering phones etc, but it worked!

First Set

Second Set

Q&A

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eBook

A Pocketful of Chalk at Keats House

Claire Booker reading at the launch of A Pocketful of Chalk, in the beautiful Chester Room at Keats House

Hey Diddle Diddle

 

Dinosaur Boy

 

Drone Boys

 

Green Ray

 

Grey Heron

 

Long Man Dreaming

 

Mirabelles

 

Morning After

 

Fisherman’s Daughter

 

Remembering Chocolate

 

The Wrasse

 

Looking Towards Smock Mill

 

 

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eBook

Eight Poems for Seven Sisters

In which we discover that ancient barns have no soundproofing at all, while reading poems about the glory of the landscape outside.

Claire Booker reads from her poetry collection A Pocketful of Chalk at the visitor centre at Seven Sisters Country Park, between the downs and the sea.

 

Fisherman’s Daughter

 

Breaking Out

 

Drone Boys

 

Gaia in the Garden

 

Green Ray

 

Grey Heron

 

On the Centenary of my Teacups

 

Looking Towards Smock Mill

buy a copy of A Pocketful of Chalk from us
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eBook