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Solstice Shorts Festival 2020: Tymes Goe By Turnes

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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.