Peter Cooper & Louise Swingler read from Stations as part of their all singing all dancing event for Ilkley fringe. Thanks to Louise for overcoming the technical problem and getting them onto the site.
Arachne has authors scattered all over the globe, but there’s a little knot of them in Yorkshire. Of those, two wrote stories for the same Station for Stations. Out of this meagre fact came the wonder that was On the Write Track, a reading, singing, sliding razzmatazz of a show from Peter Cooper and Louise Swingler.
You can read all about it on Peter’s blog.
Hopefully we will have some pictures and video soon.
In the run up to Peter Cooper and Louise Swingler‘s all singing all dancing event at Ilkley Fringe Festival, On the Write Track, a little taster …
Arachne Authors Louise Swingler and Peter Cooper are performing at Ilkley Fringe Festival on Tuesday 15th October at 9pm, in a train themed event they have devised called On the Write Track, cunningly entwining writing and trains, they will be reading from their Stations stories, and singing and talking about reading and writing on and about trains and stations.
Free Cake!
Here is a video interview from Louise which we did recently at Leeds Book Fair (hence the background noise).
Ok, I give in, you don’t like poetry. Seven poems and seven votes. Useful feedback I guess.
The winner is Peter Cooper, with his poem Ode on Your Sixtieth Birthday. Congratulations Peter, your book will be in the post tomorrow.
Zelda Rhiando is our runner-up with Will You, Won’t You, Well? Zelda, congratulations, and your badge will be on its way as soon as I have contacted you for a postal address. Thanks to the other contributors – if you would like your names appended to your work now, please let me know!
Another reading from Stations, at MVMNT cafe, right next to Greenwich DLR, if you listen hard enough we’ll have sound effects!
For those who have joined us at MVMNT before, there is now more protection from the elements and some heating, so don’t be put off by the season.
Wednesday March 20th 7pm
Line up:
Jacqueline Downs (Crystal Palace) She Didn’t Believe in Ghosts;
Bartle Sawbridge (Shadwell) Rich & Strange;
Peter Cooper (Highbury & Islington) Inspector Bucket Takes the Train,
Caroline Hardman (Hoxton) Bloody Marys and a Bowl of Pho.
And from Lovers’ Lies, (to show there’s more to us than train spotting) Darren Lee By the Horns.
Katy Darby, Peter Cooper and I were interviewed yesterday by Nia Charpentier of the Ditch Show Shoreditch Radio, on location in Shoreditch. I burbled about getting the Stations book into production and we each read extracts. Finding somewhere quiet enough was a bit of a challenge, and we ended up in the miniscule green space out the back of Translate café on Kingsland Road, in a light drizzle and with an extractor fan or a boiler or something muttering to itself in the background. Peter made the best of it as steam train sound effects for his Inspector Bucket takes the Train extract, and I was reminded once again how delightfully cruel Katy’s The Horror, the Horror really is. The segment will be broadcast on the Ditch show on Thursday 6th December 3-4pm, in nice time to plug our reading at Brick Lane Bookshop at 7pm the same day, and will be available as a podcast thereafter.
Last week marked the start of a busy time for Arachne Press, with the Launch of Stations only days away, we did a pre-publication reading at Clapham books on Wednesday.
Peter Cooper in full flow as Inspector Bucket copyright Cherry Potts 2012
This was my first chance to hear these stories read aloud by their authors and it was an interesting experience. I got so engrossed in Rosalind Stopps’ How to Grow Old in Brockley how to grow old in brockley snippet
I forgot to take any pictures – sorry Rosalind!
Peter Cooper‘s Inspector Bucket (stolen from Dickens but taking on an afterlife of his own) foiled thieves on a train, with Peter very much getting into it and doing multiple voices.
Peter Cooper Inspector Bucket snippet
Wendy Gill‘s Moving Mike also got multiple voices care of the eponymous Mike turning up to lend a hand. Moving Mike snippet
Wendy Gill (and Mike) reading ‘Moving Mike’ copyright Cherry Potts 2012
Jacqueline Downs held us spellbound with her eerie tale of cinephiles in Crystal Palace She Didn’t Believe in Ghosts,
She Didn’t Believe in Ghosts snippet
and I read Anna Fodorova’s No Prob at Canada Water, pronouncing Kochanie about eight different ways, (it should be Ko’han’ye) she says she’ll do it herself next time!
No Prob at Canada Water snippet
Jacqueline Downs reading at Clapham copyright Cherry Potts 2012
Then Thursday it was up to Waterstones on Oxford Street for a showcasing of London Lies.
A number of our authors couldn’t be with us, so we had a mix of actors and authors.
Emily Pedder‘s Are We Nearly There Yet? (Set in Selfridges – just across the road – in the run up to Christmas) read for us once again by the multi-talented Danielle Fenemore. (Her loud-drunk-in-a-shop-just-before-Christmas was extremely convincing!).
Still in the reading-on-behalf-of vein we had Katy Darby reading an extract from the excellent East End cautionary tale Thieves We Were from Simon Hodgson (who is based in San Francisco so unable to join us) and me reading a section of the delightful and witty portmanteau love story Made for Each Other by Nichol Wilmor (who was stuck the wrong side of a flood in Somerset).
Reading their own work we had Joan Taylor-Rowan with Renewal, a touching story of death on the railways and realising there’s more to life than playing safe, David Bausor exploring the British love of sausages and Royals with O Happy Day, and Liam Hogan giving us a single sentence from the hilarious Rat, followed by an extended and dramatic segment of Palio, in which some bankers are played at their own game.
Thanks to everyone who came along to make both evenings a success (and bought books!), and to the staff at Clapham Books and Waterstones for making us so welcome (and in the case of Waterstones running to the pub for more wine glasses!).
Waterstones have a small stock of signed copies of London Lies at the front of the shop, so pick one up for a loved one for Christmas!
Stations is now in the shops, and you can come and get a signed copy from us at either of this week’s readings: Canvas & Cream (nearest Overground Forest Hill) on Wednesday at 7pm, or Deptford Lounge (nearest Overground New Cross) on Thursday at 7pm.
Or you can come to the Launch! Brunel Museum, Sunday 2nd December, 12:30-14:30
© Arachne Press 2012
The first of our pre-publication readings of Stations 7.30 tonight @ClaphamBooks.
