Tag Archives: Rob Walton

Favourite memories of Solstice Shorts

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Solstice Shorts – our annual celebration of original poetry, stories and music for the shortest day – is rapidly approaching. We asked Solstice regular, poet and writer Rob Walton to share some memories of the festival, and accompanying anthologies, from years gone by. This year’s theme is Words from the Brink – writing and music in response to the climate crisis.

Rob Walton: I count myself lucky to have been included in more than one of the Solstice Shorts books, and fortunate indeed to have had my work performed/read by others. It was a great thrill to hear ‘Words on Paper’, a story of which I’m very fond, read aloud in Carlisle. It’s a story that’s close to my heart, and I’m chuffed it was recorded for posterity and also appeared in print.

Ben Brinicombe reads Words on Paper by Rob Walton, BSL translation by Karen Edmondson

I’ve definitely enjoyed seeing some of my more, er interesting pieces reach a range of audiences – I wonder what the crowds (I’m guessing) in Lisbon and Maryport made of ‘The Dowager Duchess of Berwick-upon-Tweed May or May Be Bottling It’? I’ve written micro-fictions shorter than that title!

This year’s offering, ‘Mr King Has Decided to Pursue Other Avenues’, is inspired by a long-standing commitment to environmental change and, possibly, that time I had to leave my primary school class behind on the beach trip when I was stung by a weaver fish. These things stay lodged somewhere and appear, transformed, years later…

Read an extract from ‘Mr King Has Decided to Pursue Other Avenues’:

It was a liberal and progressive school – some would say slack and lackadaisical – and when Mr King said he wanted to stay at the beach at the end of the trip, they wished him well and happily set off without him. It was almost time for the long holiday, and when he wasn’t there to take registration the following morning they arranged temporary cover, and later replaced him with somebody younger with a similar name and the same tattooist. (Mr Prince would be pleased to get the job because Hokusai’s expertly inked The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which covered all of his back, had been very expensive. And quite painful. Also, he knew it would be a star turn on a staff night out.

Words from the Brink is available to pre-order from our online shop.

Buy your tickets for Solstice Shorts 2021 on Eventbrite.

 

Arachne Press at Gloucester Poetry Festival – 30th October

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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

Love Audio Week: This Poem Here

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To conclude our #LoveAudio blog series, here is an extract from the remarkable poetry collection, This Poem Here by Rob Walton.

Arachne Press Director, Cherry Potts, recently said of This Poem Here: “At the start of lockdown, Rob Walton was responding to the anxieties and absurdities of the Corona Virus crisis by writing poetry. He published a lot of these poems on social media, as real-time responses to the latest news. Watching and enjoying them from afar, I approached Rob to publish them as a book. We were in conversation about this project when Rob’s dad sadly died from Covid. The poems in the collection then took a radical turn, delving into rage, sorrow and grief. I can’t imagine a more appropriate collection to have published in this ‘you-couldn’t-make-it-up’ era.”

Full of tears, laughter, biting political satire and Geordie grammar, these are poems that are meant to be read aloud. Here is ‘And in Lockdown’:

You can also watch Rob Walton reading some of the collection in the video from the online launch of This Poem Here: https://youtu.be/sNijjLH4zB0  (be warned, he made many of us cry!).

#LoveAudio is the Publisher’s Association annual week-long digital celebration of audiobooks is designed to showcase the accessibility, innovation, and creativity of the format. Follow the hashtag on twitter.

Arachneversary Video 4 – take over the Overground with Stations

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Part of our Eighth Anniversary Celebrations: a video about our best seller, continuing the theme that making Cherry Potts cross can be remarkably productive.

You can buy a copy of Stations for £5 from our webshop.

Just put in ARACHNEVERSARY at checkout to get your discount.

Join us tomorrow for Jeremy Dixon and In Retail.

Lockdown Interviews: no9 Elizabeth Hopkinson answers questions sent by Rob Walton

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Elizabeth Hopkinson (We/She, Time and Tide) answers questions sent by fellow author Rob Walton (An Outbreak of Peace,  Stations , Time and Tide, Dusk)

You can buy all the Arachne books mentioned from our webshop, we will post them out to you.

If you would prefer eBooks, all these books are available from your usual retailer. we recommend Hive for ePub.

Lockdown Interviews no8: Rob Walton interviewed by Neil Lawrence

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Rob Walton, (Stations, DUSK An Outbreak of Peace,  Story Cities, Time and Tide)

Interviewed by Neil Lawrence, also Time and Tide

 

You can buy all the Arachne books mentioned from our webshop, we will post them out to you.

If you would prefer eBooks, all these books are available from your usual retailer. we recommend Hive for ePub.

 

Story Cities at Old Royal Naval College day 2

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Rather delayed (by crowdfunding mainly) here is audio of our second outing at ORNC’s bowling alley. A little echoey!

Readings from Nic Vine, Rosamund Davies, Cherry Potts, Shamini Sriskandarajah of their own stories and some by other people too – Catherine Jones, David Mathews, Rob Walton and Steven Wingate.

Rosamund reads You Stand in the Secret Place by Steve Wingate

Cherry Reads Backwater by David Mathews

Shamini reads Coffee

Nic reads Go Directly to Go by Rob Walton

Cherry Reads Lost and Found by Catherine Jones

Rosamund reads The Right Place

Cherry reads Foundation Myth

Nic reads Tech Down

Dusk: Video – Carlisle – Words on Paper

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Ben Brinicombe reads Words on Paper by Rob Walton

for DUSK at Carlisle

BSL interpreted by Karen Edmondson

The unpublished poems and stories from these events are in the forthcoming anthology Dusk.

You can preorder the print version, and buy the ebook, now!

Dusk: Authors already published by Arachne Press

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Inevitably, when you make a call out for submissions you get a fair few from people you’ve already worked with. Here are links to the author-page for authors we have already worked with.

Rosalind Stopps One Two Three, One Two Three, Lancaster, Rossendale

Pippa Gladhill

Pippa Gladhill In-Between Dog, Inverness, Warkleigh

David

David Mathews Flick’ring Shadows, Nottingham

Math Jones Yes, Twilight, Greenwich

Rob Walton

Rob Walton Words On Paper, Carlisle

#Arachne5 Rob Walton New Hartley Memorial Path

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As part of our Arachne 5th Anniversary celebrations, we’ve asked all of our authors to come up with a blog, that might have something to do with writing or anniversaries. Some of them responded! This one is from Rob Walton whose stories we published in Stations.

 

Back in 2012 I was thrilled to have two stories included in Stations, and five years later I’m delighted to be taking part in the anniversary celebrations.

Another of my writing adventures which saw the light of day five years ago was the New Hartley Memorial Pathway.  This was a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of a terrible pit disaster, which resulted in the deaths of 204 men and boys.  It also led to legislation, which went some way to prevent such a tragedy happening again.

I visited the pathway recently and it was looking splendid in the August sun, and I couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride.  This is something I haven’t necessarily felt in the same way with everything I’ve written or had published in the intervening five years.  I’ve heard from others over the years that the local community are proud of the pathway and the memorial garden which is its home.

To write my stories for Stations I did what I do every day – sit at the desk in my study writing notes, scraps, lines and thoughts and seeing where they take me.

The New Hartley experience was a huge contrast in that I was collaborating with (a) Russ Coleman, a friend and public artist, (b) the lovely people who commissioned the project and (c) members of the local community, whose ideas and words were incorporated into the text.

When I first wrote about the project, I referred to myself as the writer, but I started to feel uncomfortable with this as things were much more nuanced.  I was using words from contemporary accounts, newspapers, official reports and the input – including actual words and phrases – from local schoolchildren and other community groups.  I decided to refer to myself as collating the text, and felt better for it.  I think this possibly downplays my creative role in some ways, but I’d rather that than take credit for something which wasn’t entirely my own doing – and I don’t like to blow my own trumpet. 

Then again, I am very proud of that pathway.

 

Come to the PARTY on the 8th September.