THE LANGUAGE CLUB with Contemporary Music Preview

The Language Club is collaborating with the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival on a preview event Poetry in Performance at Plymouth Arts Centre, Saturday 7 February at 7.30pm. Guest readers: Simon Jenner and Norman Jope, with open mic and bar, tickets £5 and £3.

    Simon Jenner edits Eratica magazine. His latest poetry book About Bloody Time was published by Waterloo Press in 2007. Plymouth writer Norman Jope's The Book of Bells and Candles is also just published by Waterloo. Norman will be performing a contemporary music collaboration with Alexis Kirke.

    The Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival this year is themed for the Darwin 200 celebrations with special Darwin related commissions and performances. Composers, sound artists and writers in attendance will include: Michael Stimpson, Ian Pace, Maggini Quartet, Rebecca Stott, Karen Wimhurst, Eduardo R Miranda, John Matthias, Jane Grant, Nick Ryan, Miso Ensemble and Miguel Azguime, Sam Richards, Simon Ible, Ten Tors Orchestra, Roland Perrin. 

PLYMOUTH READING BY MARK FORD

LATEST ARTS COUNCIL AWARD

Tom Vowler is the latest in a cluster of MA Creative Writing graduates to be awarded an Arts Council grant. In Tom's case, £5000 to develop his writing and work on a novel by extending a short story 'Old Enough' that was originally written for an MA workshop. He's writing a blog about his progress with the project and hoping to interact with other writers at Old Enough Novel. Tom was an editor of Ink magazine.

    His stories have been published in the journals Brand, Words and Riptide. Last year he won first prize in the HappenStance short fiction competition.

POET AND PAINTER

MA Creative Writing graduate Rupert M Loydell has had two poetry collections published by Shearsman Books of Exeter, the most recent is An Experiment in Navigation with a beautiful cover painting by the artist and poet. Jane Routh writes: 'More than ever, Rupert Loydell's new book reminds me that he is a painter. I don't mean that his writing is primarily visual, but that he rejoices in discovering what his medium is capable of . . . Echoes, alphabets, series and collage are part of the sense of play and pleasure with which Rupert Loydell makes order from disorder. These are mixed media poems. They are serious and they are full of games. Running through them all is a quiet and open-hearted voice.' 

    Rupert is editor of Stride magazine, a wide ranging online compendium of new writing and reviews, worth checking for both. He is Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth and lives in Cornwall.