The festival focuses largely, but not exclusively, on issues relating to gender equality and active citizenship, with particular attention paid to how they affect young people. As well as working with schools and civic groups, the festival has invited a variety of different artists to share their expertise in using their tools to examine and challenge what they perceive as inequities.

Kayd is an organisation promoting the freedom of expression through art and culture in the Somali territories, and aims to encourage the tolerance and appreciation of the diverse Somali culture.

If you would like any more information, here’s a link back to a previous post about HIBF.

with Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation

25th August, Liverpool

19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7ZG

What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope?  

 

If Wordsworth were to be reborn as a twentieth century American, Gilead is the book he would write. Human, humane, real, devout, and connecting the inner spiritual with the outer public life, this moving novel was mentioned by Barack Obama as a favourite.

While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.

 

Jane Davis is Founder and Director of The Reader Organisation, a charity on a mission to bring about a reading revolution, making the content of great books available to all. Jane’s talent, energy, and belief in the value of reading are an inspiration to all who meet her: don’t miss this chance to experience the power of the reading revolution for yourself!

For more information please contact Casi Dylan, Training Manager, on casidylan@thereader.org.uk or 0151 794 2830.

You can download a booking form here: PDF/ Word.

For those of you who don’t know, Brian Nellist writes the regular ‘Ask the Reader’ feature in The Reader magazine, and is a frequent contributor of fascinating essays and reviews. In the current issue, he considers the poetry of Tennyson. Details of individual back issues, and the treasure within, can be found here. And to whet your appetite, here’s Brian’s essay on Sir Walter Scott which appeared in the first ever issue: People Don’t Read Scott Any More. (“Improbable is what the past looks like to the present which sees it the wrong way round, shorn of the logic that justified it at the time.”)

Any entries of poetry, stories, lyrics, essays, mini-dramas, plus any other forms of writing will be accepted, as long as they are on the theme of JOURNEYS.

Current Poet Laureate Andrew Motion writes that,

The Sefton Writing Competition is a very welcome event: it celebrates an exciting variety of new voices.

The Judging panel will consist of Brian Wake, Philip Wroe, and David Eddy.

Please click here for more information on terms and conditions, and how to submit your entry. The closing date for entries is 9th October 2009.

The turn-out on Saturday morning was fantastic! Once everyone had settled with coffee, croissants, and new acquaintances, Jane Davis kicked things off with an introductory chat before Clare read out an extract from her novel Poppy Shakespeare, which acted as the basis for group discussion about her work.   

After the informal group discussions, Book at Breakfasters had the opportunity to direct any questions or thoughts about the novel to Clare Allan: both audience questions and Clare’s answers providing more thought-provoking possibilities for discussion.  

Those attending were extremely impressed with what the morning had to offer, with most compliments focussing on the fact that the event ‘takes people out of their everyday lives to engage with stimulating discussions’; ‘makes people aware of mental health issues’; and, simply, how they were ‘inspired’, both by Clare Allan and by the lively discussions her presence initiated. 

A big thank-you to Clare for being part of our event, her honesty and good humour made for a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating breakfast. Thanks also to all those who attended: you helped to ensure the morning was the huge success it turned out to be.

Award-winning writers Clare Allan and Mark Haddon join us for this year’s ‘Book at Breakfast’ events – reading and discussion with coffee and croissants – to which you are welcome to come!

1. Book at Breakfast with Clare Allan:

Saturday 1st November 10.00am – 11.30am
at BBC Radio Merseyside, Hanover Street, L69 1ZJ
Clare Allan in conversation with Jane Davis

Join us for coffee and croissants in the company of Clare Allan, winner of the first Orange/Harpers Bazaar Short Story Competition and author of Poppy Shakespeare for a talk about her work (an extract from the novel will be sent to read in advance). Clare Allan was the winner of the first Orange/Harpers short story prize.

‘Poppy Shakespeare has that rare quality: the feel of a book that needed to be written … It is bitterly, brutally funny and extraordinarily moving.’ Telegraph

‘Catch-22 meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest … an electrifying debut … surreal, raucous, infuriating and very funny.’ Guardian

2. Book at Breakfast with Mark Haddon

Sunday 2nd November 10.00am – 11.30am
at BBC Radio Merseyside , Hanover Street, L69 1ZJ
Mark Haddon in conversation with Jane Davis

Join us for coffee and croissants in the company of the multi-award winning writer Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  (winning many prestigious awards, including the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year) and A Spot of Bother, for a talk about his latest work, a chapter of which, ‘The Island’, will be sent out to read in advance.

‘Haddon’s style is a reader’s bliss. He writes seamless prose. The words are melted into meaning… Haddon’s gift is to make us look at ourselves when we think we’re looking away, being entertained’. Tom Adair Scotsman

‘Haddon’s last, spectacularly successful novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, found a brilliant way to make the mundane strange and the strange mundane, choosing a narrator for whom the world is so perpetually strange that it can never be truly surprising’. Telegraph

Tickets for these Book at Breakfast events are limited and going fast. If you would like to attend either (or both) events please email info@thereader.org.uk or call 0151 794 2830 and we will send you a ticket and the extract for reading.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

There is something for everyone – whether a hesitant or reluctant poetry reader, or a confirmed literature lover, of any age – we hope bring great pieces of literature to as many people as possible in engaging, enticing and perhaps, unusual ways!

All events are free and there is no need to book in advance. Here are some dates for your diary:

• Thursday 9th October, 1-2pm – ‘If You Don’t Read Poetry, You Will After This’: a special event for National Poetry Day, especially for those that may be confused or put-off by poetry; come along to this event to discover the hidden pleasures of poetry and prepare to be persuaded (this event will be fed live to the BBC Big Screen!)

• Sunday 12th and 19th October, 12noon-12.45pm – ‘Children’s Storytelling’: bringing stories to life for little ones, on the two festival Sundays – kids can choose the stories themselves by dropping suggestions into boxes around Liverpool ONE and the Bluecoat in the run-up to the sessions.

• Sunday 12th October, 2.30-3.30pm ‘The Reading Cure: Chapter’ and Sunday 19th October, 2.30 – 3.30 ‘The Reading Cure: Verse’: two unique clinics to help solve life’s problems – serious or trivial – with the assistance of our greatest novels and short stories in the first clinic and poetry in the second. Discover how fiction really can help reality.

• Plus, informal Reading and Discussion Groups, based around the authors and poets appearing at the festival, so if you’re interested in a certain writer’s work, or just intrigued to learn more about it, then feel free to come along to any of the following sessions:
o Friday 10th October, 6.30: Jim Crace, The Pesthouse (directly before event)
o Saturday 11th October, 2.30: Kapka Kassabova, Street Without A Name and Vesna Goldsworthy, Chernobyl Strawberries (directly after event)
o Sunday 12th October, 12noon: Jennie Rooney, Inside the Whale (directly before event)
o Thursday 16th October, 5pm: Raymond Tallis, The Kingdom of Infinite Space (directly before event)
o Saturday 18th October, 7.30pm: Ronan Bennett, Zugzwang (in between two events!)

Hope to see you there!

Watch out for more information about forthcoming events, organised by The Reader Organisation at BBC Free Thinking Festival (31st October – 2nd November) and Shipping Lines: Liverpool Literary Festival (3rd – 9th November). Subscribe for our free festival email alerts here.

Hölderlin, Clare, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Artaud are exemplary because they remind us of our ‘true’ sanity (of course, in actuality, most artists don’t, and never have, gone mad). True sanity is whatever it is about us that refuses to sacrifice our inner worlds, our singular visions, in order to get on in the outer world, the world as it is. True sanity transforms the world as it is to make room for the unique vision that each individual person contains inside them. These artists were truly sane because they never sold out; they never tried to make themselves acceptable or winning.

Or is this just madness? Does sanity need to be something that is socially acceptable and therefore, mean that social unacceptability is an indication of insanity? Madness is often romanticised in our cultural arts, in the sense of the ‘tortured artist’ and the people that are ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ but what in fact does this label ‘madness’ mean? Is there an inherent connection between creativity and madness? Or is this form of madness actually saneness?

Insanity is as hard to categorise as sanity but we pay it far more attention. To admit to being ‘sane’ seems to somehow admit to being ‘boring’, which is something that Phillips is disparaging of. Phillips wants to bring sanity out of the shadows and in his book, he begins to investigate what in fact it means to be sane, what the characteristics of sanity are and to what extent we meet them (if at all).

The event began with Phillips and Davis in discussion, followed by the audience gathered in groups around tables (with coffee and cake) to consider the issues arising from the book, talk about their own views of sanity and insanity, and culminating with a question and answer session. The group that I was in consisted of (amongst others) a mental health professional, the wife of a man with Asperger’s Syndrome, a recovering drug addict, an alcoholic, and an elderly lady. Each of us had our own ‘insane’ or ‘mad’ personal experiences but for such a diverse collection of people, we were all able to find resonances in what each was saying (as well as reassure one another that we were indeed ‘sane’) and come to a few conclusions about what we believed sanity could be: a form of acceptance, in which we realise that our ‘mad’ actions were just that, means that we possess a certain level of sanity. For instance, the detrimental effects of taking drugs are not seen as such until a sense of awareness, has occurred in the abuser. Of course it cannot be said that acceptance is all that constitutes ‘sanity’, in fact the morning’s discussion made us all aware that sanity is actually indefinable. Phillips argued against the notion that sanity is another word for conformity, this is too dry and far too simple, instead he thought that sanity was partly ‘excitement rather than anxiety about what crosses your life’s path’.

Although madness is far too often glamorised, to get to the root of ‘true sanity’ seems itself a crazy task, an act that would lead to such intense introspection to probably render all attempts of saneness useless. Language itself is liberating in one capacity and constricting in another: we can only explain our sanity in terms of our language but the means of expressing insanity are unbounded. We can show that we’re mad but we have to explain that we’re sane.

For the last word here’s Borges, as delivered by Mick Jagger: ‘The only performance that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that leads to madness’ (from ‘Performance’, 1968). A true performer becomes true only to himself, residing only in his own skull.’

Posted by Jen Tomkins

Very many congratulations, Jane!

Jane will be taking part in a live audience discussion around the issues raised in the People’s Choice debate as part of Free Thinking 07 in The Box at FACT at 3.15pm this coming Sunday. If you cannot attend in person, you will be able to listen to this through the Free Thinking 07 website for up to a week after the event.

Tonight Jane is in conversation with Blake Morrison in an event hosted by Raymond Tallis at the Wellcome Collection in London. ‘Books to Make You Better’ will explore how the written word influences us beyond the moment of reading and can have a transformative effect on our lives. This is the third in a series of four events exploring medicine and literature. Tonight’s event will focus on the growing interest in bibliotherapy (The University of Liverpool launched their innovative Reading in Practice MA this year, under the direction of Philip Davis) and the part writers and readers can play in improving the nation’s health.

Posted by Jen Tomkins