Internships at The Reader Organisation cover a wide-range of engaging and exciting activities, all of which will play a significant role in helping us to grow in the coming months. Our latest round of internships are open for application now, and we’re on the look-out for five keen, energetic graduate-level individuals to join us at our Head Office in Liverpool for a four-month internship.

These internships will last for sixteen weeks, for a total of 21/25 hours per week (unpaid, but with travel expenses paid). Current roles are:

• Communications: Events and Publications Internship (download Job Description)
• Communications: PR and Publicity Internship (download Job Description)
• Arts Adminstration Internship (download Job Description)
• Business Support Internship (download Job Description)
• Organisational Development Internship (download Job Description)

Previous interns at The Reader Organisation have gone on to take up posts such as Editor at Vintage Books, Marketing Manager at Princes Ltd, Digital Executive at a design company, Marketing Assistant at an architect’s firm, Accountant Graduate Scheme at KPMG, and a variety of positions within The Reader Organisation, including our current Communications Assistant, Research Administration Assistant and Development Manager.

How to apply

Please complete the required application form and return by email to jobs@thereader.org.uk or in post to The Reader Organisation, The Friary Centre, Bute Street, Liverpool L5 3LA.

Deadline for all applications is Friday 1st June at midday. You will be notified if you are to be called for interview by the end of the day on Wednesday 6th June. If you have not heard from us by then, you have been unsuccessful. Volume of applications may make replies to everyone impossible.

Interviews will be held at The Reader Organisation Head Office at The Friary Centre, Bute Street, Liverpool on Thursday 7th June 2012.

If you have any queries, please call The Reader Organisation on 0151 207 7207.

Written by award-winning playwright Caryl Churchill in 1976, the play is being revived by Liverpool Network Theatre after being approached by Frank Kennedy, organiser of the ‘Digging Up Our History’ course in Everton last year, who explains the play’s significance to the area: 

Although the play isn’t set in Liverpool, and does not directly depict the great battles of the Civil War, it shows how, during Cromwell’s uprising against King Charles I, the hopes of poor people were raised – and then dashed. WECC is just down the road from the hilltop campsite of Prince Rupert, who in 1644 captured the small port of Liverpool for the King, before the Parliamentarians won it back.

The Everton performance is part of the 2012 Out of the Blue Festival, a four month long programme of music performances, plays, exhibitions and sporting activities in and around Everton Park. Festival co-ordinator and local resident Adam Byrne will be starring in the play alongside Frank.

The play will then move to venues in the city centre over the weekend, with performances in The Casa on Friday 11th May and Next To Nowhere (beneath News From Nowhere) on Saturday 12th May (both performances at 8pm).

Tickets cost £6/£3 concessions and can be bought on the door of the venue or in advance from News From Nowhere on 0151 708 7270.

Policy Provocations is a series of lectures, led by the University of Liverpool and City Region partners, which brings together perspectives from leading international, UK and local thinkers to provide a platform for passionate public debate on issues that affect us all.  Taking on big policy challenges that shape our future, Policy Provocations confronts them with informed and reasoned debate and asks how we can tackle such challenges in new ways.

The next Policy Provocations event asks the question ‘Do we still need libraries?’. Historically, libraries have helped bring literacy to the masses as well as providing a sense of community, improved health and promotion of wellbeing, but do they still serve the same purpose in a changing society?

The panel will include Sue Charteris, Chair of The Reader Organisation; Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England; Councillor Keith Mitchell CBE, Former Leader of Oxfordshire County Council; and, before his guest appearance at The Reader Organisation 2012 Conference, Professor Jonathan Rose. The lecture will be followed by an informal reception for all from 7pm.

Tickets to the event are free but booking is essential; to book your place, please visit the University of Liverpool website or call 0151 794 2650.

News From Nowhere are holding a special evening event on World Book Night – Monday 23rd April from 6pm-9pm – to allow literature lovers to celebrate the momentous occasion surrounded by tons of books. They’ll have 25 free copies of one of the World Book Night books, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, to give away on the night, as well as a communal book display for readers to show off the books they love, a range of one-minute readings from favourite books, consolation prizes for those who don’t manage to snap up one of the 25 free copies of Good Omens and refreshments for all.

Whether you’re a seasoned booklover or you’ve never been in a bookshop before, this night is for you – you can browse, buy or just soak up the bookish atmosphere. It’s also Shakespeare’s birthday, and we’re sure he could think of no better birthday party than sharing in the joys of books.

World Book Night at News From Nowhere
Monday 23rd April, 6pm-9pm
News from Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop, 96 Bold St, Liverpool, L1 4HY 0151 708 7270

And make sure you join us right here on the blog on Monday for our own Shakespeare inspired World Book Night celebrations…

On Friday 20th April, the Little Girl Giant will be arriving in Everton Park as part of her journey. To welcome her to the community, and to officially launch the Out of the Blue Festival 2012 programme, West Everton Community Council and Friends of Everton Park will be holding a ‘Picnic in the Park’ at the top of Everton Park. Members of the community and other visitors are invited to sing songs, share stories and have some lunch as the Little Girl has her siesta between 12.30-4pm.

The event will also be the culmination of Get Into Reading’s Titanic memorial celebrations – for the past few weeks, Get Into Reading groups across Liverpool and Wirral have been reading and discussing poems and other pieces inspired by the sinking of the Titanic, sharing memories of the world’s most famous ship. As part of the Sea Odyssey event and Out of the Blue launch, Get Into Reading Liverpool Project Manager Eleanor Stanton will be reading Thomas Hardy’s The Convergence of the Twain at the Park on Friday so to share in the reading, come along for what promises to be a great celebration – and if you can, please wear something blue.

In 2006, when I first encountered Brian Turner’s poetry, media coverage of the Iraq War was at once sensationalist and jaded – Stalin’s reputed remark that “one dead person is a tragedy; one million dead is a statistic” seemed to hold true. The “Conflict in Iraq” was a toxic mess, unimaginable in its human cost. Then Here, Bullet struck me: Brian Turner’s first collection of poems about his experiences in Iraq as an infantry soldier in the US army.

The poems in Here, Bullet are both visceral and elegiac. The epic past and landscape of Babylon/Iraq is conflated with the terror and pain of young, frightened soldiers, stalked by intense boredom and an amorphous enemy that not only appears in human form, but in the terrain and unbearable heat of their treacherous surroundings. Turner’s muscular, beautiful writing gives voice to the “grunts” alongside whom he fought: the title of one of the most powerful films about the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker, was taken from his poem of the same name.

But while Turner’s poems are explicitly focused on his experiences and those of his fellow US soldiers, the true power of his work lies in his ability to intimate the suffering of those they are blindly fighting against: the “insurgent”, the civilian, their own souls. In his second collection, there are poems about violent, frightening encounters but more are about the echo of these experiences: the spacing of the titular poem and the final italics in Phantom Noise gives the poem a pleading tone, an urgent need to express “the rifled symphonic” to the reader, to bring relief from “this ringing hum”.

Phantom Noise

There is this ringing hum   this

bullet-borne language   ringing

shell-fall and static   this late-night

ringing of threadwork and carpet    ringing

hiss and steam    this wing-beat

of rotors and tanks    broken

bodies ringing in steel    humming these

voices of dust    these years ringing

rifles in Babylon    rifles in Sumer

ringing these children their gravestones

and candy    their limbs gone missing    their

static-borne television    their ringing

this eardrum    this rifled symphonic    this

ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil    this

brake pad gone useless this muzzle-flash singing    this

threading of bullets in muscle and bone    this ringing

hum    this ringing hum    this

ringing

Brian Turner

‘Phantom Noise’ is taken from Phantom Noise (Bloodaxe Books, 2010) and reproduced here with the kind permission of the author and Bloodaxe Books.

Brian Turner will be visiting Liverpool in May as a guest of The Reader Organisation and the Writing on the Wall Festival. He will be giving four readings in Mersey Care NHS Trust and HMP Liverpool, where TRO run weekly Get into Reading groups, and a public reading in the Casa, Hope St, Liverpool L1 9BQ at 7.30pm Wednesday 2 May. For further information and booking, please see the Writing On The Wall website.

There is this ringing hum  this
bullet-borne language  ringing
shell-fall and static  this late-night
ringing of threadwork and carpet  ringing

From ‘Phantom Noise’ by Brian Turner

The Reader Organisation has teamed up with Liverpool’s exciting Writing on the Wall Festival to bring award-winning US poet Brian Turner to Liverpool at the beginning of May. Brian will read on the evening of Wednesday 2 May as part of the festival, having visited Get into Reading groups in HMP Liverpool and Mersey Care NHS Trust. The partnership with Writing on the Wall allows both the festival and TRO to reach audiences they might not otherwise interact with by showcasing the work of an excellent contemporary poet.  The audiences in HMP Liverpool and Mersey Care will have the opportunity to read Brian’s work in advance of his visit, which should make his visit all the more enjoyable and stimulating.

Brian Turner was born in California and joined the US Army in 1998, serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Iraq. His collections – Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise (which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize in 2010) — searingly describe his experiences and those of the people around him. His poem “The Hurt Locker” was used as the title for Kathryn Bigelow’s film, for which she won the Oscar for Best Director in 2009, the first woman to do so.

Open the hurt locker
and see what there is of knives
and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn
How rough men come hunting for souls

Online ticket sales for Brian Turner’s appearance at the War Tour event at the Casa, Hope Street, 7.30pm on 2 May and further details about the festival can be found on the Writing on the Wall Festival website; for phone/in person bookings, please contact The Unity Theatre, 1 Hope Place, L1 9BG/ph: 0844 873 2888.

Keep an eye on our blog for further information about Brian’s visit to Liverpool Get Into Reading and some words from the man himself.

A range of readings and literature themed events will be taking place at the store between 5-8.30pm, with something in store to please readers of all tastes. Local author Maureen Lee will be reading from her upcoming novel Au Revoir Liverpool, as well as answering questions and signing books; a Poetry Showcase featuring John Redmond, Clare Shaw and Deryn Rees-Jones reading some of their work; plus another of the store’s ‘Twisted Tales’ series featuring international horror legend Ramsey Campbell and Richard and Judy Book Club listed debut novelist Alison Littlewood.

For film buffs, there will also be a World Book Night  themed movie quiz, with all questions (and answers) involving books that have been adapted for the big screen.  And the best thing about it is that all the events of the night are absolutely free.

World Book Night at Waterstones: A Free Evening Celebrating the World of Books
23rd April, 5.00-8.30pm
Waterstones Liverpool One
12 College Lane
Liverpool, L1 3DL

For more information on the evening, please call Waterstones Liverpool One on 0151 709 9820 or visit the website.

TEDx is a programme of local self-organised events created by TED in order to make sure that people everywhere can experience ‘ideas worth spreading’ from the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers. TEDXObserver is taking place in Sadler’s Well’s, London, this coming Saturday 10th March, but the talks will be simulcast to a number of regional events which will also feature exclusive talks of their own.

Jane will be appearing at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, delivering a talk on ‘The Social Importance of Reading’, alongside TRO patron Frank Cottrell-Boyce, astrophysicist Robert Simpson, Roy Boulter and Sol Papadopoulos of Hurricaine Films. The event will be hosted by Tim Adams, staff writer on The Observer.

Tickets for Saturday cost £10, including lunch, and are available here.

The Reader Organisation is a unique place to work.   Having the right staff is crucial to the success of the organisation.  That’s why we’re always on the look out for new talent and why we’re inviting you come along on 19th March to meet some of our current staff, find out more about what we do and what it’s like to work here.  In the future we hope we’ll be looking for a wide range of people for a wide range of roles including but not limited to, fundraising, delivering reading groups, community liaison and online communications. So, if you like what you see and hear you’ll be able to fill in an application form on the day and leave it with us for consideration when vacancies arise.

We are a professional, flexible, operationally led organisation. We expect our staff to work hard, and to be flexible and accommodating to ensure that we get the job done. This means expecting the unexpected, and sometimes means working outside of normal contracted hours and getting involved in out of hours activities and events.

We offer flexibility in return, along with an excellent holiday entitlement, rewarding work and a caring and supportive and working environment.  We want our staff to enjoy working here. We encourage a good work life balance, but we don’t have a culture of clock watching or totting up hours worked and owed.  It’s simply give and take on both parts.

Interested? Please come and find out more…

To register your interest, please email Michelle Barrett: michellebarrett@thereader.org.uk