WRITING OPPORTUNITIES :

The McCash Award : especially for those writing in Scots. Poems should not be more than 30 lines long and can be in any form, from sonnets to free verse. And we will welcome the widest interpretation of our theme, from the romantic to the satirical, the serious to the comic. We do trust, however, that contestants will avoid jingoistic responses or anti-English diatribes! Poets can send up to three entries. They should be submitted by Deadline August 1.
If you are in based in Scotland or elsewhere in the UKplease send your entries to :Lesley Duncan, The Herald , 200 Renfield Street ,Glasgow, G2 3QBon A4 paper with your name, address and contact details on the reverse. Entries from abroad can be emailed to lesley.duncan@theherald.co.uk. Please include your overseas address and contact phone number with international code.
The judges are headed by Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s national poet. The winners will be announced in early autumn and it is planned to deposit the competition poems in the National Library of Scotland as an insight into the spirit of Scotland at this fascinating juncture in the country’s history. Here’s to lots of inspiration and entries!

New Writing Scotland 27 – Submissions are invited for this prestigious anthology to be published in 2009. All forms of writing are invited (not novels or full-length plays) Work must been unpublished nor accepted for publication and may be in any of the languages of Scotland. Prose : max C 3,500 w and not more than four poems.
Full details from http://www.asls.org.uk/ Send submissions to :
New Writing Scotland ASLS, 7 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
G12 8QH Deadline : 30th September 2008

The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition 2008 is now open for entries!

This is the perfect opportunity to have your poems read by three of today's leading poets, stand the chance to win £5000, and see your name added to the impressive list of past winners, including Michael Hulse, Carol Ann Duffy, Jo Shapcott, Ruth Padel, Ian Duhig and our current winner Sinéad Morrissey.
Now in its 31st year, the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition is one of the leading poetry prizes. It attracts entries from Nantwich to Nairobi and offers to anyone who enters the opportunity to discover their own potential as a writer. Whether you are an established poet or a budding writer, winning often provides that essential spur to take your writing further.Details from http://www.poetrysociety.org/ deadline : Friday 31st October

Torbay Open Poetry Competition 2008
Poems up to 50 lines are invited for this competition. Entry fee £4.00 each or three for £10.00. Details from The Administrator,
c/o 6 The Mount, Brixham, Devon TQ5 8QY
Deadline : 15th August

Wells Literature Festival 2008 : There are both poetry and short story competitions to enter. Details from www.somersite.co.uk/wellsfest.htm Deadline : Tuesday 31st July 2008

Major collaboration between BBC Radio Scotland and Scottish Book Trust

This is an email I received that I thought might interest writers in the area. It sounds like a really interesting project.

Hello

I am writing to let you know about Days Like This, an exciting nationwide project run by Scottish Book Trust and BBC Radio Scotland, that may be of interest to you, your staff and other organisations you work with!

Days Like This will give people across Scotland the chance to be a part of the nation’s history by writing about a special day in their life which made a strong impression on them. The project aims to gather thousands of extraordinary tales, from born-and-bread Scots to newly-arrived immigrants, from Moffat to Orkney.

To take part in Days Like This, all people need to do is write about a day in their life that was a bit extraordinary: It could be the day they didn’t get married, or the day they got lost in a supermarket. It could be a childhood memory or something that happened yesterday. If the story is true and centres on a single day, we want to hear it!

Author Irvine Welsh, broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli, mountaineer Jamie Andrew, actress Siobhan Redmond, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble have joined the project as celebrity curators, writing and recording their own story as an inspiration for people to do the same.

Anyone can send a story - content is what matters! Stories should be no longer than 1,000 words and can be about anything as long as it’s true! All stories will appear on the BBC website for everyone to read. The celebrity panel will choose their favourites to be recorded and discussed in a series of radio programmes and published in a book in 2009. The deadline is: 1 November 2008

For more details (including the curators’ stories), click on www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland/dayslikethis

For the project leaflet, click on http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/files/days%20like%20this%20low.pdf (smaller file for viewing) OR go to http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/files/dayslikethis.pdf (larger file for printing).

With best wishes

Clare

Congratulations to Jean!

Jean Atkin, Press Officer for DGAA and a talented poet in her own right has just won Dartington Hall Ways With Words poetry competition with a very charming poem called 'Coppice' .
Congratualtions Jean, a very worthy winner.

Coppice

How the swifts’ wings bisected the blue
above the coppice wood -
so sudden shade was first a lack
of speed and height and flight.
Our pupils dilated, our skins cooled.
Our ankles were feathered in dog’s mercury.
I bent, touched sheets of stitchwort, violet, woodruff,
how they were shot with indigo, the warp and weft of bluebell.

How you relaxed, and smiled, and with your finger
smoothed the slowly easing corrugation that
was greening on a hazel leaf,
and told me how coppice cut
and grown and cut in every generation,
can live forever.

Jean Atkin