'A Penny Spitfire' will be presented at Gracefield Arts Centre Cafe on Wednesday 15 June at 7pm by well known and much awarded writer Brindley Hallam Dennis, aka Mike Smith. I think we can safely say this will be a most entertaining author event: Brindley Hallam Dennis has a well-deserved reputation as a raconteur, whose dry wit and laconic delivery already has a following in D&G.
'A Penny Spitfire' is set in October 1947, in a town inspired by his childhood memories of Burton Upon Trent. To a background of industrial steam engines, hauling their trains between the dark brick walls of brewery buildings, the characters struggle with the changes that war and history have forced upon them and their town.
Brindley Hallam Dennis writes poetry, prose and drama. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and his comic monologues, That’s What Ya Get! Kowalski’s Assertions, were published recently by Unbound Press. Mike teaches Creative Writing at Cumbria University, runs fiction writing workshops, and blogs regularly at http://bhdandme.wordpress.com/
Sign up for a free Visual Poetry Workshop with Lisa Otty on Friday 3 June, 2pm to 4pm at the Rutherford McCowan Building, Crichton Campus, Dumfries.Poetry Beyond Text is a hands-on workshop explores Visual Poetry, an experimental genre that uses not just words, but also properties such as space, colour, line, and typography. Championed by two of Scotland’s most celebrated poets, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan, Visual Poetry challenges us to ask what poetry is and how different styles of textual presentation change our readings.
Exploring the aims and ambitions of poets and investigate how individual works are constructed and read, you will experiment with creating your own visual poems. The workshop draws on the new Archive of Reading, housed at the Scottish Poetry Library. This holds eye-tracking recordings and other documents showing how people engage with different layouts and visual strategies, so we can judge how these affect interpretation.
Lisa Otty is a research fellow at Dundee University working on the Poetry beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her interests focus on experimental literature, print history and modern art, and she regularly publishes and teaches in these areas. She is based in Edinburgh, and is working on the Archive of Reading at the Scottish Poetry Library.
If you're interested, please email Carolyn Yates, Literature Development Officer at dgArts on carolyn@dgarts.co.uk
This is Like Attracts Like, by Emmett Williams. Just to get you going.
The life and crimes of Dumfriesshire bicycle inventor Kirkpatrick Macmillan will be revealed in a new BBC radio play by former dgArts writer in residence Jules Horne on Thursday 19th May.
Many of us in D&G remember Jules with affection and gratitude (she certainly helped my writing along) - so will be listening out on Thursday when her new radio play is broadcast, 2.15 on Radio 4, with all the usual helpful options for catching it later...
MACMILLAN’S MARVELLOUS MOTION MACHINE is based on the story of Kirkpatrick ‘Daft Pate’ Macmillan, the Dumfriesshire blacksmith who invented the pedal bicycle, rode from Penpont to Glasgow and committed the world’s first cycle crime in 1842. It includes a cast of thousands played by six Scottish actors, including John Kazek (Spooks, Batman Begins), Isabella Jarrett (Faust, Barry) and Gabriel Quigley (Festival, Rab C Nesbitt), and is directed by Rosie Kellagher of Newcastle’s Theatre Live.
Macmillan worked in the smiddy at Drumlanrig Castle, and Jules was inspired by seeing a velocipede at the Vintage Cycle Museum there. To find out what it was like to build and ride the first bicycle, she worked closely with the museum’s velocipede expert Tony Dymott, and carried out research at Dumfries Museum and the Ewart Library. She also visited Cousland Smiddy and spoke to resident blacksmith James Fleming to find out about the life of a Scottish blacksmith in the 1800s.
She says: ‘Macmillan’s design was way ahead of its time, but he didn’t get proper recognition. It was a fascinating period in history, with so much social and industrial change, and it’s wonderful to think a rural blacksmith was in on the start of such an important invention. It’s been great fun to bring his story to life. ’
