Feed your writing habit this spring!
Dialect Dinners, Reinventing Albion, Poetry Walks and a host of community events for rural writers to get the words flowing
COME AND HAVE DINNER WITH US!
Dialect is thrilled to launch it’s new series of online author events, bringing together our main obsessions: food, writing and good company!
A dinner party with a difference, Dialect Dinners are an entirely virtual feast for the heart and the mind, offering three online courses of rural and edge-land discussion. Each month, a hand picked guest author will be setting the menu with their favourite food, as a starter (ahem) for a discussion of their writing and creative life.
And we’re thrilled to say that Dialect’s first dinner guest is acclaimed travel writer, author, mentor and editor of the Dark Mountain Project - Nick Hunt.
Nick is the author of three travel books about walking and Europe (Outlandish, Where the Wild Winds Are and Walking the Woods and the Water), a work of ‘gonzo ornithology’ (The Parakeeting of London), a collection of short fiction (Loss Soup and Other Stories) and an alternate history novel (Red Smoking Mirror). His articles have appeared in the Guardian, Emergence, Resurgence & Ecologist, New Internationalist and elsewhere. He works as a co-director and editor for the Dark Mountain Project, and has taught in various institutions including Falmouth University and Schumacher College.
So come and join us for a new kind of literary dinner, one you can get to without leaving your home! All the conversation and no washing up - that’s our kind of party:)
Tickets £5 each, donations welcome
Free for Dialect members, caregivers and those on a small income.
Bookings can be made here
RE-IMAGINING ALBION: SELF STUDY PACK
Part of the Re-enchanting The Land Series
Many of us feel alienated from the vision of Albion which has existed in the British imagination for centuries as a green and pleasant land of tall ships and hay wains, white cliffs and country houses. Underlying that chocolate box take on rural life are histories of power, control, exclusion and the kind of acquisitiveness and exploitation which has led us to a state of planetary emergency.
This self-directed workshop is the first in a series, Re-Enchanting the Land, which aims to reclaim a feeling of enchantment with the land and a renewed sense of wonder and connection inspired by contemporary folk and outsider artists, place-based writers, poets and performers.
Re-imagining Albion plays with the received ideas of our imagination and playfully invites us to create new Albions that respond to the fantasies and preoccupations of now. Drawing on the work on Sharon Blackie, Amy Jeffs, Stephen Elcock and others, this self-directed workshop will lead you through auditory, visual and embodied practices that will inspire new writing and reignite your love of the land.
Pay what you can for care-givers or those on a small income, email juliette.morton@dialect.org.uk
Sign up here for your self study pack
BRAND NEW IN PERSON WRITING GROUP FOR WOMEN AND NON BINARY FOLK IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE!
A new prose-focused peer led writing group for women and non-binary folk is forming, based in Stroud. Run by Dialect alumni, the amazing writers and poets Debs Cox and Ellen Potts, the group is for non-beginner writers, aiming to provide supportive critical feedback and encouragement for developing your writing, including towards publication and competition entry if appropriate.
Meeting at The Exchange in Stroud on the second Sunday of every month from 2-4pm starting from Sunday 12 May. The Exchange is an accessible venue with parking. The room hire fee will be £4-5 each
If you’re interested, please drop Ellen both an email by the end of March. Tell them a bit about your writing history and where you’d like to go with it. They look forward to hearing from you!
Debs (deborahcoxart@hotmail.com) and Ellen (ellen.potts@yahoo.co.uk)
POETRY WALKS WITH PHILIP RUSH
Want some spring sun on your face and fresh words on the page? Come and join acclaimed Gloucestershire poet Philip Rush on his much loved poetry landscape walks, travelling back in time from the seventeenth century to Saxon England and then to the mysteries of the Neolithic Age, accompanied by poetry from the first millennium to the present day.
Monday April 22nd 11 am Duntisbourne Rouse
Wednesday May 1st 11 am Rodmarton Windmill Tump
Bookings here
£12 per walk, pay as you can for carers on a low income, book online or Email us: dialectwriters@gmail.com. *Participants will be advised of meeting points and car parks; car sharing will be enabled as possible. *The walks will be about three miles each, and are a 2 hour poetry and nature filled adventure:))
JOIN THE CREW! DIALECT MEMBERSHIP AND WRITING HOURS
The Dialect community is growing this spring! We are now bursting at the seams with a great bunch of writers, poets and creatives from rural and edgeland spaces all over the UK.
Offering an virtual space for sharing ideas and encouragement, online writing hours three (yes, three!) times each week, free monthly socials with guest speakers, access to mentoring and warm and friendly open mic evenings, this is the place to find your people and your writing mojo!
AND you get to support a CIC making the arts accessible to everyone in the countryside. I mean - a no brainer, right? Come on in, the (river, brook and sea) water is lovely!
Monthly membership starts at £20, free/pay as you can for caregivers and anyone on a low income.
Sign up here