The  Post Graduate Open Day on 2^nd September at the University of Gloucestershire is an opportunity to find out about the Post Graduate Creative Writing opportunities and to meet some of the teaching team. Iota Editor and Course Leader, Nigel McLoughlin, along with other teaching staff will be on hand throughout the event.

The range of Creative and Critical Writing courses offer the opportunity to develop writing and critical skills and to read widely. Further details about the Open Day, Creative and Critical Writing courses and the wider range of Postgraduate taught courses are available from the University of Gloucestershire website.

Templar Poetry is delighted to launch a new publishing award, the Straid Poetry Collection Awards,  for full poetry collections to be published in 2011.

In the five years since Templar Poetry was founded it has established a reputation for publishing excellent poetry from across the UK and Ireland and the annual Straid Collection Awards will enable us to broaden our list and work with an increasing number of poets in developing wider audiences and readers for the poetry we publish.

Further Details:

http://www.templarpoetry.co.uk/about.html

http://www.templarpoetry.co.uk/awards.html

Congratulations to Iota contributor Abegail Morley from Kent, whose first collection from Cinnamon Press, How to Pour Madness Into a Teacup, is shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection 2010.

Poems in the collection first appeared in Iota 85 – single copies available direct from the Iota website:

http://www.iotamagazine.co.uk

Further information and copies of the collection:

http://www.abegailmorley.co.uk

http://cinnamonpress.com

Templar Poetry is delighted to launch Iota Shots,  three new prizes for shorter poetry pamphlets. The annual Pamphlet and Collection Prizes, have been running for five years now and regularly throw up submissions which could be published in a shorter format than the current ‘longer’ pamphlets published by Templar.

The details are posted on the Iota website

Templar Pamphlets have earned a reputation for publishing excellent poetry as well as for their superb quality and design.  Iota Shots offer another creative challenge  to poets – an Iota Shot might be a series of sonnets, haiku, a sequence, a single narrative poem, a mini-epic,  a short collection on a theme and may also be accompanied by line drawings in black…surprise us

Submissions are accepted from now until 14th November,  the final closing date for submissions. The first three Iota Shots will be launched in early summer 2011.

Ciaran Carson, Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queens University Belfast, heads up the poets appearing at the 2010 Derwent Poetry Festival in Matlock Bath, 12th – 14th November. There will be further guest poets in the 2010 festival and the  full programme will be posted on the Templar website during August.

Paul Maddern, one of last year’s Pamphlet winners launches his first collection, The Beachcomber’s Report,  alongside four new pamphlets from this year’s winners of  the 2010 Pamphlet & Collection Prizes,  Olive Broderick, Matt Bryden, Ian McEwen and Hilary Menos.

Anthology poets will read from the annual anthology Snap.

The anthology poets are: Derek Adams, Yuko M Adams, Elizabeth Barrett, Mara Bergman, Graham Burchell, Maggie Butt, Peter Cash, Liz Cashdan, Sally Clark, K.M. Dersley, James Dufficy, Pat Earnshaw, David Gilbert, Wendy Klein, Tim Love, Marilyn Longstaff, Tony Lucas, Lydia Macpherson, Alex McRae, Catherine McLoughlin, Char March, Isabella Mead, Pat Murgatroyd, Peter Rawlings, Ruby Robinson, Sarah Roby, Ron Scowcroft, K.V. Skene, Barbara Smith, Susan Taylor, Ruth Terrington, Judith Thurley, Laura Webb, Tom Weir, Sarah Westcott, Simon Williams and Michael J. Wood.

Iota 88 will also be published at the Derwent featuring a selection of excellent new poetry, reviews and exclusive interviews with Philip Gross and Penelope Shuttle.

Tickets for the festival will be available from both  the Templar Poetry and Iota websites from the  beginning of September.

The new titles will be available to pre-order from the Templar Poetry and Iota websites in August – some covers below…

Oxfam Bookfest will be hosting some very special events around the country in partnership with Templar Poetry.
Templar published authors and Iota Editors will be reading their work at Oxfam shops in their local area – and well beyond.

All Templar’s poets are volunteering their services for free, and all profits will, of course, be going to fund Oxfam’s poverty-fighting work.

This band of Templar Poets  include award winning poet Jane Weir, Dawn Wood, shortlisted for the 2009 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, Paul Maddern, Pat Borthwick, Pat Winslow all winners of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet competition, Nigel McLouglin, Editor of Iota Poetry and Katrina Naomi shortlisted last week for the 2010 London New Poetry Award. Templar Poetry is committed to bringing poetry to a wider audience through published works and live events in a wide variety of settings. For full address details and timings for all the events, check out the Oxfam website or the Bookfest Events Finder. You can also follow this link and also scroll down to see some additions and corrections:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/bookfest/templar-poetry.html

PLEASE NOTE a couple of additional events below and a date error for one of the events detailed below:

Pat Winslow reading at:

Oxfam Bookshop

14 High Street

Witney

OX28 6BH T

| 01993 776985 E |

oxfamshopf3732@oxfam.org.uk

Tuesday 13th July

7.30 pm

Pat Winslow reading

Followed by wine

Followed by an open mic/favourite poems

Do contact Sue Cochrane: oxfamshopf3732@oxfam.org.uk

JANE WEIR is rading at Oxfam Glossop on the 15th July at 6.00pm NOT the 5thJuly.

Katrina Naomi is reading at Oxfam Streatham:

Weds 14 July – reading and open mic as a poetry benefit for Oxfam at Streatham Oxfam Furniture and Electrical Shop (part of Oxfam’s Bookfest). To take part in the open mic, sign up on the night at 7 pm. All money goes to Oxfam. Entance is £5 and includes readings, a buffet and 2 beers/wines. Oxfam Furniture & Electricals, 23 Streatham High Street, SW16. Readings start at 7.30. Entry £5 (phone Karen on 020 8769 1291 for more info).

We are delighted to announce the four winners of the 2010 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Prizes:

Matt Bryden – Night Porter
Olive Broderick – Darkhaired
Ian McEwen – Stammering Man
Hilary Menos – Wheelbarrow Farm

The competition was judged by Pat Winslow and the four pamphlets, along with the annual anthology Snap, Iota 88 and other new titles will be launched at the  Derwent Poetry Festival in Matlock Bath in November (12th – 14th).

The anthology poets have  been notified and the full details of the anthology poets  will be posted after the Oxfam BookFest along with further information on the festival program and guests.

Templar Poetry is delighted to be one of four poetry publishers in the 2010 shortlist for the Publishing category of the awards. The final results will be announced at the awards event at the British Library on Wednesday 16th June.

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets recognise the enormous contribution that pamphlets make to the world of poetry and the wider cultural life of the United Kingdom. Explore the thriving world of the poetry pamphlet with readings from some of the most innovative contemporary voices, chosen by Ali Smith, Jo Shapcott and Richard Price.

Full details from: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/june/index.html

Jane Weir reading at the Seamus Heaney Centre

Poets published by Templar Poetry are reading and appearing at numerous poetry festivals, events and venues across the UK and Ireland in March, including the Poetry Now International Poetry Festival in Ireland, The Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast, the Stanza Poetry Festival in Scotland and anthology launch events in Dublin and Cardiff . Details and links appear below, and as some are coming up in the next few days, so please scroll down by author.

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Maggie O’Dwyer is one of four  poets in the shortlist for the prestigious Rupert and Eithne Strong Awards for best first collection by an Irish poet in 2009.  A winner in the 2008 Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection Prizes with her pamphlet Yes, I’d love to Dance,  her first collection, Laughter heard from the Road, was launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival in Derbyshire,  November 2009. She will read at the DLR Poetry Now Festival Awards event on Sunday 28th March, where the winner will be announced.

Click here for a link to Maggie O’Dwyer’s work.

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Jane Weir is the  guest poet reading at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at  Queens University, Belfast on Thursday 11th March, from Walking the Block,  her pioneering and innovative poetic biography of the modernist textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, and from her current and previous work.

Jane Weir will also be reading at The White House, Limerick on  17th March.

Click here for a link to Jane Weir’s work.

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Paul Maddern , one of the winners in the 2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Prizes is reading tomorrow, Friday, March 5th,  at a Lunchbox Event at  The Seamus Heaney Centre where John Thompson, the retiring Head of the School of English at Queen’s University Belfast, is presenting a selection of his favourite texts. The event will include readings by Ciaran Carson, Sinead Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Glenn Patterson, Ian Sansom and Paul Maddern (Kelpdings, Templar Poetry, 2009).

Friday, March 5th @1.00pm.

53-61 Institute of Governance,

University Road,

Queen’s University

Belfast.

Paul Maddern will also be reading the next day, at  the Dublin launch of Landing Places, a new anthology of immigrant poetry in Ireland. Saturday @ 4.30pm, March 6th, Dublin City Hall, Dame St.

Click here for a link to Paul Maddern’s work.

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Pat Winslow,  Judge for the 2010 Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection Prizes, is reading in Oxford on 12^th March with R V Bailey, Kate Foley, Joy Howard and  Christine Webb,  Friday 12^th March 2010,6.30 – 8pm at:

The Jam Factory,

27 Park End St,

Oxford,

OX1 1HU

(Entrance through restaurant on Hollybush Row) Tel:01865 244613    http://www.patwinslow.uk/

Click here for a link to Pat Winslow’s work.

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Katrina Naomi, currently the first writer-in-residence at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire, has several readings coming up which can also be viewed on Katrina’s website.

Fri 5 March - reading at Ware Poets, Ware Arts Centre, Kibes Lane, Ware, Herts SG12, plus open mic – 8 pm £4/£2.50

Sat 6 March – reading poems based on modern day fairy tales at Book Club Boutique, Blacks, Dean Street, London W1 with Dzifa Benson and others – 3.30-6.30 pm

Sat 27 March – Poetry in the Crypt – reading with Joanna Boulter and Phil Kirby, St Mary’s Crypt, Upper St, Islington, London N1- 7 pm £4/£3 – includes cake! All proceeds to Hospice Care Kenya.

Click here for a link to Katrina Naomi’s work.

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Dawn Wood , whose first collection, Quarry, was shortlisted in the 2009 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, has a response to one of the poems from the collection, ‘The Silver Stag’, represented in a site specific installation featured in ‘Turn the corner – art in unexpected places’ exhibition at the Stanza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, 17th -21st March.

Click here for a link to Dawn Wood’s work.

Fanny Lam Christie’s work explores the complex relationship between the natural environment and human interventions in nature, and this scultpure installation questions where the balance of this complex relationship should be

http://www.fannychristie.com

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Simone Mansell Broome is very busy with several events in Wales, including the launch of a new anthology The Voice of Women in Wales on Wednesday 10th March 6 – 8pm. Booking details are available from suzy-barrett@wwnc.org.uk and full details of workshops hosted by Simone at Ceridwen, Drefach Felindre, Carmarthenshire, SA44 5XE over the weekend commencing 12^th March are posted on  http://simonemb.com/

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Cliff Forshaw is  pleased to announce his new website, and also suggests a few others which may be of interest:

http://versepalace.wordpress.com/

Hull University’s Larkin Centre for Poetry and Creative Writing,

http://www.hull.ac.uk/fass/department_of_english/the_larkin_centre.aspx

Flarestack Poets: http://www.flarestackpoets.co.uk/

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Sarah James is reading March 6, Droitwich Arts 4 All, Norbury Theatre, Droitwich, Worcs, at 2.35 along with a combined photography and poetry display, and offering a preview of her collection ‘Into the Yell’ to be published by Circaidy Gregory Press http://www.circaidygregory.co.uk in July.

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Helen Moore is reading at The Parlour, 97-99, Clerkenwell Rd, London, on Saturday 6th March sometime between 4-6pm, more information on http://welcometotheparlour.com/schedule.php and at the Garden Cafe, in Frome, Somerset, at 8pm on Monday March 8th as part of an International Women’s Day fundraising event.
Helen Moore – ecopoet, children’s author, community artist, Forest Schools practitioner
www.natures-words.co.uk/
www.bathforestschool.com/