Meet the Poet: Wendy Cope

FRIDAY 8 November 7.30pm £12, Tower Mill (Heart of Hawick), Kirkstile, Hawick, TD9 0AE MEET THE POET: WENDY COPE Heart of Hawick and The Eildon Tree Magazine present a unique opportunity to hear renowned poet Wendy Cope. Since her highly acclaimed poetry collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Faber and Faber 1986), Wendy Cope has been at the forefront of the British poetry scene. A winner of the Cholmondeley Award in 1987, other publications include Serious Concerns (Faber 1992), the Whitbread Poetry Award shortlisted If I Don’t Know (Faber 2001) and Cures for Love (Faber 2008). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, in 1998 she was listeners’ choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. Wendy Cope’s incisive, funny and often heart wrenching verse justifies her National Treasure status. She was awarded an OB E in 2010. For tickets, phone 01450 360688.

Oliver Eade's Book Launch at Melrose

Nottingham Writers' Club Short Story Competition

The Nottingham Writers' Club are holding their first National writing competition. It’s for a short story up to 2,000 words, in any genre, on the theme of emotion which they've chosen because it’s an easy one for new and less experienced writers to enter. Full details are on the website www.nottinghamwritersclub.org.uk.

National Tell-a-Story Day on 25th October

Tell-a-Story Day on 25th October is our national day to celebrate oral storytelling, when people make, share and listen to stories in any venue that'll have someone do so.

There are suggestions for running an event and a pack of free posters from the Scottish Storytelling Centre, short stories for kids and things they might like to make and free publicity if we wanted to run a storytelling event (perhaps something for next year ?) 

Everybody Writes Day is on 21st October

Everybody Writes Day was a four-year writing project partnership between Booktrust and the National Literacy Trust, funded by the Department for Education that ended in 2011.

It was aimed at stimulating pupils in primary and secondary schools to become more interested in writing not just across the curriculum but outside the classroom too. There are a lot of resources for schools.

Many of those pupils will now have left school.

The word 'everybody' includes pre-school and adults too, so quite why the Booktrust, Scottish Book Trust and the National Literacy Trust haven't sought to be more inclusive mystifies me.

Perhaps they would say that because it's not being funded they can't afford to be more inclusive.

I think that's silly.

They don't need to be any more active than putting a sentence on their website and in their newsletters encouraging everybody to write for Everybody Writes Day on 21st October.

Therefore, let's hijack Everybody Writes Day from those unimaginative organisations and declare that it's for everyone !

Ronnie Price Talk

In association with Friends of Kelso Library

Kelso Library Contact Centre

Presents

A Talk by

Ronnie Price

About the Morgan Winner at Le Mans: The Story of the TOK258

 Tuesday 22 October

7:15pm

Kelso Library Contact Centre

Bowmont Street

Kelso

01573 223171

Silver Collection

Poetry Workshops at Duns and Hawick

 Julian Colton is running free poetry workshops at 5.30pm on 22 October at Hawick Library and 23 October at Duns Library.

Booking essential on 01750 726400.

Session 2

Session 2 of the writers' course which is to be held Tuesday afternoon 2.30pm - 4.30pm at the Abbey Row Community Centre, Kelso will look at ways to help begin stories. We will look at the exercise we did in Session 1 to give us some inspiration! Look forward to meeting up again.