Centre for Place Writing

Some of our highlights from 2024 include: Helen Mort's new book Ethel was pub & her appearance on Countryfile & Kendal Mtn Lit Fest. David Cooper's co-ed Handbook of Literary Geographies was pub. Kate Pahl led a brilliant new project working with young people, learning through trees. #PlaceWriting

First thing Monday morning: looking down Oxford Road from the School of English @manmetuni.bsky.social

The Sound of the Fens: wonderful BBC Open Country in which Martha Kearney visits Helpston & Fen Edge to explore how the landscape has changed since the days of John Clare. Features Francesca Mackenney discussing Clare’s soundscapes www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Recordings now available for those who missed this last week:

Tonight at 7.30pm on Radio 3, I’m talking to Dr Rachel Johnson and Lt-Col Lauren Petritz-Watts about music and the military

‘My memory of the seaside dissolves into the memories of the people in the photographs. And everything we need to know is in these small things we hold in our hands’: a typically brilliant piece of writing by @wildtwin.bsky.social

The @forwardprizes.bsky.social ceremony is well underway and the first winners have been announced. Congratulations to Biff Smith, winner of Best Single Poem (performed) with 'Dumbarton East' (Loud Poets), and to Tara Bergin, winner of Best Single Poem (written) with 'The Fear' (Stinging Fly)! 🎉

As we pause between the storms . . . Thomas Creswick (1811-69), ‘Morecambe Bay’ (Bolton Library & Museum Services).

‘The storm breaks down the day’s last hour./ It slams through trees in the neighbour’s garden/ like air mechanically displaced/ by compartments of another world sliding past/ this one’: from ‘Starcraft’ by Karen Solie.

Tickets are now available to book for the National Creative Writing Industry Day - 5th December - @manmetuni.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-nation...

Airing tomorrow on BBC Radio4 - also available to listen on demand - Michael Symmons Roberts' drama shines a light on Byron's poem 'Darkness'. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The John Parham Fellowship is a biennial award of £5,000 supporting innovative research in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Funded jointly by John Parham’s estate and ASLE-UKI, ECRs and those outside ft academic employment are especially encouraged to apply. asle.org.uk/awards/john-...

Sharon Nunoo and Morolake Dairo of MMU Fashion School will be running a workshop on Saturday - Navigating the UK Fashion Landscape, Insights for International Fashion Designers - details below: forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...

‘Across the Bay’ by the brilliant Lela Harris: part of ‘a remembered landscape series, inspired by’ the artist’s ‘wanderings around my home in the Lake District’ & - to my great delight - the cover of my new @livunipress.bsky.social book ‘Reading Place Writing’ lelaharris.co.uk

For the past few week's we've been banging on about our new podcast series Inside Anthony Burgess. The first series has now finished, but in this week's newsletter you can read all about it, find out how to listen, and start your Burgess journey anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/inside-ant...

On Friday at Hyde Park Book Club. Tom Branfoot with @jrcarpenter.bsky.social and David Dobson. Book launch for Volatile. #PoetrySky www.hydeparkbookclub.co.uk/art-lit-zine...

Sharon Nunoo and Morolake Dairo of MMU Fashion School will be running a workshop on Saturday - Navigating the UK Fashion Landscape, Insights for International Fashion Designers - details below: forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...

TONIGHT! Dame Carol Ann Duffy and Friends - an evening of music, poetry & conversation with Writing School alumni (including CPW PGR Tom Branfoot with work from his new poetry collection Volatile). 6.30pm at Manchester Poetry Library. www.mmu.ac.uk/poetry-libra...

The John Parham Fellowship is a biennial award of £5,000 supporting innovative research in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Funded jointly by John Parham’s estate and ASLE-UKI, ECRs and those outside ft academic employment are especially encouraged to apply. asle.org.uk/awards/john-...

Andrew Biswell in discussion with Dr Ida Baizura Bahar, Universiti Putra Malaysia, about the cultural and religious politics of The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess. This is the first episode in a new podcast series, Inside Anthony Burgess. www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/i...

TONIGHT!

All the talk of a new Beatles attraction in Liverpool has reminded me that, a few years back, I wrote about the history of St John’s Beacon & my childhood memories of the tower as an ‘extraterrestrial lighthouse’ in the centre of the city www.routledge.com/From-the-Lig...

In the new INSIDE ANTHONY BURGESS and we're anticipating the forthcoming new edition of Napoleon Symphony (out 6/11/26!) Burgess takes on old Boney in an experimental, linguistically rich, and funny historical epic Subscribe at all podcast platforms or here: www.anthonyburgess.org/podcasts/ins...

One of Anthony Burgess's favourite films! We wrote about it in our series on Burgess and Cinema (to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange - we had been watching a lot of films around 2021. Can't think why...): www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/a...

On Friday at Hyde Park Book Club. Tom Branfoot with @jrcarpenter.bsky.social and David Dobson. Book launch for Volatile. #PoetrySky www.hydeparkbookclub.co.uk/art-lit-zine...

Excellent article on the book scam industry by an expert in the field.

Tomorrow - Wednesday - in Sheffield @sheff.events

We're excited to see @helenmort.bsky.social poetry translated into giant florescent climbing holds at Leeds University! From Helen's poem 'Prayer' - part of her No Map Could Show Them collection - & dedicated to Alison Hargreaves, you can read more here: helenmort.substack.com/p/is-it-a-po...

Applications now invited to join the editorial boards of two @royalhistsoc.org publications: our journal 'Transactions' and the 'New Historical Perspectives' book series for early career historians bit.ly/47rl76A Closing date: Monday 4 December 2026 #Skystorians

Poetry with Helen Mort and Katharine Towers Wednesday 21st October, 2026 at 7:00 pm - Millennium Gallery University of Sheffield. @helenmort.bsky.social offtheshelf.org.uk/events/poetr...

My essay on early firearms is now up @aeon.co

Its inktober (quite some way in!) and this morning I realised I havent touched this, or anything, for over a year. I'd really like to finish it, so aiming for some movement for the rest of this month. Grief and dying steal from you, and there are things to reclaim.

I think maybe if youre broken, and life breaks us all, that the aim is not to be mended, back to where we were. I think maybe it is to let the fractures widen. To let out flocks of birds and old records. To cry at gigs. To become softer and wider. To parcel up what we know and gently give it away.

‘Let my eyes at the last be blinded/ Not by the dark/ But by the dazzle’ (Norman Nicholson, ‘Sea to the West’): the Mersey from Otterspool.

Book launch: ‘The Architecture of Connection’ by Jen Orpin @themodernist.bsky.social on Thursday, 22 October, 18:00-20:00 the-modernist.org/blogs/news/t...

We're excited to see @helenmort.bsky.social poetry translated into giant florescent climbing holds at Leeds University! From Helen's poem 'Prayer' - part of her No Map Could Show Them collection - & dedicated to Alison Hargreaves, you can read more here: helenmort.substack.com/p/is-it-a-po...

This Sunday with Lancaster Lit Fest - The Book of Bogs with Anna Chilvers and Clare Shaw. dukeslancaster.org/whats-on/the...

On this week's newsletter, Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange) visits ‘the jewel of Catalonia’. Find out what he thinks of Barcelona, its Gaudí masterpieces, and what happens when he goes looking for George Orwell. Subscribe for FREE: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/homage-to-...

This Sunday with Lancaster Lit Fest - The Book of Bogs with Anna Chilvers and Clare Shaw. dukeslancaster.org/whats-on/the...

Great observation on the importance of human engagement in research (and read the whole thread for findings on why people leave academia)

This week on INSIDE ANTHONY BURGESS, we’re looking into One Hand Clapping, Burgess’s 1961 satire about consumerism and television. Subscribe to INSIDE ANTHONY BURGESS wherever you prefer to get your podcasts or here: www.anthonyburgess.org/podcasts/ins...

Am quoted in this Times Higher piece on the closure of Free Thinking, where the AHRC also confirms that the New Generation Thinkers scheme is being paused.

I'm part of a sound installation conjuring the waterscapes of the River Irk at Islington Mill next week - come along! www.eventbrite.com/e/two-worlds...

The Roots of Race and Class Divisions in Britain and the Caribbean - book review in the @lsereviewofbooks.bsky.social from Jodie Matthews: blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...

19th Nov - Alice McMahon Measom & Michelle Ravenscroft introduce you to Victorian novelist & Portico Library member who myth made the Pendle Witches. William Harrison Ainsworth, the Forgotten Manchester Myth Maker – talk for Portico Library’s Witches and Healers. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/william-ha...

19th Nov - Alice McMahon Measom & Michelle Ravenscroft introduce you to Victorian novelist & Portico Library member who myth made the Pendle Witches. William Harrison Ainsworth, the Forgotten Manchester Myth Maker – talk for Portico Library’s Witches and Healers. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/william-ha...

The Roots of Race and Class Divisions in Britain and the Caribbean - book review in the @lsereviewofbooks.bsky.social from Jodie Matthews: blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...

I came away to a house on the moor and brought some friends with me. A book about stones. A book about paths. And from Hookland, a book about everything. @hookland.bsky.social very kindly send me a Right to Reside and I brought that too, just in case. The wind here is strong. Who know what it moves.

Publishing news

A good night for for the moors.

Coming up later this year @drdavidcooper.bsky.social will be celebrating the publication of his book Reading Place Writing: Geography, Form, Immersion 2010-2020 with a launch event with Jean Sprackland on 3rd December at Manchester Poetry Library. Book your place here: www.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-eve...