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The Life of Language, Spring Festival: Competition Adjudication, workshops and readings – Thursday 24th and Friday 25th May. There will be workshops with Kate Foley and Fiona Sampson, plus 1 other (tbc), guest readings and open mic, and the competition adjudication readings from Fiona Sampson and our competition winner. Watch this space for a possible extra reading on the wednesday evening…
Holland House Residential week in Cropthorne, Worcestershire: Monday 13th to Friday 17th August. Tutors Mimi Khalvati and Myra Schneider, plus Mystery Guest…
Special event: Homage to Sylvia Plath. Wednesday 5th September, 8pm at the Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank. A Poetry Library ‘Special Edition’ event.
Autumn Festival: Friday 23rd & Saturday 24th November. Workshops and readings. At the Art Workers Guild, near Russell Square in London.
The mail-out took place at the end of November 2011. If you haven’t received your copy, please do let us know.
The submission guidelines for Issue 8 are here.
Our judge was Fiona Sampson. Over 1,000 entries were received. The winning and commended poems will appear in full or extract in Issue 8 of ARTEMISpoetry, due out in May 2012, and the adjudication reading will take place during the Spring Festival 2012, which will take place over Thursday and Friday 24th and 25th May.
Results:
1st Prize, Long Poem Category: For Ever, Daphne Gloag
1st Prize, Short Poem Category: At the Beaumont Hamel Memorial, France, Moya Pacey
2nd Prize, Painting on Vellum, Hilary Jenkins
3rd Prize, The Night Ship, Clare Crossman
Commended:
Sun in an Empty Room, Pat Borthwick
After Hearing a Psalm, Anne Cluysenaar
The Tenderness of Men, Rose Flint
Coming in Late, A Sequence, Kate Foley
Just Because You Wear those Ridiculous Clothes, Selima Hill
Coming down from the turbulent light, Caroline Natzler
Chambermaids Lizzie King and Nellie, Jane Routh
Burn, Jane Routh
Battle, Susan Skinner
Tatania’s Visit, Kay Syrad
Runners-up:
Where Old Languages Go to Die, Ann Alexander
Wondering About God, Dorothy Baird
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), Caroline Cook
Knight Move, Wendy French
The Wax Man, Elizabeth Horsley
Shadow, Frances-Anne King
Trace, Frances-Anne King
Kiarostami’s Snows, Maria Jastrzebska
A Man and His Music, Gill Learner
Nochebuena in Exile, Puebla 1965, Marina Sanchez
Allihies, Kay Syrad
Choughs at Botallack, Glynda Winterson
Second Light is pleased to continue management of this fund, whose purpose is to assist members on low income, and their travelling companions if required, to attend Second Light events by way of providing a modest sum towards travelling costs. The fund was started with a generous donation from the family of Mary MacRae, a fine poet and, until her death in 2009, an enthusiastic and supportive member of Second Light. For more details or to apply, see Second Light Mary MacRae ‘Access to Poetry’ Fund.
Members may send details of poetry competitions in which they are the judge or organiser. 60 word para of text please, via the online submit here.
We returned to the Art Workers Guild in Queen Square, London for two full days of workshops and readings with a very fine line-up of tutors (Gillian Allnutt, Mimi Khalvati, Fiona Sampson and Myra Schneider) and readers (Gillian Allnutt, Elizabeth Burns, Jane Duran and Mimi Khalvati, with Kaye Lee, Maggie Norton, Linda Rose Parkes and Belinda Singleton) and 2 open mic sessions for participants.
A fun time was had by all… We must remember to take photos next time!
Our 2011 residential week took place at Holland House, with an extra day this year for more writing time. Myra Schneider and Penelope Shuttle kept us busy with their usual dynamism – all we had to do was try to keep up!
The focus was on ‘The Five Senses’ so there are now some very vibrant and/or smelly poems out there…
Our surpise guest, Joy Howard, turned us into editors for a morning and gave us some rather intriguing insights into what might happen to all those poems we send out – a lively and fiery discussion ensued!
As always, all who attended gave a reading and the variety and calibre of the poems was amazing. We clearly attract poets who are intent on writing the very best work.
Some poems by participants will be collated into the ‘Holland Haul’ Issue 2 and will be circulated to all Second Light members with the next issue of ARTEMISpoetry.
Second Light member, Nikki Bennett, organised 2 days of workshops & readings at the BRLSI in the historic city of Bath. A lovely venue, and the two workshops, led by Myra Schneider and Dilys Wood, stimulated some very exciting writing. The Why Sonnet? talk was also well received and Second Light has been asked to return with further events in the future. We’d love to!
Many thanks to all our readers and to all of you who came to the launch. It was nice to see a full house and to have such an attentive audience. The first half of the event was recorded by the Poetry Library for their digital archive so it should be available to listen to at their www.poetrymagazines.org.uk site around July 2011.
Another inspiring and fun event at the Art Workers Guild in London, including Myra Schneider’s adjudication of the Second Light Poetry Competition 2010, with readings by winners, commended and shortlisted poets; workshops by Myra Schneider, Kate Foley and Pascale Petit; readings by Sue MacIntyre, Gill McEvoy, Lyn Moir and Myra Schneider, plus an Open Mic for Second Light members.
Myra Schneider’s workshop looked at The Potency of Visions and Dreams and Kate Foley’s workshop, Touching the Bear, invited us to look at the wild and surprising aspects of our creativity. Pascale Petit’ had us working with artwork images… there were some quite amazing results in all three workshops; certainly dozens of poems were begun in these 2 days, as is so often the case when Second Light members get together.
Second festival day – workshops with Wendy French and Myra Schneider, again, very well-attended and excellent workshops,readings from recent collections by Angela France and June Hall, followed by Second Light at the Lumen Poetry Series, presented by Ruth O’Callaghan, with readings by Second Light members.
The first of two full-day Autumn festivals – workshops with Fiona Sampson and Penelope Shuttle, Anne Stewart read from her new collection The Janus Hour, and Second Light launched a posthumous second collection of poetry by Mary MacRae, Inside the Brightness of Red.
All went well – the launch of Mary’s book was extremely well-attended, with standing room only available towards the start of the reading. Please do order the book, if you haven’t already acquired it, at
Inside the Brightness of Red order form.
Two full days of workshops and readings, and the 2009 Second Light Poetry Competition adjudication event. The three workshops (with Katherine Gallagher, Pascale Petit & Myra Schneider) were inspirational!
Pauline Stainer, the judge of the 2009 competition presented an interesting and informative talk on the poems she chose and the winners, commended and shortlisted poets gave us a very fine reading, as did Pauline herself and our main readers on Saturday evening, which included launch readings from new books by Katherine Gallagher, Maria Jastrzębska, Lyn Moir and Caroline Natzler.
The fast-becoming-traditional All Comers! reading by any Second Light members who wished to read was amazingly varied – and even more amazingly came in under time(!), which enabled us to force Dilys Wood onto the stage to give us a reading of her wonderful sonnet sequence written for Mimi Khalvati.
A wonderfully successful 3 day residential event… Tutors Myra Schneider and Penelope Shuttle ran stimulating and productive workshops on Myth (Myra) and War (Penelope). It is noticeably liberating to spend some quality time with fellow poets, particularly when all are feisty older women! Members of Second Light will receive a booklet of poems, the Holland Haul, arising from this event, courtesy of our willing volunteer editor, Penny Hewlett.
Holland House is a lovely venue for groups of around 30 people. We were well looked after, with very good food and comfortable rooms. The house itself is in beautiful grounds with a path down to the river and various gardens. More on their web-site.
When we ran an event to celebrate the work of Mary MacRae on 11th December 09, we had a full house and a very memorable evening. Mimi Khalvati, Myra Schneider, Lucy Hamilton, Nadine Brummer & Dilys Wood, plus many of Mary’s friends and colleagues, gave very moving readings from Mary’s work, and shared their own poems about her and their remembrances. It’s good to know that her work will continue to be read.
A festival of readings and workshops celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Second Light Network, took place at The Art Workers in London. Thanks to an Arts Council grant, a small number of Bursaries was made available and it was a real pleasure to be able to accommodate some participants who otherwise may not have been able to attend.
The ‘Fifty’ element in the title is ‘fifty years of the rise and rise of women’s poetry’. So what was beginning to take off in 1959? It’s difficult to pin-point a base year when women began to find the inspiration, not simply to pursue the lone woman artist road, but to feel themselves part of a highly charged large-scale movement.
In 1959, Sylvia Plath wrote some remarkable, now well-known poems, including "The Bee-Keeper’s Daughter", "The Colossus" and "Mushrooms". The imaginative power and raw assertion in these poems energised many women writers. It was the beginning of a certain kind of female-artist self-awareness which had to be renewed many times but in the end there was exponential progress.
One of our ways of celebrating was to include in the rich festival line-up a reading by the very distinguished poet, Anne Stevenson, one of the poets whose development has spanned over fifty years, and what an inspirational reading it was! We are delighted she agreed to participate in the festival, along with R V Bailey, Alison Brackenbury, Katherine Gallagher, Caroline Price, Mimi Khalvati, Myra Schneider, Lynne Wycherley and many others…
A great time was had by all, sell out readings and workshops. Romanian participant, Elena Nistor, had her camera to hand…
 Maggie shows Joan how the coat fits … |
 "and in this one here, look…" |
 Something funny this way comes? |
 Discussing the finer points… |
 Cornwall meets Normandie; Penelope and Kay talk shop |
 Katherine takes the throne… Elena (on her right) directs the shot |
The competition was Judged by Myra Schneider, a prolific poet and regular tutor of workshops and courses. As Scintilla is no longer running a poetry competition, and as we think it is important for women poets to have an outlet for long poems, Second Light introduced a long poem category to its competition this year.
An extract of the First Prize-winner in the Long Poem category and the winning poem in the Short Poem category, appear in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 5. Issue 6 includes more of the winning and runner-up poems (or extracts from long poems).
Adjudication Report:
This year over 1,200 poems were sent in to the Second Light Competition. It was very exciting to judge because there was such a range of subject matter and much ambitious writing. There were poems about world issues, politics, war and social problems. There were contemplative poems, witty poems, poems with a high emotional charge and poems drawing in a fascinating way on historical and literary material. It was a challenge to make decisions because of the mixture, for the first time, of long and short poems, because of the hugely different approaches and also because the standard of entries was so high. About 300 poems had to be considered very carefully and of these there were many I was sorry to reject because they had much to recommend them. I feel that the poems I finally picked out reflect how marvellously well women poets are writing today.
Myra Schneider
Results:
1st Prize, Long Poem Category: Clay, Anne Cluysenaar
1st Prize, Short Poem Category: Mermaid Andie Lewenstein
Joint 2nd & 3rd Prizes: Sand Pictures, Caroline Price; kite and flyer, Elisabeth Rowe
Read the Poems
Highly Commended:
The Bending Moment, Jill Dawson
The Lady Who Is Not For Turning, June Hall
Commended:
The Seahorse Man, Margaret Speak
Enter, Rose Flint
A Fox Assisted Cure, Kate Foley
Philip Larkin In The Laundrette, Doreen Hinchliffe
Handover, Emily Hinshelwood
Assimilation, Jane MacLaughlin
Power-Surge, Isobel Thrilling
New Homes, Sarah Westcott
Shortlisted:
Down To Portsmouth, Kate Foley
Unconditional Life, Cora Greenhill
Handhold, Justina Hart
Whatnot, Jo Heather
The Love Of Wood, Penelope Hewlett
California Day, Wendy Klein
Letter To An Ancestor, Gill Learner
Portrait Of A Child…, Jane MacLaughlin
La Matelote, Alwyn Marriage
Hand In Hand, Lyn Moir
23 To Liverpool Street, Caroline Price
Hoopoes, Elisabeth Rowe
Words, Shelley Tracy
Two Men, Sarah Westcott
and poems deserving a special mention:
Mollusc, Patricia Bloom; Home and Warning, Pat Borthwick; Winter Journey, Susanne Ehrhardt; Lir, Angela France; When the Lamp Oil was Spilt, Jenny Hamlett; In the Dining Room, Jo Hemmant; The Lodestar of the Upper VI, Gill Learner; How We Would Talk, Denise McSheehy; Mildred, Geraldine Paine; Wild Heaven, Elisabeth Rowe; Secondaries, Sibyl Ruth; Our House, Maggie Sawkins; Life Class, Belinda Singleton; Cure for Bee Stings, Margaret Speak; Young Girl with a Tree in her Brain, Marion Tracy
The Judge is Pauline Stainer, whose latest collection, Crossing the Snowline (Bloodaxe 2008), has been received with acclaim by reviewers. We included a review in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 1 and Pauline kindly read for Second Light at the Autumn Festival 2008, following up with a workshop at the May 2009 event.
The winning poems, along with poems which were commended or shortlisted, are published in ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 5, which came out in May 2010 and many of the poets, including the winners, read their poems at the adjudication event at the Spring 2010 May Madness Festival.
Results:
1st prize: Lynne Wycherley, The Lightning-Horse
2nd prize: Margaret Wilmot, Hermetic
3rd prize: Kay Syrad, "Registering their flora,/their fauna"
Read the Poems
Commended:
Suzanne Burrows, The Horses and Crossing the Bridge
Anne Cluysenaar, The Pear-tree
Kate Foley, Heart Surgery
Clare Holtham, The Jerwood Library
Pippa Little, Acrobat
M R Peacocke, The greeting
Marion Tracy, Nest and Bipolar
Jenny Vuglar, This Morning
Shortlisted:
Ann Alexander, Cabbage Cutters Wanted. Basic English. Night or Day
Dorothy Baird, 29 April
Ann Boileau, Within its Time and Frame
H Coffey, On Ivory
Margaret Eddershaw, Queen of the Tightrope
Jacqueline Gabbitas, Grass discovers metempsychosis
Mavis Howard, Nature
Gill Learner, Resurrection
Helen Loselock-Burke, Clouds on the Blackthorn
Sue MacIntyre, Interior, 1893 and A Wine Glass Half Full of Milk
Jane McLaughlin, Crossings
Rosemary McLeish, Handless Bride
Nancy Mattson, Learning the Letter Щ and Compasses: a Triptych
Caroline Natzler, Paper place
Elizabeth Rowe, Blue
K V Skene, Why I Wasn’t Listening
Dorothy Yamomoto, The button box Tiger hunt
Judge, Gillian Clarke, announced her selections just in time for a sneak preview of the winners’ list at the Autumn Festival. The winning and other poems were published in ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 2, in May 09.
Results:
1st prize: Eleanor Livingstone, Snow Hare;
2nd prize: Anne Wigley, Learning to Swim
3rd prize: Sheila Wild, Shiant Wife
Runners up:
Alison Brackenbury, Great-Great
Wendy Klein, Kid Gloves
Gill Learner, Counted Out
Pat Marum, The Insect Parlour
Lyn Moir, Ice Dream
Gillian Moyes, Norah
Isobel Thrilling, Last Day
Nicola Warwick, The Iceman’s Wife
Shortlisted:
Hilaire, The Colonel’s Daughter’s House
Claudia Jessop, Hope
Carlotta Johnston, Wild Grass Mull
Thelma Laycock, The Sash
Gill Learner, Through and Through
Gill Learner, A Descent from Mount Olympus
Eleanor Livingstone, The Soul
Lyn Moir, Juanjo, The Guggenheim, Me
Jennie Osborne, Quantum
Diana Pritchard, Barefoot in the Snow
Kate Rhodes, Details
Gillian Clarke is President of Ty Newydd, the writers’ centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990, tutor on the M.Phil in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and the current National Poet for Wales. Her poetry is studied for GCSE and A Level throughout Britain. Recent books include Making the Beds for the Dead, 2004, a prose collection, and At The Source, 2008. A new collection, A Recipe for Water, is due in 2009.
