Alumi News – keeping up with our poets
24th September 2013
We’re always keen to hear what our graduates are up to – we miss you! – so if you studied creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and have writing news to share in our alumni updates (or if you just want to say hi) drop us an email at alumni@newwriting.org. Meanwhile, here’s news of what some former students are up to on the poetry front:
MA students were treated at induction to a brilliant poetry film, There is Nothing in the Garden, made by Helen Dewberry and UoG MA graduate Chaucer Cameron. The good news is that there’s more of their work showing soon at the Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival, on National Poetry Day – Thursday, 3rd October. The bad news is that the festival’s in Bristol, at the Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Arts. But if you live in Bristol, or fancy visiting for the day, Chaucer and Helen will be screening three films as part of the festival: The Shipwright’s Love Song, Take Me to the City, and Sloat Thrit.
On the subject of poetry, thanks and congratulations to the latest additions to our alumni hall of fame: Lesley Ingram and Anna Saunders. Lesley is a graduate from the University of Gloucestershire MA in Creative and Critical Writing. She has been published in various places including Mslexia, The Flea, Dead Ink, iota, Under the Radar, Writers Abroad and Angle and her first collection will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2015. She won the 2013 Ludlow Fringe Poetry competition.
Meanwhile, Anna Saunders, also an MA graduate, has written two collections of poetry and launched a poetry festival. Her first collection, Communion, published by Wild Conversations Press was praised for its ‘lush imagery and music’ by Nigel McLoughlin and as ‘moving poems of flesh and spirit, from ears…finely tuned’, by Alison Brackenbury. Anna’s second collection, Struck, will be available from Pindrop Press in March 2014. Struck has been described as ‘a bold and beautiful collection’ by Flarestack author David Clarke and as full of ‘dazzling and intoxicating images’ by award winning poet James Knox Whittet. Anna is also the founder and executive director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival, which was described as a ‘triumph’ when it was launched, and which continues to go from strength to strength.