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Thanks to all those poets who turned out to the Oldham Failsworth poetry event who made it such a warm and fun filled evening. (That front row of kids - they should be hired to heckle hosts right, they did it so well!)

It was the kind of event where the beginnings of great things can be felt. There was a mixture of experienced and new poets, and of polished material and new writing being tried out. I was particularly pleased with the asurance of the new poets - one of them had never taken to the stage before to read and he really did well.

Migration to the UK is a story that goes back to Roman times and beyond. The Irish Potato Famine, the flight of the Huguenots from France, and William The Conqueror’s invitation to Jewish people to settle in Britain are just some of the narratives along the timeline.

More recently, the British Empire connected colonised countries to the ‘mothercountry’, two World Wars saw substantial European populations settle in the UK, and the expanding European Union brought further migrations.

2008 Competition Deadline Passed. Results due latest January 2009

The search is on to find the best budding novelist in the North West in our latest competition for long fiction writers!

This time we are searching for the best three opening chapters from a previously unpublished novelist.

The winner will get £250 and their own writing mentor to help them get their novel completed.

Six other promising novelists identified through the competition will be provided with significant assistance with their novel.

A brief update on our guests from Callaloo Magazine. Ten writers met up with Charles (and Marcus) who explained what they were looking for. Callaloo is a USA based literary magazine. They want t make it an international one. They visited Manchester to build contacts and solicit creative work. Here's the info from them...

I looked at the poems/pieces I wrote while in Pakistan and found these. Can either of them be moulded into a classical shape? (PS I showed them to Martin via his comments section - so you can check his comments on them via his blog.

1.
Grey trees spider the grey skyline
Mr Mehmood’s cell phone battery is fading.
He speaks quickly in 3 languages

2.
A bird whistles an evening chorus.
The rope bed sighs as I shift a limb.
Somewhere in UK it is raining.

The winner of this competition was this Course's very own Yvonne McCalla, with her poem, Overspread. Perhaps she will post it here? Congratulations Yvonne!

Poem Search.

Manchester's growth as the first industrial city is inextricably bound up with the slave trade. The cotton that fed Manchester's mills was slave picked cotton. I am looking for poems that can address this theme - head on, or obliquely! If you have such a poem let me know! peterkalu@gmail.com