talkwrite

The Reader Organisation presents

‘Words and Images’ Readers Day

in partnership with The Brindley

Sat 13 June | 9.30pm - 4pm | £20, £15 OAP & Student, £12 Unemployed & Leisure
Card | Lunch Included.

THE READER ORGANISATION is a charity dedicated to bringing about a Reading

Revolution - we are making it possible for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities
to enjoy and engage with books on a deep and personal level. Discover your own way
of bringing books to life by visiting our website www.thereader.org.uk where you can
sign up to our newsletter and find information about our highly acclaimed Get into
Reading project, Read to Lead training, our quarterly magazine The Reader and our
unique programme of reading events.

09.30 - 10.00: Doors open, guests arrive, register - tea and coffee

10.00 - 10.45: Introduction and panel discussion:

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We all know that first question which comes out of everyone’s lips after going to see
an adaptation of a much loved classic in the cinema. Hosted by Jane Davis, Director of The
Reader Organisation, guest writers Clare Allan and artist Viv Levy come together to reflect
upon the relationship between words and images, each considering that age-old question of
how visual art relates and compares to the written word.

Sharing their own experiences of films and books, our speakers will recommend films
that have been inspired by books and books that have been inspired by films.

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10.45 - 11.00: Tea and coffee break

11.00 - 12.30: Morning workshops (choose one of the options below):

AM1 AM2 AM3 AM4

Strange Writing What happens Pictures in
poems for Photographs: when words Your Head
Strange Times and pictures
Close up, wide get together? A workshop with
Is it Possible to angled or slightly The Reader
Write a Poem About blurred: a poetry A workshop with Organisation’s
Anything? workshop Director Jane
writer Clare
with Angela Allan and artist Davis in which we
This is a chance
to read a range MacMillan, Viv Levy, who will talk about what
of contemporary where readers are currently happens when
poems with local will consider a collaborating on a we read a story.
poet Rebecca Goss,
addressing the weird
variety of poems novel told by a dog. Nothing to read in
written in response The session advance - Jane will
and the wonderful.
to looking at offers a chance to bring a surprise
In a relaxed photographs; explore the ways short story on the
atmosphere come including work by day!
in which text and
and discuss poems Thomas Hardy,
you may not have image can impact
seen before and Les Murray, on each other and
discover images of Sharon Olds and includes a first ever
startling originality. Douglas Dunn reading from the
work-in-progress.

12.30 - 1.30: Lunch with screen showing of locally produced film in the Studio as
follows:

1.00pm: ‘Screen Play’ A Further Stages Film Project

Studio | Free Event

Following a ten week series of workshops co-ordinated by Arts Development on the

art and craft of screen acting which was held at The Brindley at the end of 2008. A
group of 9 people completed the making of short films written by local writers. All the
participants of the project are from Halton and most of them are newcomers to either
acting or scriptwriting.

The group is facilitated by professional actors Louise Nulty and Jacqueline Pilton
who also directs pieces alongside Runcorn film-maker Hayley Evans. The film scripts
include a satirical family situation, the story of a mysterious woman in a mental health
hospital and a 21st century ‘Likely Lads’ tale. Funded and supported by Arts
Development.

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1.30 - 2.00: Join us in The Reading Cure panel - books on prescription!

Is there something troubling you? A friend in a difficult situation? You don’t have to
speak personally, or even factually – feel free to make a problem up - and you don’t have to
speak up, as problems can be written down and posted to the panel in advance if you’d prefer.
Books can sometimes help, so give us a try…
Problem: “I just feel really lost in life lately - lacking in any direction. I don’t know what
I want out of life and don’t really know who I am. I need a book that will really open my eyes
and make me see how I might begin to feel a bit better about myself really”
Book recommendation: “Try reading Daniel Deronda by George Eliot - a book that will certainly
fulfil your yearning for direction and take you on a journey of another person’s self-discovery
to boot!”
Panel members will aim to answer your problems by recommending novels and
poems which might help.

2.00 - 2.15 Tea & Coffe Break

2.15 - 3.45: Afternoon workshops (choose one of the options below):

PM1 PM2 PM3 PM4

Making a Poem Wilde, Words The Language Beauty is Truth,
and Images of Painting Truth Beauty
Join local poet
Rebecca Goss in Using extracts A friendly This workshop
a series of word from The Picture exploration with will look at writing
games that will of Dorian Gray as Mark Till into the the visual in the
lead to you writing its starting point, related realms company of the
your own poem. Casi Dylan leads of painting and great Romantic
The exercises a workshop that literature – pictures John Keats and
will explore will explore the that paint a others. Come and
spontaneous power of Wildean thousand words, delight in poetic
reactions to a imagery, and such as Géricault’s beauty with Ella
variety of words discuss if and how ‘Raft of the Jolly in a relaxed
and images, the author’s literary Medusa’ and Van and friendly
providing that aestheticism Gogh’s ‘Wheatfield atmosphere
creative kick start. relates to ideas of with Crows’; and
beauty, morality, words that paint a
No previous and the tension thousand pictures,
writing experience between the visible such as Virginia’s
necessary and the hidden Woolf’s To the
self. Lighthouse and
Saul Bellow’s
Herzog – seeking
to answer the
question, “Which is
mightier: the pen
or the brush?”

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3.45 - 4.00: Raffle and final reading

No event organised by THE READER ORGANISATION is complete
without a raffle! The day ends with an enthusiastic and powerful
reading by Jane Davis

List of Guest Speakers for Readers’ Day

Clare Allan’s first novel, Poppy Shakespeare (2006) was shortlisted for the Guardian First
Book Award, the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Mind Book of the Year award. It
was also dramatised for Channel 4. She writes a regular column for Guardian Society on
matters relating to mental health and is currently collaborating with artist Viv Levy on a
novel told by a dog.

Jane Davis is the Director of The Reader Organisation. Jane works to make The Reader
Organisation a nationally recognised charity, pioneering its cause for a reading revolu-
tion across the country, dedicated to making great literature available to all. Her reading
interests are vast and various, some of her favourite writers including George Eliot, Doris
Lessing, and the poet George Herbert.

Casi Dylan is Training Manager for The Reader Organisation. Through this she promotes
the Get Into Reading model all over the country. She is currently reading Charles Bu-
kowski and Will Self in an attempt to get to know more contemporary fiction, as her tastes
tend to swing towards the great novels of the 19th century.

Rebecca Goss grew up in Suffolk and now lives in Liverpool. Her pamphlet collection
was published by Slow Dancer Press and her poems have appeared in many magazines
including Ambit, Stand, The Reader, Mslexia and Magma. Her reading interests include
the work of Raymond Carver and the American short story, and she is ‘never without a col-
lection of contemporary poems in [her] handbag.’

Ella Jolly is The Reader Organisation’s Reader-in-Residence for Bibby Line Group. Her
favourite book tends to be the one she’s currently reading (Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand
Central Station I Sat Down And Wept at the moment) but it is poetry which steals her
heart, and she particularly loves E. E. Cummings, Shakespeare and Fernando Pessoa.

Viv Levy is a graduate of St Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where
she subsequently worked as a visiting tutor in sculpture and drawing. She has shown work
at the Royal Academies in London and Bristol and has had solo shows in smaller venues.
She has fulfilled public and private commissions and has published a book on life drawing.

Angela Macmillan taught English Literature for Continuing Education courses for many
years. She is co-editor of The Reader and a project worker for Get Into Reading. George
Eliot and Charles Dickens are favourite novelists and one of her most revisited poems is
Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Mark Till works as an Arts Administration Intern for The Reader Organisation. As well as
literature, he enjoys many different arts – music, film, painting, sculpture – without actu-
ally being able to do any of them. But he can play chess, golf, snooker and tennis to an
impressively bad standard.

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