Wednesday 24 October 2012


A Room of One's Own



As you may know, we are currently in the process of setting up What's Your Story?  a series of free creative writing workshops to be held in Liverpool.  One of the weekly sessions will take place in the city centre and the other is going to be held in Croxteth, at Communiversity's new Creative Campus.
I hadn't been to Communiversity before, so last week I  paid them a long-overdue visit.  I had the real pleasure of meeting Sheila Sweeney and Phil Knibb, the two inspirational people who have worked so hard to make Communiversity a reality.  They've done a fantastic job with the place.  it's an amazing community resource and a real testament to what communities can achieve when they pull together.

I'm going to be running the What's Your Story workshops from their new Creative Campus and I can't wait to get started.  Phil and Sheila have provided a beautifully designed, fully refurbished building for our use, which includes a teaching room, theatre space, recording studio and - this particularly delighted me - private rooms for participants to write in!

They are beautiful and such a useful idea.  It's a nod to Virginia Woolf's notion that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.' Unfortunately, we can't do anything about the money situation - but we can provide men and women with a room of their own to write in.   They're going to be so helpful to writers.  Sometimes it's impossible to find a space to think in - let alone write in.  Kids arguing, telly blaring, next door playing thrash metal at all hours. (And that's just in my house) So I know what it's like.  The writing rooms at the Creative Campus will provide people with a haven, a space to be creative in.  I'm really looking forward to seeing the writing rooms in use.  Sheila and Phil have done a wonderful job of creating the right environment for people to write in - so I want to ensure that the place is packed to capacity.

If you'd like to participate in What's Your Story? contact me on:
info@writingonthewall.org.uk and I'll keep you up to date with developments.


Paula Currie

Friday 12 October 2012


Poetry plea...



Last Thursday was National Poetry Day. You will now, either stop reading immediately, or carry on enthusiastically, because like marmite, poetry seems to provoke extreme reactions from people. They either love it or hate it.
I’m firmly in the love camp, (for poetry and marmite) but I do understand where the poetry haters are coming from. I haven’t always liked poetry. Like many people, I hated it at school. We read boring poems that I didn’t understand: poems that didn’t speak to me on any level. Adrian Mitchell’s famous quote, ‘Most people ignore most poetry, because most poetry ignores most people.’ felt utterly true.

But something changed: it sounds obvious, but you have to shop around with poetry. Just because you don’t like one particular song, you would never say that you don’t like music. Yet we do this all the time with poetry. Just because we don’t like a particular style of poetry or we had a bad experience with it at school – we write off poetry as a whole. We say we hatepoetry. But we don’t. We just haven’t found a poem that we like yet. And this takes a bit of work. It’s not like hearing a catchy song on the radio and then going out and buying the album. Music surrounds us but we have to seek poetry out – although the internet has made this much easier.  It’s a hit and miss process, you’ll read loads of stuff that you don’t like but then suddenly your eye will drop onto a poem that could have been written for you. You’ll think it has been, you’ll smirk to yourself, suddenly intrigued, you didn’t realise poetry could be this good. Then you’ll read everything that the poet has written, then you may start looking at the poets who inspired your poet, and then suddenly you’re away! You like poetry.

On National Poetry day, I spent the day at a poetry reading at The Bluecoat Chambers hosted by local poet, Denis Joe of North End Writers. It was a rare opportunity to hear dozens of people reading poems of their own and sharing poems that they love with the audience. I was impressed at the range of work that was read out: witty, political, heartfelt, intelligent…. and the odd one about cats. It was a place to sit and listen, some of it would just wash over you, but then you’d hear something that stopped you cold. It was worth going for that moment: the moment when you hear something that grabs hold of you and keeps hold of you, something - a line or an image that you know will stay with you. That’s what I love about poetry and that’s why I’ll be celebrating National Poetry Day again next year.

Paula Currie

Monday 1 October 2012


First day at Wow



This is the first of many blogs that I hope to be posting as Wow's new Writer in residence. It's the first time that Wow has appointed a writer in residence and I'm thrilled to have been selected.  I'm really looking forward to getting out and about around Liverpool and hopefully inspiring people to pick up a pen and start writing. I've been teaching creative writing in Liverpool for ten years now at The Spider Project and we've uncovered some real talent there.  Part of my job as WIR involves setting up writing workshops and over the next few months I'm sure that these workshops will uncover even more. I'm also going to be blogging about the writing process.  In 2011 I won the Writing on the Wall's Pulp Idol competition.  A competition that I can thoroughly recommend. I'd been working on the novel for years in a slightly haphazard fashion, but winning the competition really spurred me on to complete it. I'm chuffed to say that I finally finished work on the first draft in August, (I love saying that!). Over the next few months I'm going to be re-drafting it and sending it out to publishers and agents. I'm planning to blog about this process too, which will hopefully provide an insight into the difficult business of getting your first novel published. Or I might go down the internet route and self publish!  Haven't decided yet...  We'll have to see what happens. Either way it's an exciting business and I'm looking forward to getting my work out there. If you've got a novel that you're burning to publish or you would like to begin one - or you just want to start writing, keep checking the WOW website as we'll be setting up writing workshops in the next few months. I'm really keen to establish links between writers, as I know how difficult it is when you're stuck at home writing alone. Anyway keep checking the website and we'll keep you posted!

Paula Currie