Earlier this year we announced WriteScience, got the word out with huge thanks to our literary and performance partners Apples and Snakes, New Writing South, Writing East Midlands, Writing West Midlands, Writers’ Centre Norwich, Literature Works, Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Live Theatre Newcastle and then people began to send in their poems.
Brilliant poems, from all over the UK (nb, 83% of our entries were from outside London – rebalancing? Fun Palaces are already balanced!), they were from all ages too, the youngest entrant being 9. We didn’t have age categories, we didn’t chose by location, we just wanted poems where writers and scientists (sometimes both in the same person) got together to think about who they are, what they do – just as both art and science are about who we are and what we do, both asking the same questions of humanity.
Our panel, Jonathan Davidson (poet, playwright, Chief Executive Writing West Midlands), Stella Duffy (writer & Co-Director Fun Palaces), Jen Hamilton-Emery (publisher, Salt Publishing), Sophie Lambert (literary agent, Conville & Walsh), Degna Stone (poet) chose six final poets, and our partner BBC Get Creative has shared them on their site today.
We love the poems and we love that each of the writers is so different, with such varied backgrounds and experience. Each poet and poem is linked to a Fun Palace – do visit the Fun Palaces and support them. The final six poems and poets are :
Charlotte Ansell from Rotherham – Facultative Symbionts – linking with Sheffield Theatres’ Fun Palace
Colette Lawlor from North Lancashire – Bathing Beach Season – working with Lancaster Fun Palace.
Colin Dardis, Belfast NI – Light Source – joining with Big Telly’s Fun Palace in Portstewart.
Dervla Carroll from Crumlin, NI – Blood Art – will be shared as Get Creative’s own Fun Palace.
Kate Innes from Shrewsbury – Walking The Hills – working with Ceramic City Stories Fun Palace at the Minton Library. They’ve already made a gorgeous page for Kate’s poem.
Vivek Nityananda, Newcastle – The Others – will share his work with Streatham Library Fun Palace and Brixton Library Fun Palace as part of the Lambeth Libararies Crawl Fun Palace.
Huge congratulations to our final six, and we look forward to WriteScience 2016!
In addition to the work of finding and selecting our final six poems to link with Fun Palaces, we also did some thinking, prompted by our friend Jen Toksvig, about the usual kind of competition. The competitions that we often pay money to enter, where our work is judged and the only feedback we get is a yes or no. The kind where we send work off into the ether and that’s it. And, because Fun Palaces really do believe in the genius in everyone, we want to do more. So each of the poems we received was sent personal and individual feedback, and each of them was also sent a beautiful mini toolkit created for us by Jen, a compendium of possibility for doing more with the work they’d already worked on, for not giving up a on a piece just because it was picked this time, for work making more work. Everyone a Poet.