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Saturday 23 January 10am – 4pm
Holocaust Memorial Reading Workshop Mel Kohlke from Swansea University leads a session which will discuss what ethical obligations and dilemmas ‘Holocaust writing’ presents readers. The session will examine how we deal with issues of empathy, secondary witness bearing and the sensationalising of pain. Texts looked at will include poetry, short story, memoir and extracts from longer works by Celan, Levi, Delbo, and others. These narratives will also be contextualised with reference to critical extracts, examining the widespread mediation and proliferation of so-called ‘trauma culture’.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY but please register in advance Wednesday 27 January 7.30pm
Science Café – Diet and Behaviour Throughout Life David Benton, Professor of Psychology, Swansea University.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY Thursday 28 January 7.30pm
Poets in the Bookshop David Greenslade, The Dark Fairground More innovative work from a truly original poet and performer who loves working with visual artists. This is the launch of an art book featuring pictures by the late William Brown and short texts by Greenslade. Described on Radio Wales as ‘incredible and extraordinary ‘ this is a moving tribute to a painter who also loved working with poets. Pictures are available at the blog site for this book - www.darkfairground.wordpress.com Also, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, we are inviting open mic readers to bring a poem, or even a short piece of prose, of their own or by another writer on that theme if they wish.
Tickets: Full Price £4-00; Concessions £2-80; Swansea PTL £1-60 Tuesday 4 February 7pm
Booklaunch – Battle in Iraq by J.M.Hammond and Flint by Margaret Redfern Two recent graduates of the Trinity College Carmarthen MA in Creative Writing launch their first books in tandem. Battle in Iraq is based on letters and diaries of Josephine Hammond’s grandfather from Iraq during World War One, but connects these events to those of the current situation, as the course of Middle Eastern history is transformed. Flint is a poetic tale of brotherly love, based in the time of Edward I, following the adventures of ditch-diggers Will and Ned as they march from the English Fens to north Wales.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY & WINE In association with Radcliffe Press and Honno.
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January - April 2010
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Wednesday 10 February 7.30pm
On the Edge presents Deadlier than the Male! Michael Kelligan’s new season of superb and varied script-held performances features plays from Welsh women writers based in Wales.
Paying The Full Whack by Gwenno Dafydd Actor, singer, comedian, writer, linguist, truly an artist of many parts, Gwenno Dafydd grew up in North Pembrokeshire. Her play was written not long after the Falklands war. Once again during these deeply troubled times throughout the world it’s a sad reminder of human conflict and futility, seeing the global picture through the eyes of two young Welsh families. As an actor Gwenno has appeared in both the English soap Casualty and the Welsh soap Pobl Y Cwm and many comedy roles on TV. She also has her own one- woman show based on the songs of Edith Piaf. Tickets: £4-00
Gwenno Dafydd
Friday 12 February 1pm
Art for Lunch – Anne Price Owen David Jones: the Wedding of Form and Content Dr. Anne Price-Owen is senior lecturer in the Dynevor Centre of Art, Design and Media, Swansea Metropolitan University and is a staunch supporter of The Dylan Thomas Centre. Anne has published extensively on the visual arts and also literature. Her primary interest is the painterpoet David Jones (1895-1974), and she founded The David Jones Society in 1996, a year after his Centenary conference at University of Wales, Lampeter. Her talk will examine the interrelationship of David Jones’s literary and visual arts, a phenomenon that she believes is particularly prevalent (but by no means unique), in the work of both poets and visual artists working in Wales. She is currently researching a book on Wales’s Women Artists, due from Seren later this year.
Tickets: £5 includes 45 minute talk, soup and sandwich. Friday 12 February - Saturday 13 February
Swansea Latin American Festival 2010 This year’s multi-art festival focuses on Brazil, with music, film and dance, a Capoeira demonstration and photographs by Erika Tambke. For more information see www.dylanthomas.com or email M.K.Morita@swansea.ac.uk.
Tickets: All Tickets from Dylan Thomas Centre.
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Friday 19 February – 7pm
Booklaunch – Maggie Harris, After a visit to a Botanical Garden Wales-based Guyanan poet Maggie’s third collection of poetry, After a visit to a Botanical Garden (Cane Arrow Press) is stimulated by the migration of plants as well as human beings between Europe and the New World since the days of Raleigh. This launch will be followed the next day by a writing workshop on the plant theme. See below. Tickets: FREE ENTRY & WINE Maggie Harris
Saturday 20 February 10.30 – 12.30
Writing Workshop – Have Roots Will Travel with Maggie Harris Having launched her new collection, After a visit to a Botanical Garden the previous evening, Maggie Harris will run this workshop focused on the early exploration of plant hunters, examining works inspired by plants and gardens as a springboard to inspire writing in either poetry or prose. Tickets: £10.00
Saturday 20 February 1pm
Lunchtime Theatre Fluellen Theatre Company presents March by Alberto Adellach A biting satire on militarism and the state from this shamefully neglected Argentinian playwright. All Lunchtime Theatre plays are script-in-hand presentations and will be preceded by a talk about the writer and the background to the play. Tickets: £5.00 Wednesday 24 February 7.30pm
Science Café – Avoiding Death by Computer Harold Thimbleby, Swansea University Tickets: FREE ENTRY Alison Bielski
Thursday 25 February 7.30pm
Poets in the Bookshop – Alison Bielski Newport-born Alison has published many collections, most recently Sacramental Sonnets (Alun Books), and has won 13 awards for her poetry. Plus usual open mic session.
Tickets: Full Price £4-00; Concessions £2-80; Swansea PTL £1-60. Friday 26 February 7pm
Womencentrestage This year WOMENCENTRESTAGE have a gallery show from February to March including artwork by students of Swansea Metropolitan University and other emergent and established freelance artists, in photography, fine art and textiles, and this evening event will be an artists networking session with a guest speaker, followed by videos presented by Broad Horizons, a Swansea project for women videomakers.
Tickets: For the evening video show £3, proceeds for Oxfam’s women’s projects. Please book early for this popular event
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January - April 2010
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Thursday 4 March
World Book Day We will be celebrating World Book Day with offers in our bookshop and with an evening event. For full details see www.dylanthomas.com or contact jo.furber@swansea.gov.uk Friday 5 March 7pm
Book Launch: Marion Preece - Man Falling off Cliff Welcome to seventeen tales of nightmares, comedy and the surreal. Be prepared to walk with sadists and angels, to witness triumph over despair and to cheer on werewolves. Be prepared for anything… except a cosy read. Published by YouWrite.On.com
Tickets: FREE ENTRY & WINE Tuesday 9 March 7pm
Booklaunch - Stevie Davies, Into Suez
Stevie Davies
Stevie Davies is the author of eleven novels (two listed for the Booker Prize). Her most recent novel is set in the run up to the Suez Crisis, a template for future invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent). Through the story of Joe, an ordinary working man on the front line, Stevie explores how imperialist attitudes to the Middle East have failed to change since 1950. Join us to discuss these very contemporary and current themes and listen to readings from a hugely enjoyable historical novel.
Tickets: Free Entry & Wine in association with Parthian Books. Wednesday 10 March 7.30pm
On the Edge presents Deadlier than the Male! Michael Kelligan’s new season of superb and varied script-held performances features plays from Welsh women writers based in Wales.
Gryfhead by Lucy Gough Lucy has been writing plays since 1986. Many of her stage plays have been professionally performed and she was a finalist for both the John Whiting Award and BBC Wales Writer of the Year Award (1994) with her play Crossing The Bar. .Her first BBC broadcast was in 1994 with Our Lady of Shadows (BBC Radio 3). Since then she has a play of the week on the BBC World Service and has had five plays on BBC Radio 4. Her Radio dramatisation of Wuthering Heights for Radio 4 was broadcast as the classic serial in Woman’s Hour in 2003.
Tickets: £4.00
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Saturday 13 March
Writers’ Squad Day With support from Academi and Welsh Books Council we mark the recent World Book Day with a day of events and workshops for members of our Swansea Young Writers Squad and their parents, in partnership with the Pontardawe Writers’ Squad. The day will also be open to anyone interested in joining our Writing Squads – a Welsh Language Squad is also being set up. For details contact david.woolley@swansea.gov.uk Sunday 14 March 7pm
Dylan Thomas in Wales Visiting American Students Project 2010 Dylan Thomas in Wales is a 12-week literary seminar offered by Knox College (Illinois, America), in cooperation with the Carl Sandburg Birthplace (America), The Seventh Quarry Swansea Poetry Magazine (Wales), Cross-Cultural Communications (New York), and in association with the Welsh Assembly Government in New York. To celebrate the arrival in Wales of the first group of American students participating in the Project an evening of poetry, drama and song introduced by the Wales’ guide and organiser Peter Thabit Jones at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea
Tickets: FREE ENTRY Friday 19 March 1pm
Art for Lunch Jen Wilson How African American Music Came to Wales Jen, from Jazz Heritage Wales, formerly known as Women in Jazz, now based at Swansea Metropolitan University, will give an illustrated talk on How African American Music Came to Wales, how the media represented it and the Women pioneers who contributed to what would become Jazz. Illustration: Sheet Music, My Little Zulu Babe 1901.
Tickets: £5 includes 45 minute talk, soup and sandwich. Friday 19 March 7pm
Book Launch - Byron Beynon, Nocturne in Blue Swansea poet and lecturer Byron’s poems have appeared in many publications including Agenda, Poetry Salzburg Review, Planet, The French Literary Review, Quadrant (Australia) and the Istanbul Literary Review. His collections include: The Girl in the Yellow Dress, The Restaurant of Mud and Cuffs. Nocturne in Blue is published by Lapwing Publications (Belfast). Byron is a former co-editor of Roundyhouse Magazine.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY & WINE
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January - April 2010
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Vaclav Havel
Saturday 20 March 1pm
Lunchtime Theatre Fluellen Theatre Company presents Unveiling by Vaclav Havel After the success of Havel`s play Audience last year, here is the sequel; a satire in which his alter ego, Vanek, is the dinner guest of a couple who have embraced their country`s oppressive system with open arms. All Lunchtime Theatre plays are script-in-hand presentations and will be preceded by a talk about the writer and the background to the play.
Tickets: £5.00 Thursday 25 March 7.30pm
Poets in the Bookshop - Carol Rumens Carol has published many collections, the most recent Blind Spots, from Seren, and won many awards for her poetry. She currently teaches creative writing at University of Wales Bangor. Plus usual open mic session.
Tickets: Full Price £4-00; Concessions £2-80; Swansea PTL £1-60. Wednesday 31 March 7.30pm
Science Café – subject TBC Tickets: FREE ENTRY Saturday 10 April 1pm
Lunchtime Theatre Fluellen Theatre Company presents Scenes of Fear
Bertolt Brecht
Adapted from Bertolt Brecht’s plays and poetry. A disturbing look at Nazi Germany in the years building up to the second world war, seen through the eyes of those who opposed Hitler, and those who didn’t. All Lunchtime Theatre plays are script-in-hand presentations and will be preceded by a talk about the writer and the background to the play. Tickets: £5.00
Thursday 15 April - 7pm
Book Launch and performance, Childe Roland: Ham & Jam and A Pearl: Two One-act Plays Wales’s greatest concrete poet presents two short plays in which Polonius quizzes the ‘mad’ Prince Hamlet on wor(l)d politics, the methodical madness of our masters. Hafan Books ‘Out of Line’ pamphlet #11. All proceeds to refugee charity.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY – All book proceeds to refugee charity. Childe Roland
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Thursday 22 April - 7pm
Book launch and performance, John Goodby: Wine Night White
John Goodby
Epically abandoned, much torqued-about price-whingeing poet (dealer in swollen goods) chewed over Saussurean sausage, watched dawn with plonk. Hafan Books ‘Out of Line’ pamphlet #12. All proceeds to refugee charity.
Tickets: FREE ENTRY – All book proceeds to refugee charity.
Friday 23 April 1pm
Art for Lunch - Stevie Davies on George Eliot Stevie Davies, novelist, and Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University and author of several books on Victorian literature, will speak on George Eliot’s moving treatment of empathy in the imaginative world of Middlemarch.
Tickets: £5 includes 45 minute talk, soup and Wednesday 28 April 7.30pm
On the Edge presents Deadlier than the Male! Michael Kelligan’s new season of superb and varied script-held performances features plays from Welsh women writers based in Wales.
Don’t Breathe A Word by Susan Richardson Susan is the author of four plays and worked, for several years, as playwright and workshop facilitator for Something Permanent, an educational theatre company with bases in both the UK and Toronto, Canada. Her first play, Two Of Me Now, is a poetic drama about biological and literary motherhood, as reflected in the lives and work of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. Don’t Breathe A Word, a play about writing and censorship, was awarded first prize in the Timberlake Wertenbaker Playscript “Thoughtful and absorbing… Competition and shortlisted in the National Student The story is beautifully told, Playwriting Competition. with clarity and precision” It has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Scotsman Platform 4 Exeter Theatre Festival, the Cheltenham Festival of Literature and in Barons Court Theatre, London.
Tickets: £4.00 Wednesday 28 April 7.30pm
Science Café – The Large Hadron Collider and the much smaller Antiproton Decelerator - what do we hope to find, and when? Graham Shore and Mike Charlton, Swansea University
Tickets: FREE ENTRY.
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January - April 2010
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Thursday 29 April 7.30pm
Poets in the Bookshop - Maurice Scully Maurice was born in Dublin in 1952. Educated at Trinity College, after which he became active in poetry editing, publishing and organizing literary events as well as working in Italy and Africa in the ‘80s. “A light for the In the ‘90s he taught at Dublin City University. language indeed.” Maurice From ‘81 to ‘06 he was engaged on a single Scully Harry Gilonis, The Gig project, Things That Happen, a work in 8 books. Doing the Same in “I have found Scully is best read in public English, a selection from work 1987 - 2008, places, a beach or a bus shelter when people appeared in 2008 and Humming appeared are around ... I laugh a lot. He’s a goodin 2009. natured poet and that transfers. While the reputed strangeness in Scully’s work is rooted in the ordinary obvious, the flowers it produces are truly exotic.” Augustus Young, Golden Handcuffs Review
Tickets: Full Price £4-00; Concessions £2-80; Swansea PTL £1-60.
EXHIBITIONS Until 17 Jan
Cherry Pickles Painting of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. 19 Jan - 14 Feb
David Greenslade & William Brown The Dark Fairground A collaboration between poet Greenslade and the late artists William Brown. 16 Feb – 21 Mar
23 Mar – 18 Apr
Women Centre Stage
Lyndon Mably Burning – A random Event
Images from local artists to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Drawings using molten iron – an exploration of chance and choice – the meeting point of the artistic impulse and the random event.
20 Apr – 16 May
Gus Payne A collaboration between artist Gus Payne and poet Mike Jenkins, both Merthyr based. This new work focuses on the use of Welsh idioms and phrases to explore social consciousness, democracy, and the powers that make big decisions on our behalf.
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COURSES/WORKSHOPS At Dylan Thomas Centre unless otherwise stated. Saturday 23 January
Holocaust Memorial Reading Day See Page 2 for further details. Saturday 30/ Sunday 31 January 10am – 4pm daily
From Page to Stage - A Two Day Course on Playwriting with Peter Read A two day course for seasoned and new writers of plays. For more information visit www.peterread.co.uk For further information and booking form please contact Peter Read on 07931 614180 or email petersamread@hotmail.co.uk or send an s.a.e to: 14 Overland Road, Mumbles, Swansea SA3 4LS
Tickets: The cost for the two day course is £60 Saturday 20 February 10.30 – 12.30
Writing Workshop – Have Roots Will Travel with Maggie Harris See Page 4 for further details. Sundays 21 and 28 February & 7 & 14 March 10am – 4pm
Acting Workshop – The Craft of Acting Fluellen Theatre Company, continues its open acting course for basic acting skills.
Tickets: £10 per session. For more details/bookings contact 01792 368269 or email fluellentheatre@aol.com
OTHER EVENTS 13/14 March (All day)
Ceridwen Centre, Carmarthenshire: Writers’ Weekend A Writers’ day, a Murder Mystery Evening, and a Crime Writing Workshop with Sally Spedding. For full details see www.ceridwencentre.co.uk or contact info@ceridwencentre.co.uk or 01559 370517
The Dylan Thomas Centre
Supported by:
Somerset Place, Swansea SA1 1RR www.dylanthomas.com www.dylan-thomas-books.com dylanthomas.lit@swansea.gov.uk
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hybu llên literature promotion
CYNGOR LLYFRAU CYMRU WELSH BOOKS COUNCIL
Whilst all effort is made to ensure that the details of this programme are accurate, the City and County of Swansea reserve the right to alter any part of the programme without notice.
January - April 2010
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01792 463980