Southampton's spoken word Festival

Southampton is holding a writers and writing stuff festival - the  So: To Speak festival; from October 23 - November 1; and it looks amazing. Have a browse through the programme where  the mix of events is unique and imaginative and unexpected. Excellent writers like Philip Hoare and Ali Sparkes will be appearing (book tickets!!) I like the sound of the celebration of the Spitfire with performance poet Matt West and musical contribution from the Spitfire Sisters. And where else would you have the venue for that, but an aircraft museum with a Spitfire in it...

The Spitfire Sisters

Another first for Southampton which will be part of the action is a celebration of Persian poetry, film and music.

I shall definitely be going to hear acclaimed biographer Ray Monk's talk at October Books in Portswood High Street. It is at 7.00pm on Friday 30 October. Another not-to-be-missed author who is speaking at another Portswood High Street event (The Library this time) is Rebecca Smith. Rebecca's talk, which marks the centenary of Portswood Library, is called 'Writing Southampton' and is on Thursday 29 October at 7.00pm.

The Dancing Man Brewery at 1 Bugle Street (in the building formerly known as the Wool House), will host many of these events and Arts Organisation, Element Arts,  will be putting on  ‘Transported’, a collection of art installations and performances which will be inside a specially built village of shipping containers in Guildhall Square. Element Arts have collaborated  with Williams Shipping and the shipping container village will be there for people to explore for the whole week.

Talking about it - not doing it yet...

Writing that is. But at least I'm talking about it - with other writers. Things I have talked about doing are:

1. Going on a writing course again. Arvon, I say, I'll check their catalogue of goodies. Then I don't.
2. What about this one in Portugal, one of my writer friends suggests. It looks amazing , is rather expensive and I seize on that as an excuse not to look at it further. However I sense that I am just being an idiot and these are cold feet I am exhibiting, not valid reasons.
3. Let's hire something cheap and cheerful on Air B&B and not too far away, says another writer friend, and we'll shut ourselves away from it all and just write for a couple of days. This one seems really do-able: not to long (has to fit in with the day job) not too costly (obvious reasons).
4. I glance between the Portugal option (fabulous expert tutor, Jill Dawson and gorgeous location) and the Air B&B option (near and cheap and short but no tutor) and come up with a brainwave:
5. Hey, I say to the writer friend - why don't we spend the AirB&B money on hiring ourselves a fabulous writing tutor to come and give us our own writing workshop in one of our front rooms? Oh dear. It seemed like a good idea as I said it.