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News | 14th July 2010 | AMITA PATEL - 1957 - 2010 |
Amita Patel took her own life on Thursday, July 15th, while at Beachy head. She had been on a ward at Lambeth Hospital for about ten days. On Wednesday 14th she was on day leave from the hospital and did not return. Her body was found by the East Sussex authorities on Thursday morning. On Wednesday 21st July Amita's body was officially identified by her sisters Laxmiben and Umaben who had travelled from abroad, and by her close friend Rashmi. They said that she looked very peaceful. Amita had a long and respected history with Survivors Poetry. She was a Camden workshop facilitator for many years, and also set up a group in her local borough with Lambeth MIND. She was a graduate of the Survivors Poetry Mentoring Scheme, being, in fact, mentored by no less a personage than our patron, Debjanee Chatterjee MBE, who has this to say of her charge.
“One senses that here is a poet who is on a journey, and on her ‘Paper Road’ she encounters many guides, beginning with ‘everybody’s ancestor’ – the monkey Anjana, who gives her a pen and bids her ‘begin.’ Journeys are a recurring theme in Amita’s poems; journeys that entail risk-taking and adventure. Her poems strike a chord for she speaks as a fellow-traveller to every reader on Life’s journey.”
Debjanee also says this : “her poem ‘We are Candles’ echoes the Buddha’s message – to be lamps unto oneself. A ‘Survivor’ in the truest sense of the word, Amita is one who lights a candle. Her poetry glows with clarity and wisdom in a chaotic world.” Survivors’ Poetry extends its deepest sympathies to her family. Amita's funeral will take place on Wednesday 28th July (which is also her birthday) at 1.15pm at Lambeth Crematorium (which is actually in Tooting, in the London Borough of Wandsworth): Lambeth Crematorium Blackshaw Road Tooting, London SW17 0BY Tel: 020 8672 6342. Nearest tube: Tooting Broadway. |
| 4th July 2010 | THE BIRTH OF SP INTERNATIONAL - The Bread is Rising |
In November 2006, I was part of a group which paid a five-day visit to the USA to work with Steve Parks, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, and some of his students, at Syracuse University in New York State, as part of an initiative to study the impact of class on education and literature. On our first evening we took part in a poetry session in Manhattan, at the Peace House on the corner of Lafayette and Bleacker, as guests of New York Poetry Collective The Bread is Rising. It was a wonderfully friendly and stimulating event with lovely people and some extremely collectable poetry. The Bread is Rising is a group with strong local connections and proud to be so. Fighters for the rights of the disadvantaged, of whom there are all too many in that locality. But that night it wasn’t just them and us. A third group was represented – Precious Promise Arts Circle, from Brunswick, New Jersey. The group is based around a Church Community and their work has a strong religious representation while at the same time being seriously concerned with social issues – theirs is the very community Paul Robeson hailed from. I came away from the session feeling I had been accorded a huge privilege – contact with a realer and truer America than the one we are normally presented with via TV- and it left me in awe of the courage and integrity of its struggle, and the humanity of its protagonists. Not to mention the character of its literature. As a result, I invited both groups to become members of the SP group network. Still nothing from Precious Promise, but, a week ago, The Bread is Rising sent back their affiliation form (happily, filled in) and SP now has a group presence in the USA. And what a presence. The Bread is Rising offer a wake-up call to the soul and the conscience, and a treat to the literary taste buds. It gives me great pleasure to welcome The Bread is Rising to the SP group network. Roy Birch
| http://www.thebreadisrising.org/index.html |
| 14th June 2010 | Poetry Express - Summer edition, issue 32 is now available to download |
| 27th May 2010 | JOHN HEGLEY performs at Tottenham Chances 27th May 2010 |
Also performing willl be: Monarch of eccentricity HUGH (KLINKER) METCALF Accordian supremo MATT SCOTT Contemporary music trio SPEAKER SLEEPER with Polly Banham Glamourous madcap comic FRAN ISHERWOOD coming together to help promote this wonderful new venue. Plus OPEN MIC !!! 
| 30th March 2010 | Government Survey Release - Attitudes to Mental Illness produced by the Department of Health |
The latest national statistics on Attitudes to Mental Illness produced by the Department of Health were released on 30 March 2010 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. Authored by: TNS UK for the National Mental Health Development Unit, Department of Health Since March 1994, the Department of Health has placed a set of questions on TNS’s Face-to-Face Consumer Omnibus about public attitudes towards mental illness. From 1994 to 1997 the questions were asked on an annual basis and then every third year up until 2003. Since 2007 the survey has again been carried out annually. The surveys serve as a benchmark, enabling measurement of whether attitudes are improving or worsening over time. The questionnaire included a number of statements about mental illness. Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with each statement. Key points from the report: People are broadly sympathetic towards people with a mental illness. However, some attitudes towards people with mental illness are worse compared to when the Department of Health first commissioned the poll in 1994 whilst a number have improved. Several attitudes that had worsened over the period up until 1997 have since improved. Attitudes to a number of statements have changed between 2009 and 2010. Opinions on some statements changed towards greater tolerance, for example: - ‘Locating mental health facilities in a residential area downgrades the neighbourhood’ - agreement with this statement decreased from 21% to 18%. Some opinions moved more in favour of integrating people with mental illness into the community, for example: - ‘Residents have nothing to fear from people coming into their neighbourhood to obtain mental health services’ – agreement with this statement increased from 62% to 66%.On one item though, opinions moved less in favour of integration: - ‘Mental hospitals are an outdated means of treating people with mental illness’ – agreement with this statement fell from 37% in 2009 to 33% in 2010. For full survey in pdf : click here |
| 12th March 2010 | International Womens Day |
| 11th March 2010 | Survivors' Poetry Open Mic |

| 22nd February 2010 | pe31 ~ see previous of the featured artist Laura Wilson |

| 10th February 2010 | Christchurch Cantebury University - Research on Significance of Writing |
Would you like to take part in research study exploring the significance of creative writing? Michelle McCartney is a Trainee Clinical Phychologist at Christchurch Canterbury University and is currently running a reasearch project as part of her doctorate. If this is something that would be of interest to you and you wish to take part please Click Here to download an information sheet. Upon completion Michelle and Christchurch Canterbury University have kindly agreed to share her findings with Survivors' Poetry. Best wishes from SP with this study. |
| 26th January 2010 | Job vacancy - Midlands |
Writer in Residence Position at The Hosking Houses Trust Deadline: Monday - 12th April 2010 The Hosking Houses Trust was registered as a charity in 1999, with the aim of founding residential fellowships for older women writers and (eventually) artists and composers of achievement and merit. Fund raising was initiated and our first property, Church Cottage (suitable for writers) was acquired by the Trust in 2001. We are therefore now seeking to appoint one or more writers for the year and the closing date is 12th April, interviews to be held on 19th April 2010. We offer- · Between two months and one year's residence in Church Cottage, Clifford Chambers with all the bills paid- · Bursary of £750pcm, or £9,000 per annum- Applications are open to any woman over the age of forty, who writes in English, has the legal right to be in the UK and who has a contract for publication or performance of original work on any subject whatsoever. For further details contact: Sarah Hosking Founder/secretary 33, The Square Clifford Chambers Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 8HT Telephone 01789 262924 e-mail: sarahhosking@btinternet.com website: www.hoskinghouses.co.uk |
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Forthcoming Mentoring Scheme Publications in 2010 |  Joanna Watson Inkblotting Joanna Watson’s poems have been quietly winning prizes and appearing in well-regarded journals for many years. Collected here, they gift the reader with an array of her most particular talents: pointillist portraits of extreme circumstances; pizzazzy neologisms and strict formal challenges; tender probings of uncomfortable yet uncomplaining truths. Naomi Foyle Poet and Mentor | 
Helen Hudspith Sleeping with the Snow Queen Helen Hudspith Sleeping with the Snow Queen is a skilfully managed pack of Tarot Cards. You want to see all the cards revealed but know that dark things will emerge as well as light and it is important to embrace both. The collection is a memoir and travel guide, brave in its honesty, challenging in the surprises it holds, an extraordinary compass. Maggie Sullivan Poet and Mentor | 
Bruce James Songs from Silence There is honesty without device in Bruce James’ selected poetry. People that have known him and his work over the years will be pleased to hear of this collection. The texts swell in confidence without mischief as the songs spring from very real places that many of us are only briefly privy to, and are here transcribed by James’ for already trusted, and new audiences. In the telling of histories and the survival of ourselves in relation to the natural, built and spiritual joinings with a nurturing heaven existing beyond what we have made of heaven, James shows the lived experience of the universe from the perspective of ‘lights coming on once the applause has diminished…’ – he is a rare and gifted Poet. Philip Ruthen Writer, and Chair of Survivors’ Poetry | The Mentoring Scheme is funded by
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