Football crazy

To reflect our short and not all that sweet stay in South Africa, I've whittled a little ditty about England's swansong versus Germany, which the lovely folk at Bad Language have included in their football "homage" (as mentioned in my recent Fixtures And Words post). You can read the poem, Cracking The Flags, on the writing collective's site here. Enjoy.

A moment of fiction #4 - zines special!

Right, my latest literary round-up has been gently gathering momentum behind the scenes, but I’m now ready to pull back the curtain and reveal the pulleys and levers behind the magic in a special zines round-up.

Nice timing is tomorrow’s Midsummer House Party, the launch event for the new adult learning and engagement programme at the Whitworth Art Gallery. The shindig runs from 7.30-10.30pm in the South Gallery (the one with floor-to-ceiling windows and ivy wallpaper by Thomas Demand), and there will be crafty goings-on with Manchester Craft Mafia, poetry readings from friends of For Folk's Sake and DJ sets from Pull Yourself Together, usually seen in the surrounds of Common on Edge Street. As well as spinning the old wheels of steel, Dan and Hannah of PYT manage to write and edit a fanzine, called Pull Yourself Together like the night, which is published every two months and available in independent record shops around the UK. Email hello@pullyourselftogetherzine.co.uk, check out the website here, peruse the online back issues or hotfoot it to the Salford Zine Library to pore over the hard copies.

Talking of SZL, Matthew and Craig have been busy compiling the now six-month-old collection into a downloadable PDF file available for browsing purposes if you can’t always make it to their Islington Mill premises. The librarians aim to offer monthly updates, so keep popping back to their online space to ch-ch-check it out. And don’t forget to keep donating your zines and self-published books as they become available.

Anyway, without further ado, here's a quick round-up of other zines on the scene. If you know of others, please keep me posted via email or the comments function.

Things Happen is a new kid on the block, which you can get hold of in The Hive, Contact Theatre and the Cornerhouse (though not in the shop as it's free). Dan, the man in charge, says he’s hoping to distribute through other places too soon; in the meantime he’ll let you email him (dandidthis@live.com) to ask it he'll pop a copy in the post for you. Dan says: “Contributions are actively encouraged, but we are only likely to include stuff that is pushing in the same direction as us... I'm sure only people enthused by what we write will be the ones likely to want to contribute anyway.” For signposting, check out the first issue of Things Happen here.

Issues of The Hare can be picked up in Centro and Night & Day in the Northern Quarter, plus Tiger Lounge on Cooper Street. As the good people behind the self-published project live at the bottom of the Snake Pass, copies can also be had in three pubs in Glossop - The Oakwood, The Beehive and The Star. Brown bread topics range from sport to history, with fashion and gossip the white bread subjects and quite a spread of satirical political pokes forming the sandwich filling. Rob and Max take submissions and the guidelines are loose (articles of 600-1,000 words in length, original artwork and the like) – just email theharenewspaper@hotmail.co.uk with your ideas. The Hare also has a Facebook group, called The Hare Newspaper. So modern, you guys.

Bilingual (German/English) b&n magazine was already on its fifth issue when I snatched a copy in the aforementioned Common. You can get in touch with editor in chief Samantha Bail (email bunmagazine@gmail.com) with words and pictures or follow @bunmagazine on that there Twitter.

Other Magazine is an exciting new online sashay into essay-writing, fiction, photography and general silliness. Follow @othermag on Twitter or visit the website for more on contributions and wotnot.

Now, I'm not saying the others aren't, but Pantheon is proper. It has proper writers contributing and everything, including Manchester’s own Nicholas Royle and Tom Fletcher. The seasonal magazine of “assorted observations and tales” describes itself as “a house for all disciplines – art, creative writing, illustration, poetry, cookery, photography, cartoons and more. There are no predetermined themes or rules”. We like the sound of that. You can follow @pantheonzine on Twitter or email pantheonmagazine@googlemail.com for information on how to go about sending in work.

Other zines that have come to our attention but haven’t yet been properly explored are the marvellously named New Wave Vomit, strange fiction (prose and poetry) collaborative quarterly Dark Lane and the mysterious arty pamphlet The Mill Press, the first issue of which I picked up in the Cornerhouse yesterday.

Worlds in motion

Even I'm bored by the football World Cup, although Portugal beating North Korea 7-0 may have been a bizarre highlight given the dearth of goals the tournament has brought our way so far. Thank goodness, therefore, for a bit of a distraction in other places, namely, er, Norwich, coincidentally currently bidding to become a UNESCO City Of Literature. Kicking off yesterday at the Writers' Centre was the Worlds Literature Festival (which surely should have an apostophe - where the devil's Lynne Truss when you need her? Why, presenting daily essays on the World Cup on Radio 4's Today programme, of course).


Perhaps in a nod to the hosts of the omnipotent soccer competition, this particular week of fixtures includes an evening with four South African writers. Proceedings wind down on Sunday, but between now and then friend of Words & Fixtures and fellow Manchester blogger Adrian "Art Of Fiction" Slatcher will be reporting live from the various events taking place, from workshops on "strange" poetry writing to talks on how to publish long fiction, courtesy of Manchester University lecturers John McAuliffe and MJ Hyland respectively. The train from Piccadilly must have been rammed.

Fixtures and words

Happen you might not know, if you've been on the Moon or at the bottom of the ocean: there's a big footballing tournament currently underway. I, personally, have been so busy managing match-watching, playing pundit from the comfort of my own couch and "populating" my World Cup Wallchart with scores, that I haven't had time to spit. Unlike quite a few of the rather more ungentlemanly players. And while so far both my first team (England) and my second team (France) have been less than dream-makers, where would football be without disappointment, dashed hopes and, ultimately, heartbreak?

The ups and downs of the beautiful game are well documented, but a few folk round and about are adding some literary sparkle to proceedings via their blogs.

Dan "Winter Hill" Carpenter and his merry band of creative writers Bad Language "have decided to name [them]selves the official Creative Laureates of the 2010 World Cup". As such, they are writing flash fiction based on the events of the next month or so, using stories from the papers as starting points. Last time I joined them, we practised this technique; they're due to meet again tomorrow in Nexus Art Cafe from 6pm, if you fancy a go.

Elsewhere, in The Big Exciting World Cup Literary Distraction Extravaganza Of Wondrous Delights, Who The Fudge Is Benjamin Judge? author, er, Benjamin Judge pits writers against each other in a line-up of fixtures reflecting the Big One. In the event of a tie, the Random Sentence Playoff and the Random Word Playoff acts like a penalty shoot-out. I'm glad to report that some of my favourites, Room Temperature novelist Nicholson Baker and local talent Chris Killen (debut The Bird Room pictured), are through to the next round.


If you know of any other similar projects relating to the World Cup, including zines and that, be sure to let me know and I can do an update.

Orange, with bits

I recently put first pen to paper then finger to keyboard and submitted an entry to the Guardian Orange First Words competition, for which the newspaper's readers (or mere website dropper-inners) were invited to write the first paragraph (up to 150 words) of an imaginary novel called Just Ourselves. This (rather clunky, I thought) title was magicked up by author Kate Mosse, co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for Fiction, which had its starry pageant yesterday evening (Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna scooped top gong, since you're asking) to which I didn't win tickets.

Still you might as well read my effort. I like to imagine it may have made it onto the "high quality shortlist"; after all, I even seem to have shoehorned the word orange in, albeit totally subconsciously.

Just Ourselves – Written by Sarah-Clare Conlon

Where the baked bricks end, the darkness expands outwards. All the familiarity of the daytime becomes lost in a close wilderness of black secrets and mysterious noises. And here, together in the house on the hill, we huddle tight against the night and the howling. At least that's how I suppose you imagine us, but why? Are we paranoid because we don't see much of you, or do you really think we're hiding? We're not trying to be isolated up here, you know. I mean, just look at our place: it's radiating light and warmth. The windows glow orange, and they're gaping out into the heat. We're not shut off from the world. We turn our attention back from the outside, back to the moths, thrashing about wildly in the paper shade over the pendant bulb. The pair of them are going to disintegrate. Everyone knows; even them. Especially them.