Broadcast Anthology from Warwick University: Two Views
Towards A New Awareness of Audience
Last year I attended the launch of the Broadcast Anthology, a collection of new writing from students on the Warwick University Creative Writing MA. The launch was held on the Warwick campus in a special space dedicated to new ways of learning, with brightly coloured benches and loungers which can be turned to face in any direction, no restrictive desk areas, spotlit walls and ceilings designed to be used for projected images, and a smooth ergonomic feel to the room design.
The launch readings themselves were friendly and informal, with most of those present having been involved in some way in the writing or design of the anthology. A series of alternating images projected onto the walls - including the stark industrial cover image, pictured above - lent a certain dynamic feel to the event and provided an interesting backdrop to the poets and writers whilst reading their work. There was also an extensive free buffet with drinks - always a welcome sight at a poetry event!
It's a special thing for a writer when a work that was conceived on paper and has now been published in book form suddenly becomes oral in nature. I'm not sure if performance is always the right word to apply to such readings, even when they involve a certain amount of poetry. But the element of performance that comes into play at any public reading provides a vital opportunity for a beginning writer's transition into a new kind of writing, by which I mean writing with an emphasised awareness of audience.
Without that awareness - of who we write for, of what we hope to achieve when making our work public - it's too easy for a writer to drift into an unhealthy isolated narcissism and forget that no piece of writing, however superb, can exist without an audience. And that applies particularly to the arena of performance poetry, of course, where the poem often has no existence at all except at the moment of being performed.
Jane Holland, poet & editor Poets On Fire
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An Instinct for Words
The Broadcast anthology, a collection of new writing from Warwick University students, will be returning for a second volume in 2007. The first anthology showcased the work of six MA Writing Students. Critic and biographer Jeremy Treglown edited Broadcast, and commented that the student’s writing had “that instinct for words, for their shapes and cadences, which seems to be as gratuitous as an ability to sing or to catch a ball.”
The second volume of the anthology aims to publish a wider and larger range of poetry and prose from across the campus. It will be edited by writer and critic David Dabydeen and co-edited by Jane Commane, a student whose work was included in the first publication. The anthology will be published in partnership with Coventry’s leading independent press, Heaventree.
The Broadcast project is student-motivated, and as well as providing a platform for new literary voices, it also provides the opportunity for Warwick Writing Programme students to gain practical experience of the publishing and literary world, through their involvement in planning and marketing the anthology.
The anthology project is entirely reliant on funding and sponsorship and the team producing the anthology are keen to hear from anyone who would be interested in sponsoring this year’s publication, even if they can only pledge a small amount. In return, they are offering advertising space on all their promotional literature, in the anthology itself on the launch night for the anthology.
Also, as all profits from sales of the first Broadcast anthology are being ploughed back into the next publication, anyone who would like to support the publication of work by new, emerging writers, can do so by buying a copy.
Jane Commane (poet & co-editor of the new Broadcast anthology)
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To Purchase a copy of the Broadcast Anthology
The Broadcast Anthology is available online from Amazon at a special price of £4 (not inc. p+p) at:amazon.co.uk
Or can be ordered by downloading an order form from:
www.heaventree.co.uk
If you’d like to get in touch with Broadcast, send an email to: broadcastanthology@yahoo.co.uk or check out our Myspace page: www.myspace.com/broadcastanthology
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