Welcome to the Havant Literary Festival - celebrating the written and spoken word in the Borough of Havant.

HAVANT LITERARY FESTIVAL 2013

This year's festival will take place during the first 10 days of October, with events coming to a climax during the weekend 4th - 6th. The venues this year will be concentrated in the town centre and as well as our lovely Spring Arts Centre, will also include Bosmere Junior and Warblingon Secondary School, South Downs College, plus lots of libraries, parish halls, pubs, clubs and cafés. We will also have a fully functioning street stage in the middle of the town.

The Programme is still forming. If you are an author or publicist and think you might want to be involved please get in touch with me now. We have already booked a resident poet - Audi Maserati - a song writer - Talis Kimberley - and a theatre group - Breakfast Cat. They will be contributing workshops and performances to the main programme, but also going into schools, libraries and workplaces. Features like the famous Havant Ghost Walk and Guerilla Poetry are set to return as is the Book Barney debate and the Book Fair. We are also planning some rather interesting literary themed art work that will be distributed around the town.

A secondary focus on 16th century English writing will produce a series of workshops and performances with contributions from our two local universities and other experts in this field.

The theme for this year's poetry competition is "renewal". Entry forms are now available. We have bumped up the prize levels this year and Wendy Klein has agreed to act as our judge.

For more information involvement proposals please contact:

Tim Dawes, Programme Director, HLF 2013
55 South Street, Havant, PO9 1BY
tim@nineveh.co.uk
02392 470592

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Weather Vane

The fifth Havant Literary Festival on the evening of Friday, 19th and all day on Saturday 20th October, once again, gave pleasure to and received praise in abundance from artists, participants and audience. Unfortunately three events were sadly cancelled due to poor audience take up, despite good publicity in The News and PO9. For those interested in the books chosen at the Bookshelf Barney organized by Wordsouth, they are as follows:


Winner: The Sea around us by Rachel Carson - Sarah Butterfield (artist)

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute - Miriam Halahmy (author)

A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - David Willetts (thinker)

The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono - Lynne Dick (artistic director)

Biggles Takes it Rough by W E Johns - Mark Waldron (reader)

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noel Kramer - Naomi Foyle (poet)

The Poetry Competition was, as always, very popular with many entries. The winners and runners up, as well as the judge's report, are posted on the Poetry Page, with the winning poem Exordium by C.J. Allen.

Sculpture
Garden

We are very grateful to Naomi Foyle, our judge, who presented the prizes at our Opening Ceremony. Naomi's first novel, Seoul Survivors is due for publication in February, 2013. And her poem 'On Advising a Young Man from Galway to do a Second MA in Biodiversity' won the Additional Prize in the first annual RSPB Nature Poetry competition.