Blog
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All the Ps – poetry pamphlets and Poems, Prose and Pints
Blogging has had to move down my priority list over the last few months. I spent September and October immersed in stimulating literature festival events and delivering workshops to adults in the community as part of my role at the University of Leeds. Then I was struck with a nasty respiratory illness and laryngitis –…
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Open workshops, performances with music, talks and publications
It is probably tautological to say that the life of a writer is punctuated by joys and disappointments. This summer there have been plenty of both – as you will judge from the length of this blog. There have been more rejections by publishers and a project I’ve poured a lot of love and passion…
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Han Kang, Human Acts, translated by Deborah Smith
In 1980, students and workers in Gwangju, South Korea protested about the ‘increasingly repressive measures’ introduced by Park Chung-hee and continued by his successor Chun Doo-hwan after his death (p1). Doo-hwan shut universities, made political activities illegal and silenced the press. He then ordered his soldiers to suppress the pro-democracy uprising in as brutal a…