Inkerman Writers
a showcase of our work
Writers prepare to bid farewell to Arts Centre
Darlington for Culture (DfC) is about to stage the last in its open mic nights for authors and audiences at Darlington Arts Centre before they switch to their new home. The events, the next one of which is on Monday June 25, form part of the programme run at the centre by DfC, which is a Community Benefit Society, a type of co-operative.
Open mic nights are events where authors can take to the floor and read their material, anything from prose and poetry to screenwriting and theatre. They take place at 7pm and the cost of entry is £3 paid on the door. There is an open theme and writers are restricted to eight minutes on stage.
With the Arts Centre closing on July 7, the nights have had to find a new home and will return for the Autumn season at Voodoo Café/Cantina, 84 Skinnergate, in September.
The Autumn programme take place on:
• Thursday September 27 when there
will be an open theme
• Thursday October 25, open theme
• Thursday November 29,
open theme.
Each session will start at 7pm and the cost of entry will be £3 paid on the door.
Organiser John Dean said: “We will all be sad to leave the Arts Centre. None of us wanted it to close and Monday’s event will be a chance for the area’s writers to say a fond farewell.
“Now that we have confirmed our new venue for the Autumn season, we are looking forward to resuming at the Voodoo Café which promises to be a vibrant and exciting new home for us.
“The talent which we have seen at the open mic nights already held has provided for some magical evenings and we hope that the special atmosphere will continue at Voodoo Café.”
More information is available from John, of Inscribe Media Limited, who is a Darlington for Culture committee member, at deangriss@btinternet.com, or at www.darlingtonforculture.org
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About
DfC
The Inkerman Writers are members of Darlington for Culture (DfC), which was set up in 2010 to help save Darlington Arts Centre from closure.
Its members include representatives of arts and community groups.
DfC was established after the centre’s owner, Darlington Borough Council, announced that budget cuts meant that it would have to withdraw its subsidy from the Arts Centre.
Although the centre closed, the organisation remains active - more at www.darlingtonforculture.org
Publications
Welcome to the site created by the Inkerman Writers to showcase our work.
Based in Darlington, North East England, and having celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2013, members have enjoyed success in a variety of arenas, including winning, and being shortlisted and highly commended, in short story competitions, having novels published and publishing the short story anthology A Strawberry in Winter, which can be obtained by visiting the website www.blurb.com
The group's second anthology of short stories, Christophe's Farewell and Other Stories, can be obtained, cost £4.95 plus postage and packing, from
The Inkerman Writers’ latest book, Out of the Shadows, which was launched as part of the 2013 Darlington Arts Festival, is on sale. The book can be ordered direct from
http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4204019-out-of-the-shadows
The group also produced The Last Waltz, a double CD of short stories, available by contacting deangriss@btinternet.com, cost £5 plus p and p.
Several of our writers wrote original one-act plays in a collaboration with the Green Theatre company, which were performed at Darlington Arts Centre early in February, 2012.
Darlington-based Inkerman Writers have produced their latest anthology of short stories, Inkerman Street, based on the demolition of a fictional northern street and the stories of the people who lived in it.
The book, which features a variety of stories ranging from horror to comedy, was launched to a large audience at the Darlington Arts Festival Literary Day on Saturday May 26 and begins like this:
“Inkerman Street is still and graveyard-hushed tonight, the terraced houses cold behind boarded-up windows, silent sentinels among a sea of wasteland. No one lives here now and tomorrow the bulldozers will move in to flatten the houses to make way for the Council’s Grand Plan.
“Although the people are long gone, the houses still have life. Peek into one of the bedrooms and see on the wall a painting of a seaside scene, brightly-coloured boats bobbing in the harbour, fishermen pipe-smoking in the noonday sun and seagulls wheeling high above the choppy waters. In the roaring silence of the night, you can hear the screeching of the birds and taste the salt air, acrid and herring-sharp at the back of your throat. It is an illusion; the bedroom is empty and the blooms on the faded wallpaper have long since wilted.
“The air in the houses is musty with neglect yet but a few months before, these were bustling homes filled with frying bacon and steaming irons, whistling kettles and playing children. The houses witnessed all these scenes for more than 150 years. Behind their curtains were enacted a thousand stories but tomorrow they will be destroyed because Inkerman Street is the last of its ilk.
“Now, on the eve of the street’s death, the people who once lived here have returned, gathering solemn and silent in the mist, the ghosts of the past come to pay final tribute….”
The anthology can be purchased at http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/7524452/bae89c993c98ec8c8b37b12d6b9b37ecced5dec3
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