Tickets £4 from A’ the Airts 01659 50514 or pop in to the centre to book.

Sponsored by Arts Live

 To complement this exhibition there will be three evening readings by poets published by Roncadora.

 Wednesday 9 February    Hugh McMillan / Graham Fulton

Wednesday  16 February            Andrew Forster / Jean Atkin

Wednesday 2 March        Rab Wilson / John Burns.

 These FREE events have been organised in partnership with dgArts. Readings will take place at 7pm in the Gracefield Café Gallery and in most cases will also mark the launch of a new pamphlet by the poets.

To book places for any (or all) of the events telephone 01387 262084.

2.30-4pm Poetry Workshop – ‘At home: living in the poem.’

With Helen Mort

 What makes a landscape ‘home’? And how best to write about places we know well? Helen Mort, Poet in Residence with the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage (Wordsworth’s home when he wrote much of his greatest work) will look at how to make familiar landscapes strange and how writers from Wordsworth to Philip Larkin and Ian McMillan have explored and reinvented the idea of ‘home’ in poetry.

6.30-7pm William Wordsworth: Selected Poems

Helen Mort and Andrew Forster, Poet in Residence and Literature Officer with the Wordsworth Trust, will read and talk about some of their favourite poems by Wordsworth along with new poems inspired by living and working in Wordsworth’s home.

7.15-8.15pm An illustrated artist talk by Charlie Poulsen

Charlie introduces the work in his exhibition and further afield. Find out how plants and landscapes have inspired some of his recent living installations.

George Wallace, Rab Wilson and musical friends take us on a lively poetic journey inspired by the work of two great poets: Robert Burns and Walt Whitman.

There will be a community minibus from Dumfries for this event – call Carolyn Yates on 01387 253383 if you want more information.

George Wallace is the Walt Whitman Birthplace 2011 Writer in Residence.  An award winning poet and journalist, George  has performed his work across America and in Europe. He is the author of nineteen chapbooks of poetry and teaches literature at Pace University in Manhattan. He is editor of Poetrybay, an online poetry magazine archived and distributed worldwide by Stanford University. Other editorial work includes Poetryvlog, Long Island Quarterly, and Walt’s Corner in the Long Islander newspaper A former Peace Corps Volunteer, USAF Medical Officer and community organizer, he is a regular performer at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Howlfest, the Woody Guthrie Festival and Bradfest. In the Metropolitan New York area he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Algonquin Club, Tribes Gallery, Sidewalk Café and at C-Note, and hosts poetry events at Cornelia St Cafe and Bowery Poetry Club. An avid Whitman enthusiast, he is a major interpreter of European Surrealism, New York School and Beat writing.

 Rab Wilson, the Robert Burns Writing Fellow in Reading Scots for Dumfries and Galloway, is a poet wha screives maistly in Scots an writes a wheen things in Standaurt Englis as weel.  His wark appears regularly in the likes o Lallans magazine, Holyrood Magazine, the Herald newspaper and Chapman magazine. He writes whit it is like tae leeve in Scotland in the 21st Century. His wark contains poleetical satire, humorous warks, elegies, sonnets, meditations oan global events, anti-war poetry, an the hale range o whit haes inspired Scots makars fir a thoosan year syne or mair.  ‘Omar Khayyam in Scots’, and  an ‘Art Buik’ version o the Roman poet Horace’s ‘First Book o Satires’, a jynt project wi the Dumfries artist Hugh Bryden, are his acclaimed owersettins o classic screeds. His collection, ‘Accent O The Mind’ wis publisht bi Luath Press o Embra in 2006. Scotland On Sunday said o this buik ‘This book contains poetry to rival the best published in Scotland, or written by a Scot, in the past 30 years.’ He wis winner of ‘The McCash Poetry Prize’ in 2008, Scotland’s leadin poetry competition fir poetry written in Scots, rin jyntly bi Glasgow University and the Herald newspaper. In 2009 he published a saicent collection, ‘Life Sentence’, and an anthology o poetry bi contemporary Dumfries and Galloway poets, entitled ‘Chuckies fir the Cairn’.  His film documentary anent the history an future o coal mining in South West Scotland, in conjunction wi the West of Scotland University, was shown at the Wigtown book festival in 2010.

Professor Alan Riach, current Chair o Scottish Leeterature at Glasgow University, hus described Rab as ‘one of the best poets now working in Scotland’.

Winner of the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, poet and artist Jen Hadfield will read from her collections Nigh-No-Place and Almanacs. With an exuberant wit and an acrobat’s daring with language, Jen treads her way across northern territories, documenting her experiences from island life to travels in the Canadian wilderness.  The event is sponsored by the Scottish Book Trust as part of their Live Literature Scotland scheme.

Admission free

ALL WELCOME

If you need a good map to help you find the Rutherford McCowan Building go to http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_75482_en.pdf

More information from Dr David Borthwick

[email protected]

Dumfries and Galloway is located in South West Scotland, and has a largely rural population of some 125,000 people.  The region is divided into four districts – Annandale & Eskdale, Upper Nithsdale, Stewartry and Wigtownshire.

The Theatres and Venues Network meets three times a year at different venues.  This has enabled venue managers and programmers to get the chance to see backstage at venues across the region, and to discuss common challenges and issues.  Guest speakers are frequently invited to the meetings, increasing awareness of new developments and national activity, for example Arts Out West from Cumbria.  The Network has tackled issues such as: health and safety; sound and lighting equipment;  programming; the challenges of rural touring.

The role played by dgArts is to facilitate and support through advice and provision of administrative and practical services.  dgArts can also provide technical performance infrastructure such as a gigrac and mixing desk, lighting, staging and distro.  The Theatres and Venues Network is managed by Louise Davies, Arts & Communities Co-ordinator for dgArts – [email protected]

Theatres and Venues: contacts and information for Promoters

Arts Live will feature the diverse and vibrant range of arts and entertainment that distinguishes Dumfries and Galloway all year round.   To help to get new events and commissions off the ground, dgArts is calling now for applications to the Arts Live funding pot.  Arts Live events will be featured here on www.dgarts.co.uk

Download the Arts Live Promoter Application Form:
Arts Live grant application form

If you have a great idea for an event or a piece of new performance or writing, then get in touch with dgArts’ Arts & Communities Officers.  In the west of the region (The Rhinns, Wigtownshire and Stewartry) contact Winnie Cooper on [email protected] or call 07788 608248, and in the east (Nithsdale, Annandale and Eskdale) contact Louise Davies on [email protected] or call 07919 574 105.  They will provide advice and support for your application.

If you have an artistic idea, commissions that specifically link to events planned by other organisations and local artists will be looked on favourably. We encourage cross-arts activities.

To discuss an idea for a literature event or new writing, please contact dgArts’ Literature Development Officer, Carolyn Yates: email [email protected] tel. 07833 477 728.

“Dumfries and Galloway Council has provided the funding for Arts Live,” said Director of dgArts Susan Garnsworthy.  “We are very keen to include the highest quality events and projects that really showcase the talent we have here in Dumfries and Galloway.  Recent years have demonstrated the positive impact of arts and events on the region’s economy and profile.”

Dumfries & Galloway Arts aims to get the money out to artists and performers as quickly as possible, and the deadline for applications is 9am Friday 29 October.  The Arts Live programme will commence in January 2011.

To apply, please download the Application and Selection Criteria and the Project Brief for Poet.

Selection criteria and application process Poet

Healing Spaces Poet’s Brief.v02doc

The deadline for applications is 12 NOON on Monday 21st December. Applicants selected for interview will be notified on Wednesday 22nd December. Interviews will be held in Dumfries on Tuesday 11th January 11.00am – 2.00pm.

This brief covers the role of the poet who can demonstrate a strong interest in the use of text as integral to creating a sense of place (placemaking) for the users and staff of the new Crichton Acute Mental Health Hospital, Dumfries which is due to be completed in October 2011.

dgArts is the main partner with NHS Dumfries and Galloway in the Healing Spaces project – creating arts for the new psychiatric hospital.  In addition to creating arts in the hospital environment, Healing Spaces is committed to generating arts opportunities when people return to their own homes and communities.  As part of all this,  ‘see me’ will showcase the entries to a Photography competition open to all but targeted at people with a lived experience of, or interest in, mental health issues.  The exhibition in the Midsteeple allows for the People’s Votes to be cast for the photographs on display.  Two prizewinning photographs, in Adult and Under-18 categories, have already been chosen and the winner of the Public Vote will join these two in being entered in the national competition. The winner will be announced in December.

‘see me’ will be open 10am to 4pm, admission free.

The Orchestra’s Principal Conductor, Robin Ticciati, gives his first performance in Dumfries.  The story of Haydn lulling an unsuspecting audience to sleep with his gentle slow movement then jolting them awake with a good loud “SURPRISE” chord is probably too good to be true, but that does not diminish this symphony’s charm or impact.  In Orpheus Stravinsky looks back to the earliest days of opera for inspiration in retelling the Greek myth of the hero’s journey to the Underworld, and brillian French violinist Renaud Capucon performs Szymanowski’s sumptuous Violin Concerto.