Wordlab #4: Carving Out the Poem

Carving Out the Poem: You, Your Poems, and the 3-Dimensional World
a special workshop with poets-on-tour Jon Sands & Ken Arkind

The Hide Bar, 15-17 Argyle Place, Edinburgh
Tuesday 28th February, 5-7pm
book in advance by email. entry by paywotucan donation.

When our life experience suggests that celebration always comes laced with a hint of melancholy, and joy is a border that surrounds sorrow; how can we construct poems that acknowledge a complicated and dynamic world? How do we avoid writing that only does one thing, and performances that transform us into caricatures? How can we guide an audience into the experience of what it actually feels like to be us?

In this workshop, we will explore tangible ways to reveal a 3-dimensional view of our poems. Bring a notebook, pen, and a sense of adventure as we take our art to the edge of the universe, and bring back proof that we’ve been there.

WordLab is a series of occasional workshops presented by Inky Fingers, designed to be open and exciting places for writers and performers to develop their work. We bring you professional workshop leaders; you bring yourselves; magic happens.

Email inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com to book a space now!

Open Mic with Ken Arkind & Jon Sands, Feb 28th

This month, we’re incredibly excited to be featuring two top US poets, KEN ARKIND and JON SANDS, as part of their UK tour. Ken Arkind is a National Poetry Slam Champion, Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam Champion and full time touring artist who has performed across the US, been publishedin numerous anthologies, and featured in HBO, CBS, NBC and Borders.com’s Open Door Poetry series. Jon Sands is a full-time teaching & performing artist. His first full collection of poems, The New Clean, was released in 2011 from Write Bloody Publishing. Jon is currently the Director of Poetry Education at the Positive Health Project.

The Inky Fingers Open Mic takes place on the fourth Tuesday of the month, from 8-11pm. It’s free to come and free for anyone to perform, regardless of style, experience, or identity. We want to hear from everybody, and we want to support everybody in performing for a friendly audience. We want your poems, your rants, your ballads, your short stories, your diaries, your experimental texts, your heart, your mind, your body. We want the essay on your summer holidays you wrote when you were four, your adolescent haiku, and extracts from your eventually-to-be-completed epic fantasy quadrilogy. We want to hear your best new work as well. And we want people to care about the way words are performed.

As well as the open mic, each night features top performers from the UK and further afield: we bring you the best in poetry, storytelling, fiction, and everything else that involves putting beautiful words in a beautiful order!

Spaces to perform are limited, so please email inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com to reserve a space.

READeasy 13th Feb

THE READEASY WRITERS’ GROUP
Monday 13th February, 6-9pm
Word of Mouth Café, 3A Albert St, Edinburgh

Hello writers! Whether you are a poet, novelist, scriptwriter, or haven’t yet made up your mind, the Inky Fingers  Writers’ Group is for YOU. We meet to read and talk about each other’s work in a fun, safe, and constructive environment. It is a unique (and free) opportunity to get feedback, to experience new writing, and to hear your work read aloud: and best of all, it is anonymous, so you can feel completely at ease.

Every month a group of writers meets in a cosy café to discuss their work. Each member submits a piece of writing for the group, these are anonymised and printed out, everyone is given one piece to read, and then we take turns reading the piece aloud and giving feedback.

To attend for a session, just drop us an email at inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com, with a piece of your writing attached. Any genre, and extracts are certainly allowed, but the limit is about 500 words, so that we’ve time to read them all. Also, please use  either .pdf, .odt or .doc (not .docx!) file formats.

Come along on the night, and we will read each piece aloud and chat about it. (Let us know if you’re not going to be able to attend, so that we can make your space available to someone else.) Bring a notepad and your wonderful mind!

Places are limited, so please send your email a few days in advance to make sure you get a space.

Happy New Year! Inky Fingers Open Mic Returneth!

Happy New Year! The legendary Inky Fingers Open Mic returns for 2012 with a brilliant new show. Courtesy of renowned house of words Cargo Publishing, our feature performers this month are authors Allan Wilson and Tracey Rosenberg.

Harry’s gone on holiday, so your evening has been left in the shapely, charming, over gesticulatory and occasionally misshapen hands of Rachel McCrum and Alec Beattie. We’re going to take care of you. We promise.

Image by Brittonie Fletcher.

 

And we still have a few Open Mic slots left! As always, it’s free to come and free for anyone to perform, regardless of style, experience or identity.  We want you. We want your poems, your rants, your ballads, your short stories, your diaries, your experimental texts, your heart, your mind, your body. We want the essay on your summer holidays you wrote when you were four, your adolescent haiku, and extracts from your eventually-to-be-completed epic fantasy quadrilogy.  For 5 minutes on a stage, we want you to tell the audience what you’re thinking about the world, how you’re feeling about your breakfast or the best story you’ve never thought you could come up with. And we want you to tell it to them well. Email inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com to reserve a place.

See y’all next Tuesday. We hope that you enjoy the show.

xx

READeasy 13th January

THE READEASY WRITERS’ GROUP
Friday 13th January, 6-9pm
Word of Mouth Café, 3A Albert St, Edinburgh

Hello writers! Whether you are a poet, novelist, scriptwriter, or haven’t yet made up your mind, the Inky Fingers  Writers’ Group is for YOU. We meet to read and talk about each other’s work in a fun, safe, and constructive environment. It is a unique (and free) opportunity to get feedback, to experience new writing, and to hear your work read aloud: and best of all, it is anonymous, so you can feel completely at ease.

Every month a group of writers meets in a cosy café to discuss their work. Each member submits a piece of writing for the group, these are anonymised and printed out, everyone is given one piece to read, and then we take turns reading the piece aloud and giving feedback.

To attend for a session, just drop us an email at inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com, with a piece of your writing attached. Any genre, and extracts are certainly allowed, but the limit is about 500 words, so that we’ve time to read them all. Also, please use  either .pdf, .odt or .doc (not .docx!) file formats.

Come along on the night, and we will read each piece aloud and chat about it. (Let us know if you’re not going to be able to attend, so that we can make your space available to someone else.) Bring a notepad and your wonderful mind!

Places are limited, so please send your email a few days in advance to make sure you get a space.

Global Conditioning: open mic with Craigmillar Writers Group

GLOBAL CONDITIONING: A Creative Writing Open Mic
for World Community Arts Day

FRIDAY 10th February, 7.30pm
SPACE THEATRE, 11 Harewood Rd, Craigmillar
Free entry

Craigmillar Writers Group and Inky Fingers are teaming up to bring you a brand new writing and performance event for the international celebrations of World Community Arts Day. Featuring tall tales, banter poetry, wild stories and writing of every description, this extra special performance night will be featuring writers from all walks of life, with space for you too to perform your work.

Craigmillar Writers Group is an old but new group in the Community, sponsored by the Adult Learning Link and Craigmillar Archives Trust, with the aim of supporting local people and groups in Creative Writing, reminiscences and poetry.

Inky Fingers (http://inkyfingersedinburgh.wordpress.com) is an Edinburgh-based writing and performance group staging open and exciting events for people who love words, from open mics and slams to workshops and minifests.

Together, both groups believe in throwing the stage wide open to anyone’s words: we care about supporting writers of all levels of experience, and making events where everyone can have fun.

To find out more about the event, or to sign up for an open mic slot (spaces open to absolutely anyone, but limited in number), please email inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com

Tickets are free but limited. Sign up at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/2711493149/ to be sure to make it!

Christmas Office Party Hell

The Nightmare Before the Office Christmas Party
December 13th, 7 – 11
The Third Door, Lothia St
£3.50/£4.50

Inky Fingers, Edinburgh’s grassroots events series for writers and performers, is putting on a spectacular literary office party. Come in your awful bowties and desperate tinsel to enjoy festive and unfestive performances from top local writers, photocopier destruction, an extraordinary literary secret santa, a competition for the worst christmas cracker joke, and much else besides. Grotesque, glorious, and packed to the gunnels with amazing words: be there!

READeasy 6th December

THE READEASY WRITERS’ GROUP
Tuesday 6th December, 6-9pm
Word of Mouth Café, 3A Albert St, Edinburgh

Hello writers! Whether you are a poet, novelist, scriptwriter, or haven’t yet made up your mind, the Inky Fingers  Writers’ Group is for YOU. We meet to read and talk about each other’s work in a fun, safe, and constructive environment. It is a unique (and free) opportunity to get feedback, to experience new writing, and to hear your work read aloud: and best of all, it is anonymous, so you can feel completely at ease.

Every month a group of writers meets in a cosy café to discuss their work. Each member submits a piece of writing for the group, these are anonymised and printed out, everyone is given one piece to read, and then we take turns reading the piece aloud and giving feedback.

To attend for a session, just drop us an email at inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com, with a piece of your writing attached. Any genre, and extracts are certainly allowed, but the limit is about 500 words, so that we’ve time to read them all. Also, please use  either .pdf, .odt or .doc (not .docx!) file formats.

Come along on the night, and we will read each piece aloud and chat about it. (Let us know if you’re not going to be able to attend, so that we can make your space available to someone else.) Bring a notepad and your wonderful mind!

Places are limited, so please send your email a few days in advance to make sure you get a space.

 

Open Mic with Robin Cairns

Inky Fingers Open Mic
Tuesday 22nd November, 8-11pm
Medina, Lothian St

The Inky Fingers Open Mic takes place on the fourth Tuesday of the month, from 8-11pm. It’s free to come and free for anyone to perform, regardless of style, experience, or identity. We want to hear from everybody, and we want to support everybody in performing for a friendly audience. We want your poems, your rants, your ballads, your short stories, your diaries, your experimental texts, your heart, your mind, your body. We want the essay on your summer holidays you wrote when you were four, your adolescent haiku, and extracts from your eventually-to-be-completed epic fantasy quadrilogy. We want to hear your best new work as well. And we want people to care about the way words are performed.

As well as the open mic, each night features top performers from the UK and further afield: we bring you the best in poetry, storytelling, fiction, and everything else that involves putting beautiful words in a beautiful order! Our feature performer this month is the comic maestro Robin Cairns.  Robin travels to perform across Scotland on a regular basis, at poetry nights, slams, comedy clubs,  ceilidhs (lots of ceilidhs), after-dinner engagements, in  schools, in libraries, rock  festivals, arts festivals, and everything else. He’s never happier than when he has an audience laughing – as long as he knows he has something up his sleeve to squeeze a tear out of them soon.

Spaces to perform are limited, so please email inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com to reserve a space.

Inky Fingers is an Edinburgh-based events series for writers and performers, running workshops, open mics, and special literary events. Find out more at http://inkyfingersedinburgh.wordpress.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter @InkyFingersEdin.

READeasy Returns! November 15th @ Word of Mouth

THE READEASY WRITERS’ GROUP
Tuesday 15th November, 6-9pm
Word of Mouth Café, 3A Albert St, Edinburgh

WHAT IT IS

Hello aspiring writers! — whether you are a budding poet, novelist,
scriptwriter, or haven’t yetmade up your mind, the Inky Fingers
Writers’ Group is for YOU. We meet to read and talk about each other’s
work in a fun, safe, and constructive environment. It is a unique (and
free) opportunity to get feedback, to experience new writing, and to
hear your work read aloud: and best of all, it is anonymous, so you
can feel completely at ease.

HOW WE WORK

Every month a group of writers meets in a cosy café to discuss their work. Each member submits a piece of writing for the group, these are anonymised and printed out, everyone is given one piece to read, and then we take turns reading the piece aloud and giving feedback.

To attend for a session, just drop us an email at inkyfingersedinburgh@gmail.com, with a piece of your writing attached. Any genre, and extracts are certainly allowed, but the limit is about 500 words, so that we’ve time to read them all. Also, please use either .pdf, .odt or .doc (not .docx!) file formats.

Come along on the night, and we will read each piece aloud and chat about it. (Let us know if you’re not going to be able to attend, so that we can make your space available to someone else.) Bring a notepad and your wonderful mind!

Places are limited, so please send your email a few days in advance to make sure you get a space. (Please note also, that only those who have submitted a piece themselves can come – if you want to just come and listen to amazing new writing, then please come to our Open Mic.)

The discussion is really informal, so don’t feel you have to be an authority on literary criticism, or, well, on anything.

WHAT FOLK HAVE SAID

“I have always wanted to attend a group like this to share and get feedback on my work. However, I was always too nervous to share my work with so many other writers at one time. The Inky Fingers method is very good because it allows you to share your work anonymously, while still receiving feedback. I found it to be an excellent experience with lots of good discussion amongst a very nice bunch of people.”

TIME AND PLACE

6 – 9pm
Tuesday 15th November
Word of Mouth Café, 3A Albert St (just off Leith Walk)