First of all, in these worrying times, I hope you are all well.
First of all we have a Spring Literary Quiz for you. Do feel free to pass on to family or friends. Many thanks to new Steering Group member, Jan Dawson, who compiled the Quiz and will look forward to receiving your completed entries. There will be a £10 book token for the winner, though they may have to wait a while to get it.
How many of you regularly keep a diary? If you don’t (like me), maybe now is a good time to start. After last week’s email I had a suggestion from one of our Festival supporters who said that she is keeping a Mass Observation Diary as they did in WW2, and perhaps others might like to do the same. In case, like me, you haven’t heard of the Mass Observation Diaries, ordinary people during WW2 were asked to keep diaries of their experiences. Some of these diaries are available in local studies libraries. A film starring Victoria Wood was made of housewife Nella Last’s diary. You don’t have to write the diary daily, but maybe keep a note of what affects you, how you feel, what you are doing to pass the time etc etc. This would be a great thing to do within families with different generations all recording their thoughts. I started mine last Tuesday.
Our inaugural Poetry Competition will launch on Monday 13th April, with a closing date of Friday 12th June. To give you a taster, the theme of the poems will be Thinking Outside the Box. The Competition Rules will be posted on the Festival website: www.eveshamfestivalofwords.org. Again, please let family and friends know. We’d love to see a bumper lot of entries.
For those who are local to the Evesham area, Cotswold & Vale Magazine was due to feature the Poetry Competition. They have this week decided not to print the April edition, but a spring issue can be found on their website: https://valemagazine.org.
Meanwhile, our Short Story Competition entries are with the judges and we will be notifying all entrants of the outcome by 17th April at the very latest.
As for our 2020 Festival programme, well still too early to plan, but ideally we will try and put on a mini Festival weekend later in the year.
Have you heard of the Stay at Home Festival? It’s a great initiative. Check out the link: https://stayathomefest.wordpress.com/programme
Anyway, get your thinking hats on with the Quiz, and if anyone has any other ideas that we can share, do get in touch.
Take care everyone. Sue Ablett, Chair
Evesham Festival of Word