Sunday 13 March 2016

Walk Drink Write

It's a long time since I wrote here. Been busy setting up the new Alice Maddicott website and on various projects such as The Car Boot Museum (see saw15momentum.wordpress.com ) and my young writers lab with Bath Festivals (fantastic performance at the Bath lit fest last week) and some other great creative education projects. Oh yes and moving house etc etc...

But since I have moved I have spent large amounts of days just walking and exploring the Somerset, Wiltshire borders - downs, forests, canal towpaths and abandoned railways... This has led to scheming a new Dirty Confetti project Walk Drink Write  So here is the blurb:

Don’t feel very Eat, Pray, Love? Walk, Drink, Write offers an alternative for women who would rather walk till they dropped, ending up in a nice pub for a pint of ale (lemonade acceptable to younger readers – tea is always good), in order to sit and write probably strange experimental narrative poetry (or stories if they tickle your fancy – fictional philosophy rather than contemplative non-fiction though please). Originally started as writer and artist Alice Maddicott’s fictional walking diary and now expanding to a Dirty Confetti project, Walk, Drink, Write seeks to bring female writers together to share the work that comes in that strange moment when limbs are aching and thirst is quenched and you are warm and comfy and your head is full of the smallest details that lit up the footpath, how the light changed, how that person walked, the sky sounded, your head cleared and refilled with ideas – Dirty Confetti believes this is better than any self help book and healthier too… We believe memories and ghosts – discarded crisp packets and secret moss worlds are more helpful than yoga sometimes; that self discovery isn’t more valuable that the discovery of secret dens and abandoned railway tracks.

So do email work to us written in that golden time and we will upload as soon as the project site is up and running. We want to create a writing atlas of the world, mapped by women’s feet in rural and urban locations alike, where words act as the lines – the borders that create a place, where those slight moments of delirium sometimes lead to inspiration.

Collaborations of course more than welcome – with illustrators too – we do at Dirty Confetti believe in that spirit of creative joy/lunacy that can come from following the #WalkDrinkWrite philosophy with a dear friend – Alice and Ana have spent many of their best days in this way (and it has often led to some of their if not best then most fun to write work!).

Email work to alice@alicemaddicott.com 

Please note this is a poetry/prose in all its forms, but not non-fiction project. Do write a blurb of where the walk was – send photo/illustration too if you like. We’re particularly fond of experimental poetic prose and those writing genres which often don’t get a chance as they don’t fit. Not too long please! And we really would like them to follow the guidelines of having been written in situ straight after the walk – not long afterwards looking back, though meta-narratives to past walks within the walk acceptable… Don’t send work that isn’t ready, but also don’t over edit – that slightly flawed post walk spark is what we’re looking for – a work in process – a fleeting rhythm of word feet…

So yes - tis all in a slightly early stage and the website is currently just my very unedited but intentially left flawed ramblings - more work by others to be uploaded soon.

Other updates - the poetic travelogue that was published by Somerset Art Works as part of The Car Boot Museum project is now available to buy from Dirty Confetti for a fiver. Or for a tenner you can still buy a copy of The City and I will throw in a copy of the travelogue for free - just click buy now on The City...