Long time since an update, but just to say that we are having a little sale on ‘Voices’. Normally £9.99 you can now get a lovely shiny paperback for £5. Just email dobbs_sarah@hotmail.com or send a paypal payment.
contributors include:
Sarah Hilary
AJ Ashworth
Mark Ellis
and more.
I’m a little late posting these up here, but here is some of the feedback from the Voices anthology. Thanks to Alexandra O’Toole and Kelvin M Knight.
Buy – £1.97
Reviews:
A review from Kelvin M Knight
An audacious yet simple front cover. Pages smell lovely. Available on Kindle and Epub (pictures unavailable in Epub format).
‘Characters of our District’ a telling memoir from Pauline Jackson about how modernisation makes towns soulless. By demolishing the old to make way for the new we lose something vital: those characters that made our communities. ‘Until Morning’ a dark, dialogue driven tale by Mark Ellis – who, apparently, is a liar.
About regret as an older man tries to relive happier times with a younger girl at a disused circus. Cotton Town Project’ Memoirs told by interviews from the Youth Action Ambassadors Group. This is the happy memories he recalls as if yesterday despite the hardships. This insight is worth the price of the anthology alone.
‘After a Long Illness, Quietly at Home’ a moving opening story by Sarah Hilary. ‘The Community (Dig In)’ by Ismail Karolia the longest story so far (12 pages) yet time flies by whilst reading. it, and for Imran too, as he must clear the snow from his drive before his wife Aliyah’s contractions start. His actions bring together an insular community. Everyone helps, even the dour Psycho Sykes, who is not all she seems in the tear jerker finale. Kelvin M Knight – @writerknights
(Also available in paperback – goo.gl/kn1zH) ( – ed)
From Alexandra O’Toole
Blackburn. Former mill town; producer of textiles since the thirteenth century; boom town of the Industrial Revolution and now the subject of a brand new collection of writings from those who have lived in, worked at and known it.
The Voices anthology is a unique collection of fiction, poetry and life writing from an eclectic group of writers: combining well known talents such as Tony Neil, A.J. Ashworth and Sarah Hilary with a host of previously unpublished writers, young and old, some of whom had never even written anything before their submission to the anthology.
How poet, lecturer and editor of Voices, Dr Sarah Dobbs, must have decided which submissions made the cut and which fell short, is not made clear, but her curatorial expertise in this volume is something to be marvelled at. Adjoining entries are connected through core themes which, despite the disparate nature of forms and styles of writing, enables the whole to flow seamlessly. The collection moves easily between wonderfully evocative pieces from longstanding residents, such as Pauline Jackson, whose memories of `Slippy Baths’ and `Saturday Nights’ and J Palmer, whose retelling of how she became known as `Contrary Mary’, paint vivid pictures of lives lived in a town in its prime, and the emotive and bitter poetry of `Piss Town’ by Tony O’Neill and the frustration laced prose of young Shane McHugh, whose `A Day In The Life of A Young Person’ is a sobering read.
Thank goodness, then, for `Blackburn Library’ to lift the spirits. This charming, witty story from the anthology’s youngest contributor, ten year old, Lotte Gracie Neil, emanates real warmth of feeling for the town. Sentiments that are echoed in the rosy childhood memories of an earlier Blackburn in John Hindle’s poem, `My Favourite Row’ and also in Gideon Woodhouse’s, `Memory’, one of two poems written by him included in this collection.
However, many of the contributors to Voices have chosen to focus their words on their feelings of despondency and disappointment about the Blackburn of today. I particularly liked David R Morgan’s very effective, `Mediocrity Is Not Enough’, which paints a picture of the town as a place of discontentment, of failed hopes and people let down and unsupported.
Mark Ellis’ story, `Until Morning’, which reads like a fragment from a longer piece, is an ambiguous tale that appears to comment on the breakdown of town’s traditional social mores, whilst the shame felt by Thomas Eccles, about his `empty, bleak and unfulfilling’ hometown is shown more directly in his writing, `Blackburn’.
Poems, `The Methodist Chapel’ by Alan Taylor and `Bag Lady’ by Martin McAreavy, depict a lethargic town of neglected relics. Whilst Baron Jepson’s, `Dandelions and Nettles’, cleverly juxtaposes a series of happy childhood memories against the backdrop of his decaying neighbourhood.
Yet despite the town’s industrial decline in recent years and the lack of opportunity it may now appear to offer its residents, it seems that Blackburn retains a hidden magic about it, with the knowledge that some things have remained true: a sense of community and belonging and pride in its heritage.
`The Trouble With Blackburn’ by Christine Clayton and `Some Hovis and A Cup of Oxo’ by Diane Smith, prove that even outsiders are not immune to Blackburn’s charms, finding it, as Christine says, `a place that doesn’t pretend: not pretty, but beautiful; not perfect, but loveable’.
Community is the central theme of Maria Ismail’s, `The Colours of Blackburn’, which celebrates the vibrant variety of cultures found on every street, calling it `a town buzzing with culture / on the brink of change’. So to, Ishmail Karolia’s story, `The Community (Dig In)’: a heart warming tale of a multi-racial community coming together to solve a problem.
Blackburn’s proud heritage is given full acknowledgement in Gaye Gerrard’s poem, `Industrial Anthem’ and also Keith Dalton’s `Northern Street’. And a submission from the town’s Youth Action group, entitled, `The Cotton Town Project’, reports on their findings from interviews with former local cotton mill workers: a thoroughly interesting read.
This diverse collection of works is punctuated and tied together by two stories written by established published authors, Sarah Hilary and A.J. Ashworth. Though unique and unrelated, the plots of Hilary’s, emotive elegy, `After A Long Illness, Quietly At Home’ and Ashworth’s poignant tale, `Eggshells’, share a similar focus: a quiet concentration on the tiny, seemingly insignificant and often intangible details that have made up a life. A fitting convergence for a collection such as this. For the Voices anthology is all about this kind of minutiae: observations of the humdrum and the everyday; the unexpected beauty and the hard to ignore decay of Blackburn’s sloping, terraced streets; a town once great, now taken for granted. Here provided as a brand new set of reasons to visit this beloved and beleaguered Northern town.
Alexandra O’Toole specialises in brand storytelling. When she’s not helping businesses connect with their audiences through stories, she’s trying to write her own. She has almost finished the first draft of a novel and is in the second year of the distance learning MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
You can listen to some of our authors reading their stories here:
Take a Leap – Flash fiction Competition.
For those who don’t want to wait for Voices from the US, you can now get it from Amazon with free delivery.
You can now get Voices for your Kindle! You don’t need a Kindle device, just download the Amazon app to your smartphone, laptop or PC.
(Please note, the e-version does not contain interior photography).
It’s finally with us – you can purchase your copy of Voices from the link below for £9.99.
There’s currently 25% off if you use coupon code countdownuk at the checkout. I think you can still get it by the 24th…
If you’d rather buy on Amazon, it will be available within two months.
Do order a copy and let us know what you think!
If anyone would like to review the collection, please get in touch.
Here’s a sneak preview of the Voices cover. More details about where to buy and so on coming shortly…
The Voices anthology was created to embrace all of the diversity and excitement that Blackburn has to offer. This collection comprises fiction, poetry and life-writing but definitions regardless, they are all stories about the town by people who have lived in, worked at and known it. Another aim of the anthology was to allow all types of writers to work together and to show that writing has a place in everyone’s life. You don’t have to consider yourself a writer to be able to write. You don’t need an MA in Creative Writing or to be a published novelist to see the positive impact of writing on your life. You don’t need permission. We can all write our stories and we all have something important to say, whether that’s our memories of growing up to pass on to our families, a best-selling novel or prize-winning poem, or observations for our own personal notebooks.
To that end, this collection will tell you all sorts of stories. It will take you from real-life reminiscences of growing up, to poetry describing the beautiful sites and memories – some tough and gritty – that Blackburn has given our writers, to current experiences of what life is like now.
Come to our pre-launch reading evening Thursday 15th September at The Continental, 8pm.
blackburnvoices 