To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Major movements forward in the development of poetic form have often been achieved by abandoning accepted conventions. The Romantic poets’ parting with the heroic couplet and Walt Whitman’s no-rhyme, free-verse revolution are two examples. Vision and courage propel creative change, and artists working in many forms learn from what preceded them. Degas and Renoir were […]
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OCA will be in Cambridge for a Poetry Workshop on November 19th. Tutor John Drew will be leading and this will be held from 10.30 to 4.30 in Darwin College, a friendly and picturesque small graduate college on the banks of the Cam just west of the city centre. All activities will be centred on […]
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11am Saturday morning: fear – of what to write, of whether any words will come, of writing well enough; of reading aloud scribbled sentences to a critical audience of strangers. 14 writers are gathered in a room in Ilkley, the top of the moor just visible through the window, on the second day of the […]
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Flagship of the literature world The Arvon Foundation works with only three higher education partners each year. OCA is privileged to be one of them. Our next residential week with Arvon is taking place between Monday 25 and Saturday 30 March 2013. Arvon has many prominent writers as friends, patrons and supporters. The list includes […]
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Let’s start with a confession. I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, not from cover to cover. But I’ve read enough over people’s shoulders to know I want more, especially now I realise it’s not the sequel to Sebastian Faulks’ Second World War French Resistance novel Charlotte Gray. It will be all mine to […]
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On Sunday, an old friend and his wife came to lunch at short notice, bringing with them his 85-year old mother, Doreen, who has recently been diagnosed with the early stages of dementia. To get to our house, they had to drive for an hour and a quarter: a regular outing for the young and […]
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Recently I had the great pleasure of filming an interview with children’s author Jacqueline Wilson. Jacqueline has sold over 25 million books in the UK alone and was the most popular library book author of the last decade. You can see some of her 15,000 strong book collection behind her in the interview. Jacqueline was […]
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I was interviewing photographer Stuart Freedman recently (see Featured Photographers) and when we came to the bit about how he got started, he stressed that much of his learning came “through looking at other photographers’ work and trying to find my own style. I used to go to bed every night with a couple of […]
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Last month, the phenomenon of cyber bullying became headline news when Conservative MP Louise Mensch spoke out against the onslaught of misogynistic abuse to which she had been subjected on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Mensch is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. The comments, many of them explicit and most of […]
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Uccello’s painting of George and the dragon appears to depict a male hero coming to the rescue of a maiden in distress. But does the composition of the painting belie this reading? Is the maiden taming the dragon successfully herself, without the need for St George to intervene? Writers including the poet Ursula Fanshawe and novelist Oscar Wilde and Margaret Forster have used an actual or imagined painting as the basis for their work.
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