Continuing the celebrations of Angela Carter’s links with Bristol around the 25th anniversary of her death, a new poetry competition has just been announced. Participants are invited to submit poetry specifically inspired by the RWA exhibition Strange Worlds: The Vision of Angela Carter. The artworks and artefacts can not only be viewed at the exhibition itself but also in the official Strange Worlds Catalogue and on the Strange Worlds Flickr page.
Carter began writing poetry during her time in Bristol in the 1960s, alongside writing her first novels. A collection of her poetry entitled Unicorn was published in 2015 by Profile Books and edited by historian Rosemary Hill. Carter’s “career as a published poet”, Hill notes, “lasted less than a decade and was concentrated in three years from 1963 to 1966”, with her ‘Japanese Snapshots’ marking its end when they were published in The Listener in 1971. Hill goes on to argue that Carter’s poems “deserve to be republished, not only for themselves and the light they cast on her later work but also as expressions of the historical moment that produced them”. She continues:
“In her twenties when she wrote most of them, Carter was steeped in the forms and traditions of English verse, but she was already interested in manipulating and subverting them. Her poetry shows an extraordinary imagination finding its expression.”
Just as contemporary artists have been inspired by Carter’s “extraordinary imagination”, so now you in turn are invited to write and submit poetry inspired by their imaginative responses to Carter’s works displayed in the Strange Worlds exhibition. The winning poems will be published on the Get Angela Carter website and there may also be an opportunity to read your poem at the RWA gallery before Strange Worlds closes on the 19th March 2017. There are no particular requirements. Entries are to be emailed to either Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts (marie.mulvey-roberts@uwe.ac.uk) or Dr Charlotte Crofts (charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk) by the 10th March 2017 with ‘Strange Worlds Poetry’ in the subject line of your email.
For more information about the Angela Carter poetry competition, head over to the Get Angela Carter website here. The official Strange Worlds Catalogue can be purchased by visiting the Sansom & Company website here. Images from the Strange Worlds exhibition can also be viewed on the RWA Flickr page.
To read my exclusive interview with Marie Mulvey-Roberts and Fiona Robinson, the curators of Strange Worlds: The Vision of Angela Carter, click here.
Angela Carter Online 