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Second Light 'fireworks'

About us

Second Light Network is a network of women poets who are published or beginning to get published and who are serious about developing their work. The Network was founded by Dilys Wood in 1994. As organiser, she is assisted by Myra Schneider (Consultant), a very-part-time administrator, and a 9-member committee which supports the work of the organisation.

We aim to promote the work of all women poets, and also to develop and promote the work of members, through publications, readings, one-day courses, residential workshops and festivals.

The Network keeps in touch through e-mail Newsletters and a Noticeboard in ARTEMISpoetry, a twice yearly journal which includes reviews of books by women poets, including books and pamphlets by members, articles, information about workshops, courses and readings. ARTEMISpoetry also publishes the winning and commended poems from the Second Light Poetry Competition which is held annually. Members also receive the Launde Bag or Holland Haul, a supplement of poetry arising from Second Light's residential workshop, held in the past at either Launde Abbey in Leicestershire or Holland House in Cropthorne.

Second Light has published several anthologies in association with established poetry publishers and through its publishing wing, Second Light Publications, as well as occasional books by individual members. (Publications)

The Membership numbers over 300 - we are aiming to have a membership of 400 - and includes very well-known poets such as RV Bailey, Mimi Khalvati and Penelope Shuttle.

Events

We hold an annual 3 to 4-day conference. There are several workshops, readings and discussions and attendees are invited to bring along their books for sale. A competition is held and the winning poems and a selection of poems from attendees is published in a special booklet, and distributed (to members only) as a supplement to ARTEMISpoetry. In 2011 the venue is once again Holland House, Cropthorne, Worcs. The 2010 publication Holland Haul went out to members with ARTEMISpoetry Issue 4.

Festivals: there are two annual festivals, in Spring and Autumn, usually held in London for ease of access. Normally taking place over 2 days, they comprise workshops and readings and provide an opportunity for members to meet and catch up on each other's news. All events are open to non-members. Members receive a 'priority booking' offer.

Tutors: Past and forthcoming tutors at Launde Abbey, Holland House and the festivals include Catherine Byron, Anne Cluysenaar, Kate Foley, Wendy French, Katherine Gallagher, Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, Mimi Khalvati, Esther Morgan, Pascale Petit, Fiona Sampson, Myra Schneider, Pauline Stainer and Penelope Shuttle.

Other Events: Readings and workshops are arranged throughout the year, across the UK. Second Light Network publications are highly regarded, often going into re-run, and launch readings are popular and usually very well attended. Advance booking is recommended!

Other prominent poets who have worked with the organization include Anna Adams, Gillian Allnutt, Moniza Alvi, U.A. Fanthorpe, Elaine Feinstein, Judith Kazantzis, Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, Meg Peacocke, Caroline Price and Anne Stevenson.

Please let us know if you want to be added to our e-mailing list.

Dates for your Diary - 2011

Fri 18 & Sat 19 November 2011, �North Comes South� Autumn Festival
The Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT (Russell Sq tube)

Two full days of workshops and readings with a very fine line-up of tutors and readers.

Workshops with Fiona Sampson (Fri am), Myra Schneider (Fri pm), Gillian Allnutt (Sat am) and Mimi Khalvati (Sat pm).

Readings from Gillian Allnutt, Jane Duran and Mimi Khalvati, with Elizabeth Burns and Jane Routh. (Sat night: 6:30pm Reception & 7:30 Main Reading). Members' readings from Maggie Norton and Linda Rose Parkes (Fri 5 - 6pm) and Kaye Lee and Belinda Singleton (Sat 5 - 6 pm), with open mic for Second Light members during both readings.

Links to:

the booking form
the Saturday night reading
and the overall programme with details of Workshops & Readings.

Publications

ARTEMISpoetry

biannual journal of women's writing

Published in May & Nov each year, 60+ pages of women's poetry and women's writing about poetry, reviews and artwork. ARTEMISpoetry aims to show the best in women's writing today.

Single Issue �5 + p&p; Subscription �9 + p&p

Second Light Publications

More details

Purchase at shop online

Inside the Brightness of Red, cover

Inside the Brightness of Red

Mary MacRae

A second, posthumous collection. In her Afterword, Mimi Khalvati says of these poems, �We cannot read Mary without becoming her, so strong is her empathy with all living things, so intense her desire to be fully alive, so palpable her sense of mortality.� The wide range of poems here includes poignant work written when she was terminally ill but also beautiful lyric poems about childhood, youth, relations with parents, marriage, friendship and her responses to art and nature.

ISBN: 978-0-9546934-8-0, (96 pp), �8.95, non-members please add �2 per book p&p. (Offer with order form: �8 incl p&p or �6 each for 2 or more copies)

Second Light Publications, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-9546934-8-0

�8.95, (96 pp) (Members �8 incl p&p)
Offer: 2 or more copies, �6 each

order a copy (pdf file)

Antarctica, cover

Antarctica

Dilys Wood

Dilys Wood, founder & co-ordinatior of Second Light, has published a poetry collection, Antarctica, which is all about The White Continent and includes the long poem The South Pole Inn, which invents a meeting in the West of Ireland in the 1920�s between the real-life Endurance Expedition heroes, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean. The meeting leads to a fictional love and adventure story�

Dilys is donating all proceeds from sales of her book to Second Light Network funds.

Greendale Press, 2008
13 Springfield Close, East Preston, West Sussex, BN16 2SZ. �5.95 (95pp)

Copies direct from Greendale Press

As Birds Do cover

As Birds Do

Mary MacRae

This is MacRae�s first poetry collection. She is published in journals and many anthologies. She lives in London but has travelled widely and has close connections with Kent and [West] Wales. Outer landscapes in city and countryside are often her entry point to the inner, spiritual landscape explored in her poems.

Second Light Publications, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-9546934-3-5

�7.95, (68 pp) (Members �7)

order a copy (pdf file)

Becoming cover

Becoming

Myra Schneider

" Becoming centres on the highly individual voices of four people as they help each other to escape from intricate patterns of prejudice, frustration and self-doubt. Expert plotting sets up tensions, contrasts, echoes, cuts unexpectedly from voice to voice, while evocative descriptions engage the imagination. Becoming recaptures for modern poetry the neglected ground of dramatic narrative." Anne Cluysenaar
(see more)

Second Light Publications, 2007

ISBN: 0-9546934-2-6

�5.95, (47 pp)

order a copy (pdf file)

Images of Women cover

Images of Women

" This is a book that has been waiting to be written since, perhaps, the nineteen-seventies, when women at last began to play a serious part in the world of poetry. These images of women are images of women by women, constructed out of twenty-first century consciousness, unmediated by the male gaze." U A Fanthorpe
(see more)

Arrowhead Press in association with Second Light, 2006, eds. Myra Schneider and Dilys Wood

ISBN 10: 1-904852-14-9
ISBN 13: 978-1-904852-14-8

�12.95, (211 pp)

order a copy (pdf file)

My Mother Threw Knives cover

My Mother Threw Knives

sister-publication (pamphlet-style) to Images of Women, Second Light Publications, 2006, eds. Wendy French, Maggie Sawkins and Dilys Wood (see more)

ISBN: 0-9546934-1-8

SOLD OUT

Was �4.50, (77 pp)

order a copy (pdf file)

Four Caves of the Heart cover

Four Caves of the Heart

... (Second Light Publications') first independent publication celebrates the work of members with exceptional talent but who are not yet widely known. We think you will find these voices interesting, distinctive and compelling.

Second Light Publications, 2004, eds. Myra Schneider and Caroline Price

ISBN: 0-9546934-0-x

SOLD OUT

Was �8.95 (119 pp)

a few rebound copies available for �2

order a copy (pdf file)

Making Worlds cover

Making Worlds

...a major anthology of poetry by women writers in Britain. It is the first such anthology produced in this century and it demonstrates the strength of women's writing today and its increasing contribution to the poetry of the last thirty years. The editors have aimed to show the imaginative power, depth of thought and range of content in women's work

Headland in association with Second Light, 2003, eds. Myra Schneider, Dilys Wood and Gladys Mary Coles

ISBN: 1-902096-70-3

SOLD OUT

Was �10.95, (272 pp)

order a copy (pdf file)

Parents cover

Parents

...includes poems by 114 poets living in Britain about their own parents and has work both by established writers and exciting newcomers. Only a few copies left.

Enitharmon in association with Second Light, 2000, eds. Myra Schneider and Dilys Wood

ISBN: 1 900564 71 8

SOLD OUT

Was �8.95, (218 pp)

order a copy (pdf file)

ARTEMISpoetry

Noticeboard: Members are invited to send news items (information about events, successes, publications) for inclusion in e-notices and the Noticeboard section of ARTEMISpoetry. See deadlines ARTEMISpoetry

Submit news items Online (preferred), or by post to Dilys Wood.

2007 FORWARD PRIZE SHORTLISTINGS...
Myra Schneider's poem "Goulash" (printed in the Launde Bag in the July SLN Newsletter) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best single poem AND Joanna Boulter's collection "Twenty Four Preludes & Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich" (reviewed in the July SLN Newsletter), which was shortlisted for the best first collection! � and Mary MacRae's poem, Jury, is featured in the Forward Anthology.

Competition

Second Light Poetry Competition for Short and Long Poems 2011
EXTENDED DEADLINE Tuesday 8th November 2011. Judge Fiona Sampson

PRIZES: FIRST �250 for each of Short and Long poems
SECOND �100 and THIRD �50, plus COMMENDED: Book prizes
All winning & commended poems will be published (in full or extract) in ARTEMISpoetry and poets will be invited to read at the adjudication event in London.

ENTRY FEES:
Long Poems (over 50 lines, no upper limit) �6 per poem
Short Poems (up to 50 lines) �4, �8 for 3, �12 for 8
Second Light Members are entitled to submit 1 free entry

RULES
� Submissions by Women poets only * Send TWO COPIES
� Second Light members are entitled to 1 free entry (can be either category) * Join SLN now for 1 free entry
� Poems may be on any subject * must be the unaided work of the writer * must not have been previously published in book form but may have appeared in magazines.
� Send TWO COPIES of each poem, typed or neatly written on A4 sheets, which should not bear the poet�s name.
� Include a separate contact sheet with name, address, telephone & email, plus poem titles.
� Cheque payable to �Second Light� and send with entries to Dilys Wood at 13 Springfield Close, East Preston, West Sussex, BN16 2SZ.

Download competition flier

The 2011 competition details will be posted early in 2012.

Results

Results are now posted on the SecondLightLive website. See 2010 Results

2009 Competition

Judge: Pauline Stainer

Full results and winning poems on Second Light's website.

The 2009 winners:

1st prize: Lynne Wycherley, The Lightning Horse;
2nd prize: Margaret Wilmot, Hermetic
3rd prize: Kay Syrad, "Registering their flora, /their fauna "

2008 Competition

Judge: Gillian Clarke

Second Light now has its own website and full detail are posted there. The winning and other poems placed in the competitions are published in ARTEMISpoetry, a bi-annual journal of writing by women: poetry, articles, reviews and artwork.

The 2008 winners:

1st prize: Eleanor Livingstone, Snow Hare;
2nd prize: Anne Wigley, Learning to Swim
3rd prize: Sheila Wild, Shiant Wife

2007 Competition

Judge: Carole Satyamurti (link to Carole Satyamurti web-page)

1st Prize: Pat Borthwick Apple Pie

2nd Prize: Kate Foley Thrift

3rd Prize: Doreen Hinchliffe The Regular

read the winning poems (pdf file)

Commended: Anne Alexander (2 poems), Jill Dawson, Kate Foley, Jane McLaughlin, Mary MacRae, Denise McSheehy, Anne Stewart, Fiona Ritchie Walker

Shortlisted: Astrid Van Baalen, Pat Borthwick, Elizabeth Burns, Tricia Corob, Rhiannon Cree, Clare Crossman, Marilyn Donovan, Doreen Hinchliffe, Maria Jastrzebska (2 poems), Doreen King (2 poems), Gill McEvoy, Shelley McAllister, Jane McLaughlin, Rosemary McLeish, Pat Marum, Margaret Speak, Zoe Williams

2006 Competition

Judge: Penelope Shuttle link to web-page

Winning poem: Pam Hughes Seven Sisters

joint 2nd Prize: Anne Ryland Snegurochka

Margaret Speak The Photographer's Apprentice

read the winning and second prize poems and Judge's report (pdf file)

Membership & Renewal

Full Membership is open to women aged over 40, with a concessionary rate available for those with limited means, and Associate Membership is open to women under 40.

Members receive twice-yearly Newsletters, other regular information about Second Light events and publications, discount on publications, priority booking, opportunities for publication in Newsletters and anthologies.

Associate Members (women under 40) receive the same benefits as members, excepting that full members have priority for publication and the chance to read at SLN events.

Current rates:

Full Membership: �23 pa, �40 for 2 years, �60 for 3 years.

Concessionary/Associate Membership: �16 pa, �26 for 2 years, �39 for 3 years.

Book Offers: as set out in Join or Renew Application.

Donations welcome.

Apply to join or renew: Complete the Application (pdf)

Contact details

Organiser: Dilys Wood

Consultant: Myra Schneider - website

Membership Secretary: Kaye Lee

Administrator: Anne Stewart

Donations welcome. Please send cheque payable to "Second Light" to Dilys Wood, Co-ordinator, 3 Springfield Close, East Preston, West Sussex, BN16 2SZ.

Links:

SecondLightLive - the website of Second Light Network

Anna Adams Gillian Allnutt Moniza Alvi

Catherine Byron Anne Cluysenaar UA Fanthorpe Elaine Feinstein

Kate Foley Katherine Gallagher�(and Katherine on poetry p f )

Judith Kazantzis Mimi Khalvati

Hilary Llewellyn-Williams Esther Morgan Meg Peacocke

Pascale Petit Caroline Price Carole Satyamurti

Myra Schneider (on poetry p f) Penelope Shuttle Pauline Stainer

Anne Stevenson Anne Stewart � (and Anne on poetry p f ) Dilys Wood

Arrowhead Press Enitharmon Press The Poetry School

Note: this page created for Second Light Network by poetry p f on a sponsored-page basis � no formal association exists otherwise.