Jasper Fforde - This Wednesday

This Wednesday the acclaimed writer, and sometime aviator, Jasper Fforde, will be speaking at St Catharine's College. Winner of the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, Fforde's talk looks to be the last Shirley event of term, and as always promises to be an engaging event. The talk will start at 7pm prompt, and entry and refreshments are free.

Wednesday 7th March, 7pm, Ramsden Room, St Catharine's College

Iain Sinclair

This Thursday 25th January, Iain Sinclair will be giving a talk at 7pm in the Ramsden Room. As usual, all are welcome, the event is free, as is the wine. The talk will probably be on cities and disappearances, as Mr Sinclair has focused much of his recent writing on the psychogeography of London, and there will be a question-and-answer session following the talk.

Stewart Lee

Unfortunately, Stewart Lee will not be able to visit the Shirley Society this year - but he does seem pretty keen, so keep an eye out for him, hopefully, in Michaelmas.



Poetry Competition

The winner of the December competition was Tim Lang-Smith, who wrote the following on the theme Indestructible Fragility - congratulations!

Blossom

        –Tim Lang-Smith

Dreams, the keys of the big house,
all the little boys and big running in and out.
Mark, disappointed in the wreckage, so,
of all the things we broke

and couldn't unbreak back again. Then
I fell or flew, tripping and weightless down a hill,
running from people known
to me and not. A shout. Somewhere aware

in the dark of the hot back next me, white
and simmering. There were things - strong
the sense of us - we lost. Ties broken, bridges
we severed in the night. Faults. I was running

with a vase when I tripped finally
and fell. Unplanned a sleepless jerk in bed
landing. Nothing broke. I felt very young.
In the wrong. Hot. I rolled away and slept.

Now, today's been so hot and cold by turns
it's strange, as though, in the half light
from under clouds the suspicion of snow
could have been blossom,

from trees more lofty-high
with roots more deep below
than the way things have fallen out,
or the foundations of the big house,

than anywhere I could dig to
in the back garden of my grandparents'
house, small on weekends, purposeful
with a red spade, down past the yellow clay

and on. I drift. Deeper than those. Pieces
unbroke come back to me: sharing the bed, too hot,
the fall, making a collapse of things. Blame,
a curtain pulled across a cold bright window.