Macbeth, the North, and 1066 with Justin Hill

Feb _16Justin Hill

York Explore Library :

Fri 16 Feb :

3.30pm – 5.00pm :

Adult £6.50 Conc. £5.50

The events of 1066 are often seen through the prism of what happened in the south of England.

However, the events that lead to the Norman Conquest happened here, in the North, in the struggle between the real-life historical figures of Duncan, Macbeth and Earl Siward. In an illustrated talk, bestselling author Justin Hill recounts this little-known story, which is just as bloody and compelling as the Shakespearean play.

To book ticket please click here.

For more information please visit The Jorvik Viking Festival website.

What’s on in York: The Queens of the Conquest, with Joanna Courtney

Feb _16 Queens Of The Conquest

York Explore Library :

Fri 16 Feb :

10.00am – 11.30am :

Adult £6.50 Conc. £5.50

Think you know the story of 1066? Think again….

Joanna Courtney’s ‘Queens of the Conquest’ series explores the lives of Edyth of Mercia, Elizaveta of Kiev and Mathilda of Flanders in their own quests to promote their homeland, support their husbands and, ultimately, to become Queen of England.

Explore the events leading up to the end of Anglo-Saxon England from a female perspective with Joanna at this special and intriguing talk.

To book ticket please click here.

For more information please visit The Jorvik Viking Festival website.

What’s on in York: Vote 100 – Celebrating the Centenary

Sat _17 Vote 100

York Explore Library :

Sat 17 Feb :

2.00pm – 3.30pm :

£6, or £5 with a YorkCard

Join suffrage historian Jill Liddington, who has researched the Votes for Women era, in this Vote 100 event!

Jill will look at the wide sweep of suffragists and suffragettes across Yorkshire, with a special focus on the city of York itself. She asks: what was special about York’s Votes for Women campaign? And what did win the vote for women over 30 in 1918? An opportunity not to be missed!

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Shadow Puppet theatre and craft with Hoglets Drama

Hoglets Drama

Acomb Explore Library :

Mon 12 Feb :

2.00pm – 2.30pm :

£2

Hoglets is theatre fun for small folk and we have Mama Hoglet coming to our libraries to perform a fun shadow puppet show.

You can also have a go at a craft yourself after the show.

This event is for ages 3-7 years.

Book early to avoid disappointment.

For each libraries telephone number or email to reserve a place please click here.

What’s on in York: Louise Penny and Ann Cleeves – More than just murder…

Feb _6 L.Penny & A.CleevesYork Explore Library :

Tue 6 Feb :

6.30pm – 8.00pm :

£6

Join bestselling authors Ann Cleeves and Louise Penny in conversation about their love of stories and the secrets behind their success.

Ann Cleeves is the bestselling author of ITV’s VERA and BBC One’s Shetland. She’s written 31 novels in 31 years and her latest, THE SEAGULL is set in her home town of Whitley Bay. The recipient of the highest accolade in crime writing, the Diamond Dagger, Ann is the Queen of British crime fiction.

Louise Penny is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Gamache series, set in the fictional Canadian village of Three Pines. The recipient of virtually every existing award for crime fiction, her twelfth novel, A GREAT RECKONING, was awarded the prestigious Agatha Award, Anthony, Macavity, Barry and Left Coast Crime Award.

The ticket price £6 (includes 99p off paperbacks at the event)

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: Finding the Words with John Paul Burns, Emma Storr and Charlotte Wetto

York Explore Library :

Thu 25 Jan :

6.45pm – 8.00pm :

£3/£2 with a YorkCard

Jan _25Findingthe WordsFinding the Words is a regular poetry evening every month at York Explore Library. Each evening brings together three poets and we aim to include both published writers and those working towards a collection. We’ll have a bar available and readings last around an hour. The evening is also a chance to share and chat, so please feel free to bring any news or information about poetry local, regional or national.

John-Paul Burns is a writer of poetry and essays currently on the Creative Writing MFA program at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Manchester. His work centres around images of the road, the coast and fruit–of music history and the cinema–Federico Fellini wandering the earth spreading madness like Dionysus, Foley-sound artist as Demiurge, a dream of following Thelonious Monk. He has appeared in journals such as The North, Poetry Salzburg Review and 3AM Magazine and is featured in the Smith|Doorstop anthology Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets.

Emma Storr lives in Leeds where she is a member of the Leeds Writers Circle. After working as a doctor and teacher for many years she is now giving more attention to poetry and writing. She is interested in where science and poetry intersect, particularly in relation to understanding the body. She has been published in The Hippocrates Prize Anthology 2016 and Strix 2 and her poem ’Spring Walk’ was highly commended in the Walter Swan Poetry competition in 2016. She recently completed an MPhil in Writing at the University of South Wales.

Charlotte Wetton is a poet based in West Yorkshire. Her first pamphlet, I Refuse to Turn into a Hat-Stand has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks award, following a spoken word album, Body Politic. She has published in Poetry Wales, Staple, Stand etc.  She regularly performs across the North and will run workshops if the opportunity sounds fun.

@CharPoetry

www.charlottewettonpoetry.wordpress.com

 

Prices

£3 or £2 with YorkCard

Book at any library or online

Future of Rowntree Park lodge to be decided

Councillors will make a decision about the future use and investment in Rowntree Park Lodge at a meeting of City of York Council’s executive on 25 January.

The report seeks an Executive decision to invest in Rowntree Park Lodge in order to keep this well used and valuable park asset in good condition. It also looks to ensure that it is used for public benefit and secures a long term income stream for the park.

Rowntree Park is one of the council’s most well used park and the city’s first Green Flag recipient.  The Lodge is the heart of Rowntree Park and is also used by York Explore as a Reading Cafe. It is considered that investment into the property will contribute significantly to maintaining the parks reputation amongst residents and visitors.

The report asks the Executive to recommend to Council the allocation of £150,000 capital budget to facilitate the regeneration of the upper floors of the Lodge. This capital allocation will be funded from the revenue receipts generated from future use. It is also recommended that any net revenue is ring fenced for the upkeep of the park.

Following the regeneration of the upper floors it is proposed to let it as a holiday letting following the correct consents being obtained. It is thought a market value hire fee of £1,000 to £1,300 per week could be achieved. Yearly income would be dependant on occupancy rates.

Other ideas explored included, selling the leasehold, leasing the property for private residential accommodation, leasing the property for social residential accommodation, commercial use or expanding the library and cafe. These options were found to not be appropriate after further investigation.

The Future uses of the Lodge have been discussed with the Friends of Rowntree Park who believe that the future use of the lodge should benefit the park and that it should not be sold. Discussions’ have also taken place with the Explore Library who support the Holiday Let for the Lodge, recognising that the flat does not meet the current standards for access for a library due to the age of the building and modest room sizes.

What’s on in York: POETRY LAUNCH – Crow Flight across the Sun

Jan _18 Mike

York Explore Library :

Thu 18 Jan :

6.30pm – 8.00pm :

Free

Mike Di Placido has published two collections of poetry: Theatre of Dreams (Smith/Doorstop, 2009) and A Sixty Watt Las Vegas (Valley Press, 2013). His poetry has been translated into German and Romanian through the web magazine PoetryPf, and also broadcast on British and European radio.

Mike has read at numerous literary festivals, and his poems and reviews have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as The North, The Rialto, Pennine Platform and Poetry Saltzburg. He was recently the sole judge of The Poetry Space Competition, 2017.

Mike is a member of The Ted Hughes Society and The Elmet Trust.

Comments on Mike’s poetry:

I can’t remember when I enjoyed a book of poems so much; possibly ‘Season Songs’.
Keith Sagar (on Di Placido’s ‘Theatre of Dreams’)

Shrewdly, comically, with Blakean innocence, Mike Di Placido writes about enthusiasm and inspiration: how in practice we read poetry and fall in love with it.
Ed Reiss

In these poems Ted comes alive again, he lives and breathes. These poems are healing gifts.
Mark Hinchliffe

www.caldervalleypoetry.com

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: 150 years of change to riverside York

Jan _16River York

York Explore Library :

Tue 16 Jan :

6.30pm – 8.00pm :

£6

The rivers Ouse and the Foss have both been vital commerical and leisure resources, but with the ever present threat of flooding. Join Colin Atkinson, retired flood risk manager with the Environment Agency, as he takes you through 150 years of York’s rivers and the changes that have taken place along their banks.

To book tickets please click here.

What’s on in York: DUSK – A Poetry Reading with Ian Taylor

Jan _13 DUSK Ian Taylor

York Explore Library :

Sat 13 Jan :

2.30pm – 4.00pm :

Free

The author will read poems from his recent collection DUSK

Ian Taylor has been writing about the lost landscapes of the North for over forty years – old earthworks, ruined churches, derelict mineworkings, Neolithic barrows and deserted villages. Bringing together the best of this work in a single volume, Dusk is a book about enclosure, famine and deforestation, about bleak moorlands, sunken roads, nettles and cobwebs. Exploring between the pages of history, superstition, myth and the ‘threadbare cloak of folk tradition’, Taylor listens to the drovers, peat-cutters, ironstone miners, seasonal labourers, landless farmers and tramps in whose ‘hollow voice of loss’ he hears a renegade and still undefeated Albion, like a fox running from the ‘cleanshaven faces and privileged profiles’ of the Hunt, the Green Man still dancing in the trees.

‘Taylor’s is an inventive, controlled, authoritative voice, unafraid of the rare but exact word… contemplative, intelligently and movingly eloquent on behalf of those silent people and places for which he invents voices.’

Peter Conradi

‘I.P. Taylor\’s vision of agricultural man shares with Hughes and Heaney a noble poetic ancestry running from Wordsworth to Hardy to Lawrence, but his poetry is all his own because he has lived through his subjects in mud, words and imagination.’

Cal Clothier

‘Ian Taylor was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire. He has been a forestry operative, a market gardener, a farm worker, a drystone waller and a millhand. Winner of the Stroud Festival international poetry competition and the Poetry Society’s Greenwood Prize, his publications include A Poetry Quintet, The Grip, The Passion, The Hollow Places and Killers. He lives in York.

To book tickets please click here.