26 books featured in the library at Wordstock 2023
In 1969, more than 460,000 people descended on a dairy farm near Woodstock, New York, for the greatest festival of all time – with three days of “Peace & Music” led by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Ravi Shankar, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and later memorialised by Joni Mitchell.
Hosted by Dark Angels’ Neil Baker and held in the beautiful Conway Hall Library in Bloomsbury, 26’s “Wordstock” will be a somewhat more intimate celebration – of words, of the people who use them, and of 26 (now in its 21st year). It is an afternoon of talking, listening, and writing together, with workshops, interviews, and readings shaped around the theme of this year’s Bloomsbury Festival: human.kind.
How do words reflect and shape who we are? How can they set us apart, and how can they bring us together?
Part I: Human
Rob Self-Pierson
Workshop. How can we as creative individuals use the art of telling stories to make a brand more human, and how can the constraints of writing for business help us hone our creative storytelling?
26’s Neurodiversity Project
Readings and Panel Discussion. 15 writers have been exploring, in 62-word poems and narratives, what it means to be neurodivergent. How does it connect to creativity and what makes us human?
Part II: .Kind
John Simmons, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Neil Baker, and Kaye Brennan (featuring the Barbican Young Poets and the Wildlife Trusts)
Readings, Interviews, and Guided Writing. A series of speakers from both within 26 and beyond it look at how we connect, firstly to the people around us, and secondly to our world.
With readings and inspirations from 26 Connections (also launched at this year’s Bloomsbury Festival, here), the Barbican Young Poets, and the Wildlife Trusts.
Part inspiration, part celebration, part training, this is a day dedicated to broadening horizons and bringing together like-minded language-lovers. With teas and coffees provided, all you need is your pencil and a notepad.
– Max Parfitt
3pm, 19 October, Conway Hall Library. Book your tickets here (£15).
Wordstock will be preceded (at 1pm) by the launch of John Simmons’ poem Berliners, which was shortlisted for Live Canon pamphlet of the year. Book your tickets here (£8).
26 @ The Bloomsbury Festival:
An exhibition created by artists from The Lettering Arts Trust based on the poems from 26 Connections, with extracts produced in the form of calligraphy, stone or wood carving, and craft typography.
A free walking and writing workshop led by 26er Sarah Farley. Come along on the day, and don’t forget to bring a notebook and pen.
The launch of John Simmons’ poem Berliners that was shortlisted for Live Canon pamphlet of the year. You can fit this in nicely before Wordstock.
26’s annual celebration of writers and writing, featuring Neil Baker, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Rob Self-Pierson, and more.
A head-to-head debate organised by 26 Board member Irene Lofthouse and the JB Priestly society. The debaters will explore areas of these writers’ output that contextualise their influence on literature and thinking through the 20th century and beyond.
26 is looking for 8 writers, each of whom will be allocated a day of the Bloomsbury Festival. They will then attend various events (depending on what takes their fancy), take notes, get inspired, and soak up wisdom, before (at around 10pm) they submit a creative reflection of their day.
The next day, their piece will be published on the Bloomsbury Festival’s website and promoted across social media. Please email Lauren at admin@26.org.uk by the end of August to take part.