Help Send a Poet to the Hawthornden Fellowship

The Situation

The Hawthornden Literary Fellowship is a prestigious international award open to published writers from around the world and I was delighted when I was accepted as a Fellow for October 2012, to work on my second collection of poetry. This was late last year. Since then, the recession has made it far more of a risk to take time off work to pursue such a venture.

This leaves me with a problem. I have a prestigious fellowship it would be foolish not to take up, but the work climate makes it difficult to do so. So I have been forced to innovate and use Sponsume as a way of raising the capital that will make it possible to take the time off work. This is where you come in, dear reader; if you like my work (a sample of which, recorded by Colin Still at ULU last year, can be viewed here) please read on.

The Time Stuff and the Money Stuff

The Hawthornden Fellowship offers unadulterated time to write for a month free of internet and telephone and the Trustees have covered my board and lodging for that period but, given that times are hard and freelancing as a writer is a fragile business at the best of times let alone at the moment, I am eager to raise £800 to make sure I can actually get to Scotland to participate and not stress the whole time about what havoc lack of work during that time may be wreaking back home.

£800 will cover a month's worth of:

• mortgage payments 
• standing orders 
• stationary 
• research materials 

It will also cover:

• travel to and from Scotland
• maybe a dram or two of whisky whilst I'm there...

That covers all my most basics for the time I would be away at what is, admittedly, a pretty extraordinary place. I cannot deny that it would be a priviledge to spend very rare and precious silent contemplative time pretty much alone with my pen and a ream of paper in a castle in Scotland. As I have said, times are hard and I am fully aware that this extends to all of us. With this in mind, it is only sensible to offer you...

Rewards

You will no doubt have noticed that there are 'rewards' being offered in the column on your right, little incentives such as exclusive limited editions of my debut book, or poem posters and postcards. If you'd like one of those, or to be acknowledged in my next book, or even to book a full day's worth of poetry readings and workshops lead by me in a venue of your choice (be it your home, in a school, an arts centre near you or anywhere you like, within reason) then please click one of those buttons. 

You may also have noticed that the things on offer, if all are taken up, would amount to rather more than £800. If this campaign gathers more money than the target, I promise to use the extra monies to keep working on the book and other poetry-related projects and to keep anyone who has invested in this project updated regularly as to what that entails. New incentives would have to be arranged in these circumstances, of course. 

The Book

The book I intend to be working on at Hawthornden Castle, if the funding is raised, is provisionally titled Conditions of Living. I intend it to take a sharp and lyrical look at the impact of civilisation and technology on landscape and people, drawing from personal experience of rural and urban landscapes I knew as a child as well as from research conducted over the last few years. The book will look at Sunderland, London, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire in particular but also beyond. I am very interested in the slow processes, the details and visions of change.

About Me

• I am a poet, journalist, editor and copy writer and have been writing since childhood. I've been a ghost writer, a barman and a sheep dipper in my time as well. I was Glastonbury Festival's official website poet in residence in 2009 and was voted onto the Hospital Club 100 as an 'emerging talent' in 2010. My first full collection, Turning, was published by Headland in 2011.
• Of my first pamphlet of poems, Next Year in Jerusalem (Hoo-Hah, 2004), Anthony Rudolf wrote: "Tactful and tactile, [Horovitz] has his own true voice, speaking his occasionally disturbing material with a light yet firm touch."
• Of my debut collection, Turning, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote: "Adam Horovitz writes poems of great beauty and truth; poems which are earned through experience, suffering and love and deployed in a physical language of scrupulous integrity. He is the real deal."
• According to National Poet for Wales Gillian Clarke: “Adam Horovitz comes of age as a poet with these vivid poems of love and loss, joy and grief, place and memory. Always, he gives the reader the very taste, colour, detail of a house, a kitchen, the valley, the sounds of a garden through an open door. I welcome this passionate collection, the first of many, I hope.”

OK Horovitz, why should I help you fund your time there?

• Because you would like a limited edition sonnet by me on your wall?
• Because you want to help new poetry thrive?
• Because you like my poetry?
• Because you don't like me very much and would be glad to spend a little money to send me off on a hermetic retreat for a month to keep me out of your hair?
• Because you'd like to make a ginger poet very happy?

If you can answer any of the above in the affirmitive, please do consider buying a limited edition poster or donating something. I will put it to good use. And do feel free to ask questions on the comments sections if you would like any more information. Many thanks for your time!