Local Writers
Humber Mouth is committed to creating opportunities for local writers. As part of our programme for 2021 we are pleased to announce projects that commission and showcase work from writers with a strong connection to Hull. Listen again to four writers commissioned for our project with BBC Radio Humberside in Spring 2021, and enjoy the micro-commissions from four more local writers published online this summer.
Humber Mouth micro-commissions
July & August 2021
We had so many great applications for the BBC Radio Humberside project earlier in the year that we selected four additional Hull writers from the shortlist and asked them to submit work in a format of their choice.
This Voice
Andrew Hodgson
Thursday 22 July 2021
Andrew Hodgson is author of the novels Reperfusion (2012) and Mnemic Symbols (2019), and the monograph The Post-War Experimental Novel (2019). He is editor of the experimental writing collections Paris (2019) and Praxis (2021). He has presented creative and critical work and participated in art exhibitions in France, UK, Ireland, US, Czechia, and Austria. He is Lecturer in French and Cultural Studies at the University of London Institute in Paris.
A Love Letter to Hull
Jay Mitra
Thursday 29 July 2021
Jay Mitra (they/them) is a non-binary punk poet, artist, and music journalist, based in Hull/Manchester. Born in India but raised in Yorkshire, they have spent their life merging two cultures into one five-foot body. A founding member of Hull’s poetry collective No Larkin About, and a freelance music journalist and English tutor. Their poetry has been published in Acumen Poetry, Soundsphere Magazine, PUSH Magazine, Survivor Zine, Streetcake Magazine and also featured in Human Appeal’s Stories of Her Sisters poetry anthology. They have performed in numerous slams and been runner up in Halifax’s Spoken Weird poetry slam. They performed in BBC’s Contains Strong Language, Freedom Festival, Awareness Festival and have had solo work commissioned by Leeds LGBT+ Lit Fest, Middle Child Theatre and Creative Hull.
Three poems: Fox, The Pheasant, The Kestrel
Michael Good
Thursday 5 August
Michael Good is a primary school teacher who lives in Hull. In 2017, he was part of a collection of four schools who, as part of Hull City of Culture, spearheaded the theme for National Poetry Day on ‘Freedom.’ and read with local writers, and established poets Sophie Herxheimer, Chris McCabe, Kate Fox, Joseph Coelho and Shazea Quarishi. He has hosted Open Mic nights in Hull and has poems published in The Canon’s Mouth and Carillion.
Yellow
Louise Beech
Thursday 12 August
Lousie Beech’s debut novel, How to be Brave was selected as Readers’ pick in The Guardian in 2015 and top ten bestseller on Amazon UK. Maria in the Moon was described as ‘quirky, darkly comic and heartfelt’ by the Sunday Mirror; The Lion Tamer Who Lost shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of 2019 at the RNA Awards and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019; Call Me Star Girl longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was Best magazine’s Best Book of the Year 2019; and I Am Dust was a Crime Magazine Monthly Pick. This Is How We Are Human is out now. She is part of the Hull-based Women of Words collective.
Humber Mouth & BBC Radio Humberside
19 – 25 April 2021
Writers were selected from an open application process in January 2021 for a project with BBC Radio Humberside. They have worked with Humber Mouth producer Joe Hakim to produce brand new work for broadcast. The work is diverse in scope and form and tells stories of love, of life in lockdown, of a future Hull that’s underwater, and of Hull legend Clive Sullivan – from the perspective of his wife Ros Sullivan.
Working from Home
Jodie Russian-Red
Monday 19 April
Evenings on BBC Radio Humberside ‘No Filter’
A contemporary and powerful story around the shift to remote work and told from a bedroom and email inbox during the pandemic. The piece is a meditation on isolation and the concept of belonging, and the very idea of ‘home’.
Jodie Russian-Red
Jodie Russian-Red is a Hull-born writer, poet and artist who won the Sid Chaplin Prize, Northern Writers’ Award 2020. She has presented spoken word shows at several arts festivals and was published in Kit de Waal’s Common People Anthology (2019). After working with Jarvis Cocker on BE KINDER, a National Trust art project commemorating the Kinder Mass Trespass, Jodie has since been writing a collection of short, autobiographical stories about suburban working-class culture, pub function room parties, karaoke competition dramas, all-inclusive package holidays to Tenerife and everything that’s sparkling about Hull. She is currently Artist-in-residence at Durham University for 20/21.
Sidelines
Rosalyn Sullivan
& Dave Windass
Wednesday 21 April
Mid-morning on BBC Radio Humberside with Burnsy
A unique short story that steps away from the thudding muddy action of Rugby League and glittering career of Clive Sullivan and instead tells the story of a togetherness, true love and learning what’s really important.
Rosalyn Sullivan & Dave Windass
Rosalyn Sullivan lives in Hull. She is the widow of Hull sportsman Clive Sullivan, mother of the couple’s two children Anthony and Lisa and grandmother to five grandchildren Indi, Keenan, Kane, Lexi and Leon, and great-grandmother to Beau, Indi’s daughter. Ros attended South Hunsley School and Hull College. She was consultant on Dave Windass’s play Sully, which premiered in 2006.
Dave Windass is a writer, playwright and artist based in Hull. He has written extensively for the stage and performance with The Old Courts, Wigan, E52, Hull Truck, Middle Child and others. Work for radio includes Yearning Hearts (2014) and Twenty Days (2020). Work for film includes Three Cheers for Amy (2020) and Born on the Tide (2019). He most recently wrote fact-based, fictionalised diary entries charting Amy Johnson’s solo flight to Australia. He is also a producer on Heads Up Festival and Contains Strong Language, co-ordinated the UK’s National Writing Day and recently completed an MA in English at the University of Hull. He is currently writing a collection of short stories.
Tales from the Underwater City
Cassandra Parkin
Thursday 22 April
Evenings on BBC Radio Humberside
A dream-like series of poems imagining a future Hull that has been returned to water and inhabited by a strange second-skin creature. The writing is inspired by a quote in The Deep and covers important themes for these challenging times, such as evolution, adaptation, redemption and redemption, and exploring our hidden creative impulses.
Cassandra Parkin
Cassandra Parkin is a writer of novels, short stories and poems. Her short story collection, New World Fairy Tales, won the 2011 Scott Prize, and her debut novel The Summer We All Ran Away was nominated for an Amazon Rising Stars award. Her seventh novel, Soldier Boy, was published by Legend Press in 2020. As one quarter of Hull’s Women of Words spoken word collective, Cassandra has made and performed work for BBC’s Contains Strong Language, the Big Malarkey Festival, 2017 City of Culture and Back To Ours. She is currently a Writer-in-Residence for First Story in Bridlington.
The Seven Stages of Love
Matt Nicholson
Sunday 25 April
Afternoons on BBC Radio Humberside with Lucy Clark
A series of seven short poems inspired by ‘The Seven Ages of Man’ from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The writing is based on Matt’s experiences and observations, looking at what love means and what part it plays in the lives of those in seven different life stages.
Matt Nicholson
Matt Nicholson is a poet and performer from East Yorkshire. Matt has published three collections of poetry: There and back to see how far it is (2016), We are not all blessed with a hat-shaped head (2018) on Kings England Press, and Small Havocs (2020) with Yaffle Press. In 2018, Matt toured the length and breadth of mainland Britain as support act for Matt Abbott’s 2 little ducks tour, and in 2019, as part of Gob Almighty (a group of page-to-stage Poets from Hull), and was nominated for Best Spoken Word Performance at the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Phil White, Evening Producer, BBC Radio Humberside.