Events
Dream Catcher Events 2009
Canadian Poet Chris Pannell in Dream Catcher Readings   Dream Catcher in London
Tony Flynn and The Mermaid Chair
Dream Catcher Author Scoops Radio Prize
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Tony Flynn publishes The Mermaid Chair
Prize Success for Dream Catcher Editor
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Dream Catcher 22 Published

As Sebastian Barker describes, Dream Catcher 22 ‘looks and feels excellent, with a fine degree of organisational intelligence and independence of mind.’

This issue contains remarkable poetry from such British authors as Myra Schneider (shortlisted for the single poem category of the Forward Prize, 2007) and Tony Flynn winner of the English association Fellows Poetry Prize, 2007 with ‘Seeing Voices’ (published in this issue). Another prominent voice is Josephine Dickinson’s; her new collection Night Journey has just been published by Flambard; its title poem appears in DC 22. Chris Firth, once Dream Catcher fiction editor, has gravitated toward writing some extraordinary poems in the Sufi tradition; three appear. Americans include award-winning Donna Pucciani (well published in this country), Jonathan Lewis who wishes to dedicate his poems to his grandmother who drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz and the powerful Mario Susko with another unusual angle on consequence of violence in the lives of every day people. Humour’s never forgotten with Michael Swann’s empathy with a nervous tannoy, and Alessio Zanelli’s ‘The Mail Eater’ reveals hazards of the postal system – a private hazard.

Fiction is always important in each Dream Catcher. The number of fiction submissions receive suggests we’re gaining a reputation for publishing some startling work. In this issue, stories range from faintly supernatural in Mark Howard Jone’s ‘The Strongest Branch’ to the sinister in Cameron Dunham’s ‘Joining The Gym’. You may never want to join a gym again. Joolz Denby’s aged computer techno-suburban secret agent has her own list of targets and people to rescue in ‘A Merry Christmas To Us All’. Jack Debney, a regular Dream Catcher contributor, presents a selected piece from his Grimsby-located Jannicott Stories. ‘Mr Ketilsby’ may be quintessential English, but it discloses telling details about the process of bereavement and different assumptions that have shaped and re-shaped our inner cities and much more in the post WWII Britain. Michael Spring’s ‘Belfast to Glory’ is as much documentary as fiction as it maps a connection between the best of Irish poetry and a bigger-than-life US rock celebrity. ‘The Old Tom’, by American Sue Williams, explores with reserve passion how teenagers grow up and alter out of all recognition in front of each other, even when they’re close as a Tom and Ruth.

Dream Catcher is particularly fortune to have the work of a fine British calligrapher, Mick Paine, in Dream Catcher 22. As well as on the cover, five more of his extraordinary letterings and artwork punctuates the journal. Highlighting this art is especially appropriate in a literary arts journal. Mick Paine pushes the image of words beyond discernible meaning, to the creative potential of the letter’s form, written, elaborated and multiplied to suggest a different language from the ordinary symbol.

Six books are reviewed: fiction, Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland and Sally Spedding’s short stories collection, Strangers Waiting; poetry collections by Mimi Khalvati (The Meanest Flower), Mario Susko’s Closing Time and Ian Park’s The Cage; also an anthology of poems about bats On a Bat’s Wing, from Five Leaves Press, edited by Michael Baron.

Dream Catcher is an essential magazine – contemporary writing for contemporary readers.



About Dream Catcher


Dream Catcher is an international journal, a small press and a community-based literature organisation. Located in the East Midlands, our events draw audiences from across the region and we are increasingly to be found at festivals across the country as the reputation of the magazine spreads. Take look at Dream Catcher Events for the latest details of what we're up to.

Dream Catcher magazine offers contemporary readers a terrific mix of poetry, prose, artwork and reviews. Our contributors span the globe, making Dream Catcher a truly international magazine. Our aim is to make the very best of contemporary writing available to the most discerning of contemporary readers.

You'll find back issues of Dream Catcher on our website. Take a look. The range of work is astonishing and whether you are a writer, a reader, an editor, teacher or librarian, we're sure you'll want to subscribe to this most readable of literary magazines.

History

Dream Catcher began in York in 1996, where Canadian editor Paul Sutherland then lived. From the outset the emphasis has been on both writer and reader. Dream Catcher’s eclecticism is its strength. The range of literary styles is wide and what began as a magazine for student writers has become a discerning publication keen to attract new work from wherever it might emerge, aimed at readers wherever they might be.

Dream Catcher is now based in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire where it is establishing itself as a vital feature of the regional literary landscape. We want to establish Dream Catcher, the magazine, the press and the literature organisation as a real and evolving presence, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Contemporary writing for contemporary readers is our guiding principle. Enjoy this website. Whether you’re a writer or reader Dream Catcher is for you.



David Grubb

You Are Still Alive


This is the time of chaos and roses smell of skin.
‘The Arrival Of The Wolf’ Goran Sinic

They are writing letters to people they do not know.
Words get out, leave the territory, travel to the other world
of normal awakenings, safe gardens, schools where the children
only play at war.
They are writing letters like this all the time to keep other ideas
in the earth, to smother terror, to murder what might murder them.
To America and Canada, England and Germany and then other countries
never heard of, imagined, ideal.
Then they receive letters back.

These letters are about air tickets and money enclosed and the people
who can get you out and the way to dig a tunnel in your head
and what the rest of Europe will do and how the President spends each
day on his knees in the White House praying for them.

These letters are about culture and history and spiritual values and poetry
and the value of identity and what we all learn of suffering.

They are written to people they do not know
on pieces of curtain and bits of wallpaper
and a few also pick up the telephone receiver
and wait to hear the silence speaking.

They want to hear the President’s prayers
and what he says to himself when he gets up from his knees.
They want to hear what the Pope says when all he can hear
is silence and all he can see is sunshine and saints.
They want to hear what their children prophesy
in Germany, in the USA, in their graves.

They want to hear what the rats say and the
birds who have learned to love fire
and the soldiers who have gone quite mad.

They are writing with bits of pencil
and ancient typewriters and each word begins
its journey into the other world and waves goodbye
and the silence that is left
the whiteness of the silence
the knowledge of the silence
sits in the room like
a rumour of angels.




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