Events
7th May 2008
Canadian Launch of Dream Catcher 21

10th September 2008
Dream Catcher authors at The Speakers' Corner, York

18
th September 2008
Launch of Dream Catcher 21
Shipley

20th September 2008
Dream Catcher poets at Saltaire Bookshop

October 2008
Wolds Words Festival - a new Dream Catcher Parnership
 New
Dream Catcher Author Scoops Radio Prize
 New
Tony Flynn publishes The Mermaid Chair
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Dream Catcher 21 Published

Dream Catcher 21 celebrates the Canadian poet David Haskins and the American-Croatian poet, translator, and critic Mario Susko. Other highlights are two poems by Myra Schneider and new translations of work by the famous 20th century Austrian poet, Ingeborg Bachmann as well as excellent stories from the young Canadian-Welsh writer Tyler Keevil and Carol Topolski, whose novel Monster Love has just been long-listed for the Orange Prize.

From New Zealand we have the fine studied poetry of Jan FitzGerald; from Scotland the newly-discovered Henry Marsh freshly evokes images of the Scottish Isles. Enjoy work from America by the prize-winning poet Patrick Carrington and from the Middle East by Yahia Lababidi.  Gail Denby’s work gives us a view of contemporary South Africa.

Along with Jeremy Worman's gritty tale of addiction in the 1960s and the fabulous sexual aspirations of a 10 year old in modern Khajuraho, in The Feast, by Indian writer, Sonya Singh, Dream Catcher 21 also presents Joy Armstrong's depictions of the dangers of stealing too much in the Cuban hotel trade and a wife's revenge in Joanne Brandon's Peaches.

The issue contains a great long poem by the prize-winning UK poet, Sue Wood, who recreates the drama surrounding the excavation of the Anglo- Saxon ship burial in the 1930s at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, by the eccentric landowner Mrs Pretty.

Dream Catcher is democratic and ambitious, a great read, half poetry, half fiction. Issue 21 is rounded off with a moving exploration of four famous contemporary Canadian poets by Chris Pannell. The fascinating images of artist illustrator Vanessa Stewart are featured in the journal; she supplies as well the front cover.
This issue is diverse, full of wonderful poems and stories, informed and engaging.  Enjoy it.

To read extracts from this issue, just click here.



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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