Hannah Frank news December 2009: poetry competition launches tomorrow
Fiona Frank
I’d like to tell you about something which is happening this Friday,
on the anniversary of the death of my late aunt.
We have got together with St Mungo’s Mirrorball Poets Network to
launch a new poetry competition celebrating the life and work of
Hannah Frank. The launch takes place on Friday, 18 December 2009.
I was inspired to run this competition after St Mungo’s Mirrorball
awarded Hannah a lifetime achievement award on her 100th birthday, 23
August 2008. This took the form of a specially commissioned poem by
Mirrorball poet David Kinloch. David based his poem based on Hannah’s
drawing ‘The Mocking Fairy’ from 1931. (The poem is below at the
bottom of this newsletter). I approached Jim Carruth, poet and
convenor of Mirrorball, to see if they would work with me on this
competition idea. To my delight he was as enthusiastic as I am and he
engaged poet William Bonar, who is a founder member of St Mungo’s, to
work on the project.
The competition is open to adults and children. All we ask is that the
poem (or [poems if you are entering more than one) should take its
inspiration from any of Hannah’s black and white drawings. William
(known as Billy to his friends) has already started working with
children from two Glasgow primary schools to create poetry inspired by
Hannah’s drawings.
Most fittingly, the competition launch takes place at Pollokshields
Primary School, Albert Drive, which is on the site of Hannah Frank’s
old school, Albert Road Academy. In fact, we’ll be in the very art
room where Hannah started her 75 year artistic career. Children from
Pollokshields Primary and from Calderwood Jewish Primary School will
read some of the poems they’ve written. Also, Barbara Spevack,
Hannah’s great-niece who is an actress and singer from Newton Mearns,
will read out extracts from Hannah’s diaries of the 1920s, about her
time in the art classes at Albert Road Academy.
Here’s what William Bonar said:
“As a former teacher of English, I could see right away how I could
use the drawings to stimulate imaginative writing from children. For
the competition we will be looking for a combination of close
observation of a Hannah Frank drawing with an imaginative
interpretation of what is suggested by the drawing. Because the
drawings are figurative and highly suggestive of narratives they are
ideal for this type of approach.”
David Kinloch will judge the competition and the winners and
runners-up, in four under-eighteen age group categories and one adult
category, will receive a cash prize and a framed Hannah Frank print.
In the under-18 age groups, the winners’ schools will also receive a
framed Hannah Frank print.
The first 100 Scottish schools who express an interest by e-mailing
hannahfr...@googlemail.com with their contact details will
receive a free pack of Hannah Frank-related materials, in order to
help to inspire some excellent poetry from school children. The pack
comprises copies of two Hannah Frank books and a Hannah Frank DVD with
a combined worth of over £50.
The books are Hannah Frank, A Glasgow Artist, Drawings and Sculpture,
edited by Fiona Frank, and Hannah Frank, Footsteps on the Sands of
Time: a Hundredth Birthday Celebration Gallimaufry, edited by Fiona
Frank and Judith Coyle. This book includes a teachers’ pack for use
in primary and secondary art. The DVD, ‘Hannah Frank, The Spark
Divine’, was made by award-winning film maker Sarah Thomas.
Schools which aren’t in time for this free offer – and other
interested fans - can still have the pack at a special rate of £35
including postage. But it’s not necessary to get the books in order to
enter the competition – all of Hannah Frank’s distinctive black and
white drawings can be seen on the ‘gallery’ page of the website
http://www.hannahfrank.org.uk
As for the prize presentation we aim to hold that on 23 August 2010,
the day that would have been my aunt’s 101st birthday. I feel certain
she’d have loved the idea of a poetry competition of this kind because
she was inspired by poetry and literature herself throughout her long
artistic career – and she was a poet herself, as well as an artist.
• Entry to the competition for under-18s is free. Entry for adults
(per poem) is £3. An adult entry includes a £3 gift voucher which can
be redeemed for Hannah Frank prints and cards in the Hannah Frank
online shop on the website http://www.hannahfrank.org.uk
• Downloadable entry forms and full details of the competition are on
the Hannah Frank website at http://www.hannahfrank.org.uk
We would love newsletter subscribers to enter the competition – and to
pass this information on to anyone else who may be interested,
especially English teachers, art teachers, creative writing teachers,
and young people of any age.
I’ve been selling Hannah Frank prints on Ebay for the last few weeks
and have found quite a few ‘new fans’ and recontacted some old
friends. But I need to warn you that from early January this won’t be
happening any more. Also: we’re down to our very last handful of
signed copies of Garden, Flight, Sun, Two Heads, and Wrap Thy Form in
a Mantle Grey. A signed print of Garden changed hands in a Glasgow
auction earlier this year at over £200. So get yours quick before
prices of signed prints go up in the new year.
Best wishes
Fiona Frank
Below - the ‘lifetime achievement’ award poem by David Kinloch, to
inspire future competition entries.
The Mocking Fairy
(after a pen and ink drawing by Hannah Frank)
This is the house that Hannah built,
one window lit, one window dark,
dark as the forest made of pen and ink
and the fairy mimbling, mambling in the garden.
A mocking, whispering aphid, this fairy
is vaguely anorexic, a line of arms and legs
that grows from trees scored up in black
whose sap is virgin paper, a wing-like translucence
tough as rope. One star falls beneath
the constellations, lower even than the moon,
falling on the grass of fallen stars
past the creeper that was human.
The house that Hannah built is odd:
symmetry suggests two windows,
three perhaps, with one behind the tree;
the unlit one peeks out, maimed but dark
against the mimbling, mambling in the garden.
Mrs Gill is there within the house;
can she hear the fairy from the lit
or unlit room? Would she cry out
in the small hours or at dawn?
Words are curling in the margins
at the paper’s edge and the fairy
feels them mimble mamble through her toes.
Mrs Gill is lit and unlit, star and tree,
rope of ink and moon and wing;
she flits between her virgin rooms
always on the brink of speech;
but never, never, from her cold cottage
answered Mrs Gill the fairy
mimbling, mambling in the garden.
David Kinloch 2008