Graham Mort

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Graham Mort 'is acknowledged as one of contemporary verse's most accomplished practitioners'.^[1] He is the author of seven volumes of poetry and has written short fiction and radio drama for BBC Radio 4.

His latest collection Visibility: New and Selected Poems, was published by Seren in 2007. The Guardian Review of Books comments that it 'perfectly exhibits the blend of formal scrupulousness, sensory evocation and intellectual rigour that has shaped his reputation.'^[2]

He received a major Eric Gregory award from the Society of Authors for his first collection of poems, A Country on Fire and Circular Breathing was a Poetry Book Society recommendation.

Graham won the Bridport International Short Story Prize , 2007 for his story 'The Prince' and is currently working on a collection of short stories entitled Touch.

Graham was born in Lancashire and studied English at Liverpool University. He worked as a mill labourer, dairy operative and psychiatric nurse before training as a teacher. He taught in schools, colleges, prisons, special education and psychiatric units before becoming a freelance writer. He gained a doctorate from the University of Glamorgan and is a Distance Learning and eLearning specialist. He has been the Director of Studies for the Open College of the Arts and is now a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University where his academic research ranges from contemporary fiction and poetry and emergent African writing and narratives of diaspora to eLearning and literature development project design. He convenes the distance learning MA with Lee Horsley and is director of the PhD programme in Creative Writing at Lancaster.

1 Crossing Borders
2 Radiophonics
3 Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research
4 Bibliography
5 References
6 External Links

[edit] Crossing Borders

In 2001, Graham designed and led the Crossing Borders scheme. The project was piloted in Uganda in 2001. By 2003, the project had developed into a major British Council/Lancaster University partnership involving Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Africa South Africa and Malawi.

Crossing Borders employed a team of 25 writing mentors throughout the UK and reached over 300 African writers, bringing a budget of £375,000 to the University for this Third Mission activity. The Beyond Borders pan-African literature festival in Uganda in October 2005 involved writers from the UK and 17 African countries.

The mentoring project was laid down in April 2006, but the website remains active and publishes a quarterly online magazine of new African writing. Recent achievements for Crossing Borders participants include Monica Arac de Nyeko of Uganda winning the Caine Prize for African Writing 2007 and Ellen Banda-Aaku, Zambia, winning the Commonwealth Short Story Competition.

[edit] Radiophonics

Graham devised Radiophonics as legacy activity to Crossing Borders. It was piloted in Uganda in autumn 2006, when 8 Crossing Borders writers took part in workshop and online mentoring to produce short stories for radio.

The stories focused on topical themes and were broadcast on Sanyu FM (Kampala) as the Under the Sun series with live audience reaction to the stories. Graham Mort devised and produced the series with Faith Kinani of Sanyu FM. Kate Horsley was the project researcher and also designed online support systems.

Each whole programme was mounted on the Crossing Borders site as podcasts intended to reach a global audience. Radiophonics has now been commissioned as a major project in Nigeria and Uganda, commencing in September 2007.

[edit] Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research

Graham is the director of Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (CTWR) which was launched at Lancaster University in 2007 in order to create a transnational and interdisciplinary environment that will promote the study of creative writing across cultures. The Centre brings together a number of intercultural research projects: Crossing Borders, Moving Manchester, Radiophonics and Trans-Scriptions.

[edit] Bibliography

Poetry

Visibility, Seren, 2007

A Night On The Lash, Seren, 2004

Circular Breathing, Dangaroo Press, 1997

Snow From The North, Dangaroo Press, 1992

Sky Burial, Dangaroo Press, 1989

Into The Ashes, Littlewood Press, 1988

A Halifax Cider Jar, Yorkshire Art Circus, 1987

A Country On Fire, Littlewood Press, 1986

Radio Drama

Cuba Libre at the Café España (afternoon play) BBC Radio 4, 2002

The Life Of The Bee (dramatic adaptation) BBC Radio 4, 1999

The Red Field (long poem) BBC Radio 4,1997

Flymowing (poem) BBC Radio 3, 1997

Educational Coursebooks

Storylines, Open College of the Arts, 1992

The Experience Of Poetry, Open College of the Arts, 1991

Starting To Write, Open College of The Arts, 1990

Short Fiction published in Northern Short Stories (Littlewood Press), Northern Short Stories (Arc Publications), London Magazine, Bright Streets Dark Comers, (Unwin Hyman), BBC Radio 3, The Guardian, Critical Quarterly, Krax, Global Tapestry, Fisheye, The North, Panurge, Metropolitan, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio North-West, Fish Publishing Short Story Anthology.

Articles, academic papers and reviews have been published in a wide range of literary journals.