Heavensfield

Exhibition opening at Gràcia Arts Project last night.

Didn't go.




Instead went along to a regular meeting of an English creative writing group to listen to five people give their opinion on the current chapter twelve of Heavensfield - a novel in progress, and to hold forth on my take of three other novels in progress. All good stuff.

Heavensfield could be characterised as a hard-edged cosy.

In general the writers' group meetings are pretty useful, and a good opportunity to not only get feedback on current projects but an opportunity to help fellow writers identify strengths and weaknesses in their current output. There's also a social dimension which can sometimes lead to opportunities to explore other creative, or wholly social, activities.
For example, last night, after the meeting, a gang of writers headed off into the city centre to get with La Mercè, the city's festa major, while I headed off home to eat.

Anyway, didn't get along to the exhibition opening at Gràcia Arts Project last night, but my partner did, and I'll probably check out the show before it ends.

And, I didn't get along to any Mercè events, but I'll be out and about tonight.

Escoles d'Altres Mons - Kim Manresa

Photography exhibition preview at the Maritime Museum in Drassanes last night. 

Names of contributors you'll likely recognise include Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes along with Michael Crichton, Orhan Pamuk, José Saramago, Wole Soyinka, Juan Goytisolo, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, and one of my current favourite poets, Joan Margarit.

The exhibition and book, Escoles d'Altres Mons/Escuelas de otros mundos, is a collection of photographs of scenes from schools in 50 countries by photo-journalist Kim Manresa. Each black and white photo is accompanied with a text by a Nobel laureate or other prize-winning literary luminary.

Have to say the preliminaries to the exhibition opening were pretty tedious - with six speakers all wanting their say. There were no seats, so for invitees who had come straight from work, or whom had left work early, to dash across the city during the rush hour and then having to stand for 45 minutes and listen to, mostly, self-serving gush was a bit much. There were no refreshments, and what irked most was that the museum's café-bar closed at 8pm.

Still, we made a night of it and repaired to the nearby Bar Pastis to meet up with a friend for a good old chinwag about football, poetry, Guardiola, Cantona, Ken Loach, Maragall and books - great fun.