An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester

Author(s): Jon Wilkins

Location(s): Leicester

Genre(s): Creative Writing

Era(s): Vikings to Futuristic

How can you wring everything out of a city in a creative writing sense? Is it possible to write about a place and exhaust every avenue so that there is nothing left to write? Can you fill a book about Leicester and then be left with nothing, a void?
This was what I wanted when I asked writers to offer me a piece showing me their love of Leicester to be produced in an anthology of creative writing, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester.
I was overwhelmed by submissions, well over a hundred and so the answer was clear, you can never write everything there is to know about a place as you will always find something new to write.
What was exhausting was the selection process to whittle it down to a manageable project and the end result of 68 contributors sees the best of the work offered.
There is a wide age range from 12 to 72. A fairly balance gender range as well as contributions from all over the world, including the USA by a Leicester ex-pat, Poland and Finland from someone who was over here fort a university semester.
We have poetry and prose poems, non-fiction and fiction, ghost stories, dystopian tales, memoir, futuristic dreams as well as lots of nostalgia for a well-loved and well-remembered city.
And it wouldn’t be about Leicester if King Richard didn’t pop his head up in various guises. We meet the Vikings and Oscar Wilde, both visiting Leicester for the first time and take a trip down the. Golden Mile and the River Soar. There is an amazing street art piece journeying through the city landscape as well as poems all about places we know and love in Leicester. Charnwood and Bradgate Park are investigated by an intrepid young reporter as well as some well-known Leicester poets and we have an acclaimed writer honouring The Curve in a poetic piece. Probably the best thing I have had are the pieces by unknown writers young and old as well as schoolchildren working on the Colonial Countryside project who wrote about Calke Abbey which has been claimed by Leicester for this anthology.
Illustrating the book is the work of that wonderful local artist Sarah Kirby who shows the beauty of Leicestershire alongside the words.
There is something for everyone. The book is available to order from bookshops, on Amazon or lulu.com and will be formally launched in October.
Events are being held all over Leicestershire to celebrate publication, look at our Facebook page or the Eventbrite ticket site. All events are free and you will have the chance to purchase the book at a discounted price as well as books written by the many contributors.
The wonderful thing is that there will always be something else to write and hopefully this anthology will encourage you to do just that. Why not write a poem or a story, a blog or a script about a place you love? Write it and keep it. You never know when I might be asking for contributions to volume 2!

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