the ramble dump

'The Athenaeum was founded in 1797 to provide a meeting place where ideas and information can be exchanged in pleasant surroundings. The heart of the Athenaeum is its famous library, one of the greatest proprietary libraries in the United Kingdom.'

They're doing a competition in partnership with the Liverpool Culture Company, the Liverpool Daily Post and Radio Merseyside. It's an annual thing for 'young people between the ages of 16 and 19'. It's the Athenaeum Writer-in-Residence award: 1000-1200 words on pretty much anything I like.

The award itself: you get to be Writer-in-Residence for a month, £1000, publication in the Daily Post, the opportunity to produce and publish two articles, essays or poems, honorary membership at the Athenaeum for a year (with access to the library), a short period of secondment of the Daily Post writing team, an invitation from the Liverpool City Council to a civic event during the year, another invitation from the Athenaeum to a lunch or dinner, and advice on careers in the arts from the Liverpool Culture Company.

The deadline is October 31st, so I have to have it sent off by tomorrow. I've finally finished it. I was going to do a piece about humanity and creativity (from the point of view of a god who regards the change from dinosaurs to humans merely as a cultural change), but that proved to be a bit too big and difficult. So, as suggested by Mother Jordan, I've taken a short and humorous piece mocking where I live which I did for English Language class a few weeks ago, and I've padded it out.

Frankly, I don't stand a chance. With a prize like that, you know the competition's going to be tough, and my entry is too all over the place and probably not nearly academic enough, but it's worth a shot. It doesn't cost anything to enter, after all.

I kind of have to go through with it anyway, because I asked two English teachers if they would give references (which actually just meant I needed their contact information so I could fill in the two spaces provided on the submission form), so they'll probably be asking about it, and might want to see what I've done. I have three English teachers this year, but one of them's been off for a long time so I haven't done any work for him yet, and another, the one who told us about the award, was away in China. I managed to see the other one, but as she was also my teacher in Years 10 and 11, I had to track down my Year 9 teacher and ask her...my Year 9 teacher being the real Miss Darley. I don't think I'd actually spoken to her for about two and a half years before last Friday.

Oh well. Here, as they say, goes nothing.

# posted by Chris @ 7:48 PM