Dusk

Stories and poems performed at Solstice Shorts 2017 Dusk: A Wave of Words across the UK.

On 21st December 2017, the shortest day of the year, eighteen stories and twenty-eight poems celebrating DUSK were read live on twelve sites, from pubs to arts centres and libraries, by way of woodlands and hillsides, at DUSK: the 2017 Solstice Shorts Festival A wave of words across the UK.

Starting in Ellon in Aberdeenshire at 17:07, the festival raced over the country at the speed of dark, with overlapping events taking place in Inverness, Carlisle, Holyhead, Lancaster, Rossendale, Nottingham, Birmingham, Greenwich, Kelston, and Warkleigh, ending in Redruth in Cornwall as full dark fell at 18:20.

"This is the perfect, atmospheric memento of one of the most imaginative, forward-thinking festivals in recent history: a nation's length celebration of the dying of the light at the turning point of winter." - Patrick Gale

Dusk lends itself to the anxiety that darkness brings, and there is a fair smattering of edge-of-horror, chills-down-the-spine and keeping-the-lights-on, but there is also humour and the in-between-ness of the cusp of day, when anything is possible.

Stories:

David Hartley, 'Daylight Savings'

David Mathews, 'Flick'ring Shadows'

Rob Schofield, 'Four Beaches'

Samuel Wright, 'Here'

Rosalind Stopps, 'One Two Three, One Two Three'

Penny Pepper, 'Wolf's Head'

Rob Walton, 'Words On Paper'

Helen Slavin, 'At Sky's Edge'

Lucy Grace, 'Breadcrumbs'

Jackie Taylor, 'Cape Cornwall'

Sherry Morris, 'Granda's Plan'

Pippa Gladhill, 'In-Between Dog'

Alex Reece Abbott, 'MacFarquhar's Bed'

Fiona Salter, 'On The Evening Train'

Cath Bore, 'The Dusk Runner'

Kirsty Fox, 'They Said There Were Pirates'

Katerina Watson, 'Threshold'

Math Jones, 'Yes, Twilight'

Poems:

Mandy Macdonald, 'Gloaming'

Katie Evans, '16:30'

Joy Howard, 'Factory'

Jane Aldous, 'After The Sun, Before The Stars'

Eileen Carney Hulme, 'Blue Hour'

Alice Tarbuck, 'Decoration Of A Fermented Season'

Gabrielle Choo, 'Sundown Breath'

Kate Wise, 'Tempus Erat'

Alannah Egan, 'I Am Dusk'

Alison Lock, 'Crow Haibun'

Aziz Dixon, 'Calligraphy Of Starlings'

Ness Owen, 'Female Blackbird Sings'

Jeremy Dixon, 'Driving To Blackpool To Visit My Sister'

Lindsay Reid, 'Summer Evening'

Sue Birchenough, 'Roost'

Nigel Hutchinson, 'Sometimes A Black Cloud'

Sue Johnson, 'The Shortest Day'

John Bevan, 'Afterglow'

John Richardson, 'All This'

Kelly Davis, 'Calling Them In'

Katy Lee, 'Red Coat, Wolf, Etc'

Laila Sumpton, 'Starling Time'

Michelle Penn, 'End of Ramadan'

Bridie Toft, 'Arrival'

Nicholas McGaughey, 'Magic Hour'

Lisa Kelly, 'Match Girl'

Martyn Crucefix, 'Summers Ended In Sweetness'

Elizabeth Parker, 'Dhusarah'

Carl Griffin, 'Sea Wedding'