Hall Writers’ Forum
The Hall Writers’ Forum is an online community that was launched in 2013, which seeks to foster creative writing, dialogue, and collaboration. It expresses a wide range of talents and interests, reflecting varied cultural, scholastic, and political backgrounds.
Contributions to the Forum come in many literary and artistic forms and include debate on matters of topical concern; challenges, on any subject (usually of current interest), attract a variety of responses.
Since its inception, the Forum has had a strong workshop ethos, welcoming comments (and often suggested revisions) on work submitted; but we also value readers who are simply there to enjoy the material.
The Hall Writers’ Forum is open to all students, graduates, and staff of St Edmund Hall. Associate membership is also available.
Publications by the Forum
The Forum has published numerous anthologies, some under its Chough Publications imprint, including:
- Poems on Conflict (2022): a collection of poems prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 but which cover other areas of conflict worldwide. Samira Ahmed (1986 English, Honorary Fellow), the award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster, wrote in her foreword to this piece: “In these verses there is a challenge to the narrative of war as inevitable – with a focus on the business of weaponry and geo-politics as usual. As with Oh! What A Lovely War nearly fifty years after the first world war, these writers burn with fury and with pity.”
- Unruly Riddles (2020): a collection of riddles which proved to be a source of much amusement during enforced Covid isolation.
- Whirligig (2020): this slim volume was published to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth.
- Only The Moon Howls (2019): verses written to and about the Moon.
- Now We Are Five (2018): an anthology of Hall Writers’ Forum work, to celebrate our fifth anniversary.
- Challenges (2018): a compilation of winning entries to challenges set on the Forum since it started in 2013.
- Joker in the Pack (2017): a collection of verse and prose responses to Bob Dylan, including works by Oxford Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage and comedian Stewart Lee (1986 English, Honorary Fellow).
- Than-bauks (2015): a collection of pieces written in this unusual Burmese tercet form.
- Limericks (2015): an anthology of this well-known verse form covering a multitude of subjects, not all of them humorous, written in response to a challenge to write the most boring limerick in the world!
- The Parliament of Fouls (2015): “being an indictment of the Politickal Classes &c” which first appeared in the Oxford Magazine Issue 359, Trinity Term 2015.
- New Proverbs of Hell (2014): a collection of aphorisms inspired by Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
- Ballads & Divers Verses (2013): a collection of ballads submitted to a Ballads challenge, plus a collaborative Valentine’s Day Ballad.
For further information please visit the Hall Writers’ Forum website (https://tinyurl.com/HallWritersForum), or contact Darrell Barnes (darrellmpbarnes@gmail.com) or Natasha Walker (walker@natashawalker.eu).