{"id":479,"date":"2011-10-24T13:51:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T13:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=479"},"modified":"2011-10-24T13:51:11","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T13:51:11","slug":"turning-the-wheel-a-new-book-by-kevan-manwaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"Turning the Wheel – a new book by Kevan Manwaring"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big ’40’ was coming up. I wanted to do something special to mark my fortieth year. I had a birthday party planned, but beyond this I want to make it a ‘landmark year’. They say life begins at forty, so I was determined to be fully alive! Why we feel the need to mark significant moments in our life as individuals got me thinking about this cultural tendency in a broader sense \u2013 how communities make and mark ‘sacred time’: festivals, anniversaries, seasonal celebrations. \"\"<\/a>I had a brainwave: what better way to celebrate my fortieth year than to travel around Britain on my motorbike (a Triumph Legend 900tt) seeing how folk \u2026 celebrate. I would visit places and people who mark the ‘turning of the wheel’ in their own distinctive way. I would keep a journal and a blog throughout \u2026 and this fed into the book, which I got commissioned to write from O Books, after pitching them the idea. They had already published a previous title of mine \u2013 The Way of Awen: journey of a bard<\/em>; and I had been keeping my Bard on a Bike blog<\/a> for a couple of years (as a professional storyteller and performance poet, my motorbike is my sole means of transport to gigs, talks, etc) and so a book seemed the natural next step.<\/p>\n

The birthday party kicked things off with a bang and, after I’d recovered, I hit the road… I took a Brysonesque approach to this travelogue, accepting my own fallibility and subjectivity of experience. I could physically only see and do so much within one year, and inevitably things wouldn’t always go to plan.\"\"<\/a> I would break down, get lost, turn up late, or find ‘life getting in the way’. Lacking a fat advance to pay for a year off, I had to fit my trips inbetween the business of marking a living \u2013 which is mainly tutoring for the OU. Still, it provided a welcome relief from the piles of assignments! By the end I had a deeper understanding of ‘sacred time’ \u2013 something that can be found in the most unexpected places and moments. The ways folk celebrate are endlessly diverse and delightful \u2013 Britain excels at eccentricity. Perhaps, in my quirky methodology, I was contributing to that. I felt I had certainly marked my fortieth!<\/p>\n

Kevan is a tutor for OU creative writing modules at all levels: A174 Start Writing Fiction<\/em>, A215 Creative Writing<\/em>\u00a0and A363 Advanced Creative Writing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Turning the Wheel<\/em> is published by\u00a0\u00a0O Books<\/a> November 25 2011<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1-84694-766-7\u00a0 \u00a315.99\u00a0 313pp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big ’40’ was coming up. I wanted to do something special to mark my fortieth year. I had a birthday party planned, but beyond this I want to make it a ‘landmark year’. They say life begins at forty, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[92,93,94],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-writing","tag-blog","tag-celebration","tag-storyteller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}