One month. Four words to inspire you. And the limitless power of your imagination.
Throughout Autumn 2024, I’ve been encouraging writers of all levels of experience across Birmingham and the Black Country to create pieces for an anthology of brand-new work — however much or little they had written before, I wanted to hear from them!
There was a broad inspirational theme for writers to respond to — True Voyage Is Return — taken from Ursula K. Le Guin’s iconic novel The Dispossessed which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its publication this year. Where that theme led everyone’s imaginations was entirely up to them: the works they’ve produced are as unique as the writers themselves.
Life is a journey back to where you started from, Le Guin always said. True voyage is return. When you get there, you might know a little more than when you began.
For four weeks in October, I transformed The Exchange into a hub for new writing which nurtured and celebrated the creativity of people across the region. As part of that, ten professional writers — from poets and playwrights to essayists and graphic novelists — were based on site, producing brand-new work in full view and in real time. I challenged myself to write a 90,000-word novel over the course of just one calendar month. (Visit my blog to see how that went…)
Members of the public were encouraged to spend time at The Exchange as they got stuck into their own writing, and each week, there were plenty of opportunities for anyone who was curious to get more involved or who was seeking support for their own work, with panel talks, practical workshops and one-to-one writers’ surgeries. There was also a dedicated programme of Half Term activities, focused on young people and intergenerational audiences.
In Spring 2025, I’ll launch the anthology alongside a 10-episode podcast featuring interviews with contributors and specially recorded extracts of their work.
Ten professional writers were based at The Exchange during the project, producing brand-new work in full view and in real time — and here they all are!
Commissioned Writers
PHILIP HOLYMAN
Philip’s theatre writing has often been presented through Little Earthquake, the company he runs with his husband Gareth Nicholls. In 2019, he branched out into prose with the short story collection To Infinity And Beyond. In 2023, he wrote his first full-length novel, and for True Voyage Is Return, he’s producing his second — Obsolete Constellations.
CHARLOTTE BAILEY
Charlotte Bailey is a visual storyteller, writer, facilitator and host exploring how we can reimagine our relationships to home, heritage and collective futures through comics, film, essays and workshops. She has published, edited and contributed to a number of graphic essays, anthologies and journals.
STEPHEN ARYAN
Stephen Aryan is an award-winning fantasy author. His first novel Battlemage was published in 2015 by Orbit. Since then, he’s published nine additional fantasy novels. The most recent, The Blood Dimmed Tide, is the second instalment in a Persian-inspired historical fantasy trilogy, The Nightingale and the Falcon.
SHAUN HILL
Shaun Hill is a poet and movement artist mapping post-capitalist ways of being. He is the author of warm blooded things (Nine Arches Press, 2021) and recently completed an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice project exploring what improvised movement with living systems can teach us about the ongoing climate crisis.
ROMALYN ANTE
Romalyn Ante is a multi-award-winning Filipino-British poet. She was 16 years old when her mother – a nurse in the NHS – brought the family from Lipa to the UK. Her debut collection Antiemetic for Homesickness was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second collection AGIMAT is forthcoming in September.
LORNA FRENCH
A two-time Alfred Fagon winner, Lorna French has written for theatre and radio. Theatre has been produced by Pentabus, Theatre by the Lake, Jermyn Street Theatre, Octagon Bolton, Eclipse Theatre Company and Birmingham REP. Radio plays for BBC Radio 4 include Rise (Naked Productions) and the co-authored The Last Flag (with Eclipse Theatre).
WREN JAMES
Wren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels as ‘Lauren James’, including Last Seen Online, Green Rising, The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. They are a RLF Royal Fellow and the story consultant on Netflix’s Heartstopper (Seasons 2 and 3).
BRADLEY TAYLOR
Bradley Taylor is a poet born and based in Birmingham who won the 2024 Roundhouse Poetry Slam. He hosts Overcoat Poetry, a monthly spoken word night, and he also performs ‘Poetry on Demand’, visiting local parks, independent bookshops and festivals with his trusty typewriter to gift bespoke, one-of-a-kind poems to complete strangers.
The submissions window may now have closed, but there are still plenty of ways to connect with the project during Winter 2024 and beyond
Get Involved
The window for submissions for the True Voyage Is Return anthology has now closed.
WRITING BRIEF (retained here for reference):
You can download a copy of this information here.
WHY IS THERE A WRITING BRIEF?
Some projects, callouts or competitions give you total freedom to write about absolutely anything you want, which can be great — but that freedom can also be very daunting.
Often, it’s useful to have something a bit more specific to respond to, which helps writers to focus their minds, settle on their subject, and refine their ideas.
Having a brief is especially useful for writers who might not feel very confident or who may not feel they have very much experience — and that’s why I’ve set a brief for this project.
WHAT IS THE BRIEF?
It’s really simple! The brief invites writers to respond to this four-word phrase: “True Voyage Is Return”. That’s it! Told you it was simple!
WHERE DOES THAT PHRASE COME FROM?
It’s a quote from The Dispossessed, a novel by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The book was first published in 1974, so it’s celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. (On the subject of milestone dates, Ursula K. Le Guin would have celebrated her 95th birthday on 21st October, the third Monday of our project period. We’ll definitely be having cake that day!)
If you were in a bookshop, trying to track The Dispossessed down, it would probably be shelved in the Science Fiction section.
WHAT’S THE BOOK ABOUT?
Here’s a super-short, and hopefully spoiler-free summary:
The planet Urras is a capitalist society and the nearby planet Anarres is an anarchist society. Long ago, Anarres was colonised by people from Urras who wanted to reject the capitalist patriarchal propertarian system and who decided to set up a new society of their own. Life on Anarres is shaped by a totally different set of values, based on the spirit of mutual cooperation and abandoning the notions of personal property or centralised government. Shevek is a physicist on Anarres who wants to experience Urras for himself. (He’s inspired by J. Robert Oppenheimer who was a frequent visitor to Le Guin’s childhood home.) Against the community’s wishes, Shevek goes to Urras, and finds out firsthand what life there is really like.
(There’s a LOT more to it than that — but I’m trying really hard not to spoil it for you!)
The book invites us to think about the kind of society we live in, the kind of society we’d like to live in, and how far we’re prepared to go in order to create and maintain a world that reflects and upholds our values. It also encourages us to think carefully about the pros and cons of every kind of society or social system, and to avoid thinking that any of them are perfect. It’s a brilliant book to read during an election year…!
DO I NEED TO HAVE READ THE DISPOSSESSED TO BE ABLE TO TAKE PART IN THIS?
No! Not at all! It’s a great book, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone. (There’s a really nice audio version as well for anyone who needs or prefers to listen to a book rather than to read a physical copy. It’s available from the usual places like Audible and Spotify, but it’ll also be out there in other places if you’re more of an audiobook anarchist!)
You absolutely do not have to know anything at all about The Dispossessed in order to write something of your own for this project. What I’m most interested in is seeing where the phrase “True Voyage Is Return” leads your imagination, and discovering what you write in response.
DO I HAVE TO WRITE A NOVEL?
No! Not at all! I want the anthology to include a range of literary forms and there’s more detailed information about this in the Submissions Terms and Guidance, including limits on the length or word count of your piece. Here’s a super-quick summary of the kinds of work I’m hoping writers will submit:
- short prose fiction — such as a short story
- short works combining images and text — such as a zine or short graphic novel
- poetry — this could be a single poem or a collection of up to five poems
- theatre writing — such as a short play or a monologue
- narrative non-fiction — such as a memoir, a travelogue or a biography that experiments creatively with language, form or style
- writing for children and young people — such as a picture book or a young adult short story
DO I HAVE TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION?
No! Not at all! Just because the inspiration for this project came from a work of science fiction, that doesn’t mean you have to write one, too.
There are lots of ways that different types of literature get referred to: words such as “genre” or “class” or “category”, for example, that help to describe things like the subject or style of a work of literature in broadly recognisable terms. Thriller, romance, horror, and so on, and so on.
These words are nothing more than labels, really — as far as this project is concerned, you can write in any genre or category you like, or in no specific genre or category at all. What’s important is that the work you write falls within the scope of the Submissions Terms and Guidance.
WHAT DOES “TRUE VOYAGE IS RETURN” ACTUALLY MEAN?
In the context of The Dispossessed, the phrase features in the dedication on the gravestone of Odo, the woman who is a key figure in the revolution on Urras and who inspires the founding of the anarchist colony on Anarres:
Laia Asieo Odo
698 — 769
To be whole is to be part;
true voyage is return
(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed)
The concept doesn’t get specifically explored or explained again in the book beyond that, but it’s an idea which pops up in different ways throughout lots of Ursula K. Le Guin’s other works:
Life is a journey back to where you started from, Le Guin always said.
True voyage is return. When you get there,
you might know a little more than when you began.
(Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, edited by David Streitfeld)
Le Guin’s short story The Day Before the Revolution revisits Laia (Odo from The Dispossessed) when she is in her seventies — and variations on the phrase appear in that story twice:
If you wanted to come home you had to keep going on,
that was what she meant when she wrote “True journey is return,”
but it had never been more than an intuition,
and she was farther than ever now from being able to rationalize it.
and later…
She had come home; she had never left home. “True voyage is return.”
(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Day Before the Revolution)
There are lots of Reddit threads about what this phrase means (as there are about pretty much everything), and one commenter, Massive_Customer_930, puts it very nicely:
Essentially, at the end of a journey when we come back to where we began,
it’s only then that we can see how much we’ve changed — this change being our true voyage.
So when you approach this writing brief, there are all sorts of ways you can run with this phrase and respond to it in the piece you write.
One great option is approaching it literally. A character starts out in one place, and then they go to another place. They might have lots of different reasons for doing that. At some point, they go back to the place they started out from. They might have lots of different reasons for doing that, too.
The place they left behind is likely to be different now — subtly different or dramatically different. The same thing goes for the character themselves, too. They are likely to be a very different person now from who they were when they left.
The journey from place to place will cover a span of time — a small interval, like the midnight of one day to the midnight of the next — or a huge period of years, decades, centuries and beyond, from now into the past or the future and back again — or anything in between.
The distance between places can be as small as switching from one seat of a bus to another — or as large as travelling from one galaxy to another. It could involve going to prison and being released (or escaping) — going to hospital and being discharged (with a new baby, or with a terminal prognosis) — trekking around a desert island or journeying around a war zone. Fictional stories like Gulliver’s Travels, or Planet of the Apes. Factual stories like the Apollo 11 Moon mission or Teddy Seymour sailing solo around the world.
And it doesn’t have to be a physical journey from A to B and back to A again, of course.
There are all kinds of other journeys a character could go on — emotional journeys, political journeys, spiritual journeys — journeys to do with identity or ideology — journeys from one age or stage of life to another — journeys where the returning character may still be the same in some ways but may also be very different in others.
The main character can be you, or another real person who exists or has existed, or someone completely made up. And your character doesn’t have to be human — they could be an animal, an alien, anything you like. And there can be lots of characters, of course — not just one.
What I’m hoping I’ve made clear is that there’s massive amounts of freedom for you to interpret this brief, taking it as a starting point and then going in your own unique direction with it.
The most important thing is for you to have fun, playing around with different ideas and imagining all kinds of possibilities, before you settle on something that really excites you, which gets you writing and leads to you completing a brand-new piece which we can celebrate and share in the anthology.
The window for submissions for the True Voyage Is Return anthology has now closed.
I am hugely grateful to everyone who has submitted their work, and I will look forward to reading everyone’s pieces with great interest.
At first glance, it appears that short stories have been the most popular form, closely followed by poetry. I’ve received one memoir, and even one chapter of a work-in-progress novel (from the youngest contributor of them all, who is just into double figures!)
Work will begin shortly on compiling the anthology, and I’ll keep the main True Voyage page updated with news on where and when it will be launched for public view.
The window for submissions for the True Voyage Is Return anthology has now closed.
SUBMISSIONS TERMS AND GUIDANCE (retained here for reference):
You can download a copy of this information here.
- WRITERS
I can accept submissions from an individual writer, or from a collaborative writing team of two or more people.
I want to ensure that all writers are appropriately credited. Writers can use their own name(s) or, if they prefer, they can use a pseudonym (a name that they’ve made up).
- WRITERS’ LOCATION
This project is about nurturing and celebrating local talent, so I can only accept submissions by writers who are based in Birmingham or the Black Country (Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall or Wolverhampton).
- NUMBER OF ENTRIES
I can only accept ONE submission from each writer or writing team, so make sure you only send me the piece you’d like to be included in the anthology.
- WRITING BRIEF
The work you submit must respond to the project brief: the four-word phrase — “True Voyage Is Return.” (If I’m in doubt, I won’t be able to include the work in the anthology!)
- STAGE OF READINESS
The work you submit must be finished and ready for inclusion in the anthology. It should not be a rough or incomplete draft. There will not be any opportunity for writers to make revisions to the work once they have submitted it.
- FEEDBACK
This project is not a competition and is not part of any kind of mentoring or education programme. I will not be able to provide any feedback on the work you submit.
- COPYRIGHT
The work you submit must be an original work by the writer or the writing team. The work should not have been previously published, or be subject to any kind of current contract or agreement with a publisher.
(As you’ll appreciate, I don’t want to see any plagiarism going on — and I don’t want to infringe any copyright laws or publishing agreements! If I’m in doubt, I won’t be able to include the work in the anthology!)
The copyright ownership for the work will remain vested with the writer or the writing team. The copyright for the anthology as a whole will remain vested with me. By submitting the work to me, the writer or writing team is giving permission for me to include it (in whole or in part) in the anthology and any derivative True Voyage Is Return activities, including the podcast. I will not make commercial use of the work, and contributors will not be entitled to any royalties from my use of the work.
- AI
This project is all about giving you an opportunity to explore your own writing and your own creativity — it’s not about seeing how well you can prompt AI to write or create something for you.
As part of the Submissions Form, you’ll be asked to confirm that the work you’re submitting has not been produced through any kind of AI generating program. (If I’m in doubt, I won’t be able to include the work in the anthology!)
- LANGUAGE
The work you submit must be primarily in English. If your work includes elements in languages other than English (including languages you’ve invented), you should ensure that the piece still makes sufficiently clear sense to a reader of English who does not speak those languages.
- LITERARY FORM
I want the anthology to include a range of literary forms. As this project is being supported by public funding through Arts Council England, I can accept works in the kind of literary forms which they support more widely through their Literature strand.
Examples of what I can accept include:
- short prose fiction — such as a short story
- short works combining images and text — such as a zine or short graphic novel
- poetry — this could be a single poem or a collection of up to five poems
- theatre writing — such as a short play or a monologue
- narrative non-fiction — such as a memoir, a travelogue or a biography that experiments creatively with language, form or style
- writing for children and young people — such as a picture book or a young adult short story
Examples of what I can’t accept include:
- screenwriting for film or television
- academic publications
- non-fiction where the literary quality of the language, form and/or style are not a key focus of the project
- translations from English into other languages
(As you’ll appreciate, I also don’t have the capacity to accept longer forms of prose fiction — such as novels and novellas.)
- LENGTH / WORD COUNT
The maximum length of the work you submit depends on which literary form you’re using:
- short prose fiction — no more than 5,000 words
- poetry — no more than 5,000 words (across a total of up to five poems)
- theatre writing — no more than 5,000 words
- narrative non-fiction — no more than 5,000 words
- graphic novel or zine — no more than ten pages
- picture book — no more than ten pages
(If the work you submit is any longer than this, I won’t be able to include it in the anthology!)
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you’re submitting a hand-written or other non-digital document, the maximum lengths are smaller. This is because I will need to do a lot of extra work to get your piece ready for inclusion in the anthology, and that will end up taking me a lot of time!
- short prose fiction — no more than 2,000 words
- poetry — no more than 2,000 words (across a total of up to five poems)
- theatre writing — no more than 2,000 words
- narrative non-fiction — no more than 2,000 words
- graphic novel or zine — no more than five pages
- picture book — no more than five pages
(If the work you submit is any longer than this, or if I am not able to clearly decipher your writing, I won’t be able to include it in the anthology!)
- LAYOUT FORMATTING
You must format your work in the following ways, as this will make it as easy as possible for me to compile the anthology:
- Paper size — A4
- Page layout — Portrait
- Margins — 2.54 centimetres / 1 inch at Top, Bottom, Left and Right
- Font and Size — Arial 12 point
- Line Spacing — 1.15
- Alignment — Justify
I recognise that graphic novels, zines and picture books will need to be laid out in whatever way best suits the specifics of the work, in terms of colour, font, pagination, etc. — but in order to keep the anthology at a standard size, graphic novels, zines and picture books should use A4 paper size.
- FILE FORMATTING
The file format of the work you submit depends on which literary form you’re using:
- short prose fiction / poetry / theatre writing / narrative non-fiction — .docx
- graphic novel / zine / picture book — .pdf
(If the work you submit isn’t formatted this way, I won’t be able to include it in the anthology!)
- CONTENT GUIDANCE and AGE RECOMMENDATION
I want the anthology to be enjoyed by as many readers as possible, but I also recognise that some kinds of content may be unsuitable for readers of all ages. This is especially applicable to, but not limited to, the following:
- strong or coarse language;
- depictions of, or references to, violence or physical or mental abuse;
- references to, or images of, sexualised behaviour;
- racist, homophobic, misogynistic or other discriminatory language or behaviour;
- dangerous or criminal behaviour (including references to or images of illegal drug use and/or the misuse of alcohol, tobacco and/or other substances) depicted in such a way that glamorises such behaviour or that may encourage imitation, and which may be considered by a significant number of people to be offensive or unsuitable for children
It is not my intention to censor writers or their imaginations, but I ask you to think carefully about your prospective readers while writing and before submitting your work so as to take these considerations into account.
I will produce two copies of the anthology — one featuring all eligible works which are considered suitable for readers aged below 16, and one featuring all eligible works which are considered suitable for readers aged 16 and above. This will support readers of all ages (and the appropriate adults in the case of young or vulnerable readers) to make more informed choices.
As part of the Submissions Form, you’ll be asked to declare if the work you’re submitting is suitable for the over-16’s anthology and the under-16’s anthology, or for the over-16’s anthology only. You will also be asked to indicate if your work includes material relating to dangerous or criminal behaviour, discriminatory language, drugs and drug use, sex, sexual violence, strong or coarse language, suicide and self-harm, or violence.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The final decision on age suitability is mine. I reserve the right not to include any work in any version of the anthology which I feel does not adhere to this guidance, particularly in relation to potential breach of the criminal law, including any legislation relating to defamation, libel or slander, or any material judged to be obscene under the current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959.
So — here it is, at long last — the True Voyage Is Return Spotify playlist.
It’s packed with songs, music, readings and podcast episodes which have inspired members of the True Voyage team, which resonate with the themes or subjects we’ve explored, or which may even be referenced within the new works we’ve written.
Below, you’ll find some accompanying sleeve notes here which tell you more about the choices each writer has made.
PHILIP HOLYMAN
The novel I’ve been writing, Obsolete Constellations, is a queer sci-fi romance in 23 chapters (and a prologue and epilogue) which explores what happens when two men meet and fall in love against a backdrop of the possibility that the planets they live on might, or might not, be on a collision course with each other.
I invited the writers who spent a week working alongside me at The Exchange to choose three tracks, so I reasoned that since I was doing four weeks, I should get twelve tracks. But it’s my list, and my rules, so I decided to expand that to 23 AND added a bonus track instead.
Each track in my section doesn’t match up with the correspondingly numbered chapter of the novel — I’ve just gone for things which spoke to me at the time and have kept speaking to me since.
1 True — Spandau Ballet
2 Voyage voyage — Desireless
3 Return — Shed Seven
How could I NOT start the playlist with songs with these titles? Surely you were expecting the first one, at the very least?
4 First Encounter — Jóhann Jóhannson (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Arrival)
Obsolete Constellations is set across four planets orbiting a star in the Aquila system, many light years away from Earth. I can’t think of a better piece of music to capture what I imagine it feels like to set foot on an entirely unexplored world for the first time.
5 Why Wait For Science — Robert Frost
The Robert Frost poem I really wanted in the playlist is The Star-splitter, which provides the foreword and afterword for my novel, and which also leant its name to the interstellar communication device featured within the plot. Since Spotify has no recording of that poem, I’ve opted to include not one but three of Frost’s other works instead which all relate to what I’ve been working on.
I have to confess that I don’t think hearing them read in Frost’s own voice adds anything to the enjoyment or appreciation of his poetry; if anything, it slightly detracts. But that’s as much to do with my own personal dislike of hearing any writer read out their own work, because I’m not convinced they’re ever any good at doing it justice. Feel free to agree or disagree with me.
6 The Visitors — ABBA
7 Arrival — ABBA
8 Waterloo — ABBA
Obsolete Constellations is divided into four parts, each named after ABBA albums with travel-themed titles. The Visitors is Part One; Voyage is Part Two; Arrival is Part Three, and, giving a clue to how it ends, Waterloo is Part Four.
I’ve included the title tracks from three of those albums; unforgivably, Benny and Björn did not see fit to include a track called Voyage on the 2021 album of the same name.
9 Waiting For The Stars — Vitalic, David Shaw and The Beat
10 Waiting for a Star to Fall — Boy Meets Girl
11 Venus Meets Pluto — Eve’s Plum
Three tracks from my own personal playlist of more than 600 pieces. Perhaps my iPhone was listening to me and grew to understand what I was doing throughout October, and so told Spotify to start pushing the vaguely space-themed tracks my way during my walks to and from work each day. I picked out three which it pushed most persistently, each of which is actually very appropriate for different aspects of my novel.
12 City Lights — Blanche
13 Hold Me Closer — Cornelia Jakobs
14 Hold Me Now — Johnny Logan
Waterloo got me thinking about other Eurovision songs which might be relevant in some way, so here they are: Blanche’s 2017 entry for Belgium (4th place in the final), Cornelia Jakobs’ 2022 entry for Sweden (also 4th place), and Johnny Logan’s 1987 entry for Ireland — his second Eurovision win, and Ireland’s third. The lyrics of all three are perfect fits for my book.
15 The Road Not Taken — Robert Frost
Robert Frost again, one of his most famous works, and again, not really done justice in his own reading, I don’t think. A magical poem, though, that’s clearly about so much more than a walk through the woods.
16 Amoureuse — Véronique Sanson
17 Amoureuse — Kiki Dee
Back in 1999/2000, I was on my placement year from university, in a remote corner of north-eastern France, and I was often very lonely, and I listened to the radio a lot, especially to the brilliant channel Nostalgie. (No prizes for guessing what that means.) They often used to do a segment called VF VO, Version Française Version Originale, where a French cover of a song would be played, followed straight after by the covered song in its own language. It was GENIUS.
I only discovered these two songs in 2023, and this pairing should strictly be VA VO, as Kiki Dee’s version anglaise is a cover of Véronique Sanson’s version française. The Kiki Dee version is fleetingly mentioned in my first novel, R.C., and I intended for the Véronique Sanson version to be playing the first time my main characters in Obsolete Constellations had sex, but that didn’t end up happening (at least not in Draft One.)
This new novel has the potential to be the first part in a trilogy, so if I ever do get round to writing the other two, each will need its own subtitle. So this part will be called The Rainfall of Another Planet, in honour of the final line of Kiki Dee’s English version.
Promise me you’ll listen to them back-to-back. Great songs, both, by great artists.
18 Kêlê Magni — Oumou Sangaré
One of the nations on one of my novel’s planets is descended from West African pioneers who spoke Bambara, one of the national languages of Mali. One of the icons of Malian music is Oumou Sangaré, who I discovered only in the last couple of years, but whose music I’m growing to love more and more. This song is my absolute favourite, a proper belter which also manages to speak out against the harms of war conflict and be a passionate call for reconciliation.
19 O mio babbino caro — from Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini, sung by Maria Callas
I really, really wanted to find this piece being sung by a male voice, but didn’t find any that I liked. So instead I’ve gone for Callas (although Kiri Te Kanawa was a close second choice). It’s about being desperate to marry the love of your life. Enough said.
20 Pavane pour une infante défunte — Maurice Ravel, Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
One of the saddest and most wonderful pieces of music I know, and a centrepiece on one of my other Spotify lists: Weepy Classical Playlist.
Composed in 1899, Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” got his contemporaries wondering who precisely it was meant to commemorate. “That title has nothing to do with the composition,” Ravel replied. “I simply liked the sound of those words and I put them there, c’est tout.“
According to his biographer Benjamin Ivry, Ravel intended the piece to be played extremely slowly – more slowly than almost any modern interpretation. The critic Émile Vuillermoz complained that Ravel’s playing of the work was “unutterably slow”. Ravel woud probably have hated this recording, too, but I love it.
21 Winter – 2 — from Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, Daniel Hope (violin), Konzerthaus Kammerorchester Berlin, conducted by André de Ridder
Fantasising about a big-budget Netflix adaptation of a novel that I still haven’t even finished, here’s the music I think they should use for the teaser trailer, tracking across the deserts, rocky shores, plains and moss forests of my imaginary planets.
22 Follow Me — Amanda Lear
Obsolete Constellations explores many of my feelings about religion, and in the later stages, we meet members of a cult who bring about the novel’s climactic scene. If I was ever going to launch a cult of my own, here’s the anthem I’d use to lure in my followers — sung by Amanda Lear, the French singer,model and muse to Salvador Dalí, whose voice you may recognise from the Tails.com advert, soundtracked by her song Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me).
23 Choose Something Like A Star — Robert Frost
The third of the Robert Frost pieces, which I couldn’t leave out. If you’re not so keen on him reading it, read it out loud yourself. Actually, do that for all three of his pieces on this list.
24 Dance (While The Music Still Goes On) — ABBA
I’m not writing Mills & Boon, and Obsolete Constellations doesn’t give its heroes a conventional happy-ever-after ending. Their journeys to the final chapter — sometimes together, sometimes apart — involve pain and hardship but also dignity and redemption, too. A bit like life, you might say.
Another ABBA song to make up for the one Benny and Björn cheated me out of (see note for Tracks 6, 7 and 8 above) — a song for when you know it’s almost time to let go — but not yet.
WREN JAMES
25 Good Luck, Babe! — Chappell Roan
I’m fascinated by the speed at which Chappell Roan has been propelled to fame by the algorithm, and it was a big inspiration for my story.
26 Sloop John B — The Beach Boys
The story takes place on the maiden voyage of a transatlantic train, which everyone compares to the Titanic. Our protagonist does not want to be there. It’s “the worst trip she’s ever been on”, as the lyrics go.
27 The Seed — AURORA
The story is set in a solarpunk version of the future, and one of the main characters is a ‘fungi architect’. This song about seeds and nature really fits that tone.
STEPHEN ARYAN
28 Forest — Zoë Keating
29 The Path — Zoë Keating
My story is all set in a forest, so her music seems quite apt and atmospheric as the story is set in a forest. (Phil — Stephen suggested either/or of these two tracks, but I decided he should be allowed to include both.)
30 Civilian — Wye Oak
Creepy, weird, disturbing song, no idea what it’s about, don’t want to know, fits with the mood I was channelling for the story.
31 Something In The Way — Nirvana
Moody teenage me listened to this, and I was trying to capture that teen voice, and it also has a dark undertone, which fits the story.
CATHERINE O’FLYNN
32 Station to Station — David Bowie
It feels a little literal to choose Station to Station but I can’t help it – it’s the first song that comes to mind when I think of travel or voyaging or indeed returning. I suppose it’s the first song that comes to mind in a range of circumstances as it was my favourite song from so early in life and for so long that it feels part of my DNA.
Whilst I say it’s literal to choose it – and yes, train sound effects and repeated lines like “the return of the Thin White Duke” are certainly quite on the nose – I actually have no idea what David is on about. “It’s not the side effects of the cocaine,” he keeps shouting, but I suspect that it probably all was. My lack of understanding has always enhanced my engagement with the song which inhabits its own distinct landscape in my head.
33 Before We Begin — Broadcast
Whilst considering the paradox of the words True Voyage Is Return I found this track kept drifting into my head. I guess the reason is the similarly paradoxical opening lines:
‘Here again at the end
Before the beginning’
But there is also something in the lines—
‘I don’t mean to show that I know how this goes
Before we begin’
—which nicely sums up my feeling as I started the residency with very little idea in my head of what I might write.
I loved Broadcast and like everyone else who did, still mourn the loss of Trish Keenan. For me, as well as making beautiful, melancholy music, they absolutely captured something ineffable about Birmingham.
34 Spancil Hill — The Wolfe Tones
This is a classic song of voyaging and returning. An Irish émigré dreams he has returned to his home town of Spancil Hill. The verses have a dreamlike lack of consistency in which some inhabitants of the town have aged or died whilst others are just as the narrator remembered them (including “the tailor Quigley” who we learn, in a nicely prosaic detail, “used to mend my britches”).
It is, I suppose, a very typical kind of traditional Irish song and corny in its way. Inevitably our dreamer wakes at the end to find himself in California, far from Spancil Hill. It’s a song my parents would play on Sunday evenings which I guess transported them back to the places and people they had left behind.
CHARLOTTE BAILEY
35 Beings Seen and Unseen — A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh — Emergence Magazine Podcast
This podcast conversation informs much of my writing, including the secret of the nutmeg totem that I wrote with during the residency.
36 Bon Voyage — Kupla, from the Lofi Girl – beats to relax/study to playlist
My go-to study and writing playlist, so the soundtrack of the comic is Lofi. (Phil — out of the 500 songs on the playlist, I chose one whose title seemed very appropriate for this playlist.)
37 Long Live Palestine — Lowkey
Also strongly informed the piece, the whole idea of True Voyage Is Return and the key as analogy.
LORNA FRENCH
38 Even by Rachel Chinouriri (feat. Cat Burns)
It talks about comparisons made between people, a system of living within society which is unequal in many ways. It also talks about the experience of living within an unequal system as a Black woman.
For me this links to the ideas behind The Dispossessed [which inspired the True Voyage project] because of Shevek’s journey where he continually compares how people live: the Anarres and the Urras people. Considering which way of living is better, but also experiencing shallow understanding and a lack of tolerance or acceptance by both those on Anarres and those on Urras of those who are considered Other.
Additionally, as Shevek finds when he arrives on Urras, a society may on the surface look like a positive thing if you consider only one group of privileged individuals but if you consider the experience of groups who do not form the privileged class, you may find a less positive viewpoint of that society.
39 Mary Jane — Alanis Morissette
40 Perfect — Alanis Morissette
Both of the above songs by Alanis Morissette were chosen because they both speak to the central idea in the short play I have written for True Voyage is Return. They both concern the harmful aspects of trying to achieve perfection, when the idea of being perfect distorts healthy relationships.
Mary Jane focuses on the experience of a striving for a perceived perfect but unhealthy low weight that is making her miserable. This speaks to the protagonist’s dilemma in my play.
Perfect also addresses how the striving for perfection to please others in her life leads her to harmful behaviours. The single voice and exploration of an individual experience that dominates both songs Mary Jane and Perfect also felt appropriate to the monologue form that the majority of Jas’s action takes in my play.
BRADLEY TAYLOR
41 Lazarus — David Bowie
42 Alarm Call — Björk
43 Cannock Chase — Labi Siffre
If I were to be launched into space, the crew I’d like with me would be Bowie, Björk, Labi Siffre — and a secret Tom Waits stuffed in the trunk.
Bowie is the navigator. Björk is the captain. Siffre is the cook. Tom is the janitor. I’m the jester.
SHAUN HILL
44 Alto Paraiso — Akuai
45 Hymn of Healing — Beautiful Chorus
46 Sita Ram — Jai Uttal
In Spring 2025, the anthology of brand-new work submitted by my contributors — public writers and project team alike — will be available to view online on this site. To help you make informed choices about what you’d like to read, there will be two versions: one will feature works suitable only for readers aged 16 and over, and one will feature works suitable for readers of all ages.
To coincide with the anthology, I’ll also launch the accompanying True Voyage Is Return podcast. Each of the nine commissioned writers will have an episode dedicated to them, featuring interviews captured during their week at The Exchange along with specially recorded extracts of their work — the tenth episode will celebrate the work of our public contributors.
Once I’ve supported you to get going, there’s a whole host of ways to nurture your writing bug.
You could get involved with writers’ groups and literature events across the region — you could check out the range of opportunities offered by Writing West Midlands — you could link up with local independent publishers including Floodgate Press and The Emma Press — or visit local independent bookshops including Voce Books, The Heath Bookshop and How Brave Is The Wren.
And if you feel there’s a whole novel just waiting to burst out of you, there’s no better time than this November — otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month — to make it happen! 50,000 words in a month? You’re more than up to the challenge!
The team behind True Voyage Is Return
Credits
FOR TRUE VOYAGE IS RETURN
Project Leader and Manager | Philip Holyman
Podcast Producer | Gareth Nicholls
COMMISSIONED WRITERS
Week 1 to Week 4 inclusive | Philip Holyman
Week 1 | Catherine O’Flynn and Thomas Glave
Week 2 | Charlotte Bailey and Stephen Aryan
Week 3 | Shaun Hill and Romalyn Ante
Week 4 | Lorna French and Wren James
Poetry on Demand Writer | Bradley Taylor
CREATIVE COLLABORATORS
Graphic Design | Antony Antoniou / Design by Antony
Filmmaker | Paul Stringer
Photographers | Angela Grabowska, Greg Milner, Katja Ogrin
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM RESEARCH PARTNERS
for Philip Holyman | Professor Amaury Triaud
(Professor of Exoplanetology, School of Physics and Astronomy)
for Lorna French | Professor Patricia Noxolo
(Professor in Human Geography, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences / Chair in Postcolonial Geographies)
for Wren James | Dr Elliot Evans
(Associate Professor in Modern Languages)
SUPPLIERS & CRAFTSPEOPLE
Printing | Central Print
PRODUCTION PARTNERS
Philip Holyman
in partnership with University of Birmingham
PODCAST PRODUCTION PARTNER
Midlands Arts Centre (MAC)
FUNDERS
FOR UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
Head of Public Programmes | Laura Milner
Public Engagement Digital Producer | Grace Chapman
Public Programmes Officer | Kate O’Connor
Public Programmes Officer | Anna Pitts
Research Engagement Officer | Lauren Deere
Communications Manager (Arts & Law, Social Sciences) | Ellie Hail
for UoB Department of Film and Creative Writing | Professor Luke Kennard
FOR THE EXCHANGE
Venue Manager | Fiona Innes
Venue Services Manager | Damien Vincent
THANK YOU
Peter Stones at Arts Council England; Debbie Kermode, Fozia Bano and the team at Midlands Arts Centre; Shantel Edwards, Suzie Evans and the team at Birmingham Literature Festival; Catherine Gale and Claire Dawes at The Heath Bookshop; Jenny Moore at How Brave Is The Wren; Peter Haynes, Nigel Proctor and Garrie Fletcher at Floodgate Press; Georgia Wall at The Emma Press; Indi Deol at DESIBlitz; Linda Muirhead at University of Birmingham, Department of Drama and Theatre Arts
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