Oscar’s in the air this weather: from Katy Evans-Bush’s poems about him and Henry James, through her post the other day about his poetry criticism* and, of course, the new film of The Picture of Dorian Gray to the theme Merchant City Festival writers conference, taken from an essay of his, “The Decay of Lying”.

This isn’t just idle trend spotting, but by way of a slightly tortuous introduction to the fact that I’ll be appearing at said conference, which  is more a one-day book festival than the academic symposium the title might imply.** Details are still to be worked out, but I’ll be doing a poetry workshop and a reading. Other conferring writers include: John Calder, Eleanor Livingstone, an unconfirmed representative of The Scottish Writers’ Centre,  Stephen Thomson, Jane McKie, Word Dogs group from Glasgow, Ruth Cockshott and Flatrate Theatre group. I’ll post more details when I have them, but it should be fun. It’s being organised by ONE  magazine and it’s free.

*While we’re on the subject of Katy’s posts, there’s a beautiful one in tribute to Michael Donaghy, who died five years ago yesterday. Read it.

**Heavens, that got a bit verbose!