Amy Jo Philip
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This year’s Edwin Morgan poetry competition was launched last week. With a first prize of £5,000 and others of £1,000, £500 and £50 (x 2), it’s one of the richest poetry prizes in Britain, but the kudos of being thus associated with Morgan’s name would itself be a high reward in my book. And, of…
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No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. Whether you are setting out on your journey into poetry or have already been on the road a long time, Robert Frost’s statement rings true. Join me to explore ways of bringing that element of surprise into your writing from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm…
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I’ve just seen that the latest Magma e-newsletter includes a rather lovely mention of The Ambulance Box in Jacqueline Saphra’s article on catharsis in poetry. She says: There are countless poems or collections that successfully achieve the cathartic effect — for me at least — so I thought I’d do a whistle-stop tour of just…
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The World Book Night event at St John’s on Saturday didn’t go quite as planned. David’s books hadn’t arrived on time. Instead, he had two boxes of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights — somewhat ironically, given Pullman’s views on religion — and one of John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Still, with…
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My contributor’s copy of Gutter 4 arrived the other day and very good it looks too! I’ve not had time to delve into the contents, but I’m very pleased to share the pages with such a vibrant mix of writers, from newcomers to leading names of the new generation and senior masters such as Alexander…
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It’s World Book Night on Saturday 5 March, and St John’s Church, Linlithgow has a juicy wee event planned to celebrate. It’s the brainchild of David Todd, community outreach pastor, who is a registered World Book Night book giver-away, and I’ll be taking part. David will be giving away his WBN copies of Stuart: A…
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When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be… I think I wanted to either be a poet, a priest, or a pianist. I decided by being a songwriter I could be all three at once. When I got serious about songwriting, it was the first time in my life that I…
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On Saturday, the fine London-based Donut Press celebrated its 10th birthday with a quintuple book launch — Matthew Caley, Jude Cowan, AB Jackson, Wayne Holloway-Smith and Ahren Warner all launched their new pamphlets. I’m particularly looking forward to ABJ’s Apocrypha. I’ve heard him read from the sequence before and will be at the Glasgow launch…
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“I think when you’re a poet you have to forget you’re a poet — a real poet doesn’t draw attention to the fact he’s a poet. The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.” The great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai in a fascinating Paris Review…
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The shortlist for this year’s Crashaw prize was announced this week, and I was delighted to see that my friend Stephen Nelson is among their number. I was almost equally pleased to see that he’s the first of the shortlisted authors to be profiled on the Salt blog. All digits are disecting for him. Stephen…
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“Good art stops being art — it becomes a way of being happy, of receiving something beautiful and human from stranger, of confirming one’s identity, of being not alone.” AL Kennedy in The Guardian books blog today arguing with typical intelligence, wit and accessiblity that it’s not unreasonable to defend arts funding when all the…
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There was a goodly crowd for the Scottish Poetry Library‘s flash mob outside St Giles this lunchtime. It was fun! I saw several lovely people I wouldn’t normally see of a lunchtime and was interviewed by a journalist, though I probably wittered nonsense away at her. There’s a video on The Scotsman website with footage…
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January 25th is nearly upon us once more, and the world resounds to the tones of Burns’s poems. The Scottish Poetry Library and Let’s Get Lyrical have come up with a typically fun and inventive way of celebrating our most celebrated of Scots poets: a flashmob outside St Giles cathedral tomorrow at 1 pm. Instructions…
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The full programme for this year’s StAnza is now available – has been for a few weeks, in fact – and it looks really interesting. It’s not packed with really big names and looks all the more stimulating for that. I’m particularly pleased to see a strong showing of translated poets – and not all…
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Issue 5 of Salt’s flagship online literary magazine, Horizon, has just hit the screens. It’s the first under the editorship of Katy Evans-Bush and it’s packed with poems, fiction, drama, reviews and essays from a really strong line-up of contributors, including Rob A Mackenzie, Ira Lightman, Ian Duhig, Julia Bird … I could go on,…
Amy Jo Philip 