Amy Jo Philip
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I’ll be interviewing another Shearsman poet, Claire Crowther, here on Friday 31 July. The following poem comes from her marvellous new collection The Clockwork Gift. Open Plan They took the walls away without warning.The roof floated, a miraculous over of shelter.We were caught out. We cooled quickly. A sty? My hands made paws? My lover…
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Siriol Troup’s Beneath the Rime, her second full collection of poetry, was published earlier this year by the wonderful Shearsman Press. I first met Siriol when we read together at StAnza 2006, along with Richard Price, and was only too pleased when asked to take part in her virtual book tour. Andrew Philip: It’s a…
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If a disadvantage of touring virtually is that you don’t get long stretches of reading time on trains or planes, one advantage is certainly the ability to skip back and forth over huge stretches of ocean and land as if you had a little nut tree. Accordingly, this week finds me back in the USA…
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I’ll be interviewing the poet Siriol Troup here on Tonguefire on Friday, 24 July. The following poem comes from her new collection, Beneath the Rime. Nox Elephantorum– Elephant Night at the Coliseum Climb the railings by moonlight – you’ll find uson our knees in the ring, turning tricksunder the sky’s black awning. Such eloquentdesolation: the…
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Unoccupied as I am and have been, I’ve added another date to the Ambulance Box virtual tour: on 5 August, I’ll be at fellow Salt poet Anne Berkeley‘s blog Squared.
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Others may be going on a summer holiday, but here at Tonguefire the Ambulance Box virtual tour bus keeps chugging along. It’s a remarkable engine, managing to pull me over the Atlantic and back in a week with barely a dampened spark plug to speak of. Today, it pulls into Cadwallender, the eponymous blog of…
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Just finished reading Shira Wolosky’s The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem, which I borrowed from the Scottish Poetry Library. Good book, I thought; one I’d certainly recommend as a general overview of poetic form and rhetoric. I might well buy a copy for reference. Only once or twice did really think she’d…
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This week, Carol Ann Duffy launched her new poetry prize: the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for the most exciting contribution to poetry in that year. It’s a generous gesture from the new laureate, though questions have been asked about whether we need another poetry award. The test will be the shortlists:…
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The first print review of The Ambulance Box is in! It’s part of a piece in Magma 44, where Rosie Shepperd reviews it alongside Paula Meehan’s Painting Rain (Carcanet) and River Wolton’s The Purpose of Your Visit (Smith/Doorstop Books). The review is thorough and extremely positive. Here’s a headline quote: delights readers with a dance…
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My Cyclone virtual book tour skips over the Atlantic today to stop in Ojai, California at poet Robert Peake’s blog. Thanks to the wonders of Skype and Robert’s technical know-how, you can see and hear us discuss the surprises of publication; language; the music of poetry; the importance of the page; and grief and hope.…
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My choice of classic poem has just gone up on the Scottish Poetry Library’s Reading Room site. Click here to read my thoughts on Henry Vaughan’s “The Night”. Don’t omit to browse the growing wealth of previous choices too.
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Just back online after my trip to London for the Lemon Monkey reading (a fanstastic evening of which more anon) and a brief computer hiatus enforced by redecorating. All of which leaves me with two tour stops to catch up on. First of all, on Monday, as Rob Mackenzie and I sped southwards on the…
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A wee while back, I speculated about the preception and truth of poetry sales. This was before the BBC’s admirable poetry season and Salt‘s cash crisis. Now, today, courtesy of Matt Merritt, I found this article on the effect the Beeb’s tranche of programmes has had on poetry sales. Or, to be more precise, the…
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Today’s tour stop is at the blog of Dundee-born artist Douglas Robertson. Doug has turned our chat via Facebook messages into a fine post about my sequence of “Hebridean Thumbnails”, incorporating the poems themselves and beautiful, deft sketches he has created to accompany them. I say it’s about the sequence, but that’s really only the…
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Whoops! I’ve got a day behind myself in posting the links to my Cylone virtual book tour. Thankfully, Claire Askew is on the ball and posted her interview with me on her One Night Stanzas blog yesterday as advertised. Drop by and read about how I became a writer, how I got from my first…
Amy Jo Philip 