Amy Jo Philip
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The programme for Linlithgow Book Festival 2008 is beginning to take shape. It’s looking good, not least with our first Booker Prize-winning author on the festival in James Kelman. Keep an eye the website for further announcements in coming weeks.
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StAnza reports are, naturally, now popping up in the Scottish literary blogomarble. Colin Will offers a StAnza insider’s point of view in his brief sketch. Rob A Mackenzie has two reports: one for the Friday* and one for the Sunday. Rachel Fox muses on her mixed feelings here; while Sorlil gives a StAnza first-timer’s view…
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Will leave this up for a few days for comment. The title is Scots; here is a link to the DSL definition of the word. [poem deleted 21/03/08]
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I jumped into the car first thing yesterday morning and zipped up the road to St Andrew’s for my fix of StAnza 2008, listening to The Guardian CD of great 20th century poets on the way to get me in the mood. My first event was the masterclass in translation with Helmut Haberkamm and Fitzgerald…
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“Things often move slowly in the poetry world!” said I. Do you think if we rechristened poetry “slow books” it might become as vaguely trendy as the slow food and cittaslow movements? But then even vague trendiness is probably not what poetry needs. Remember, it was once the new rock ‘n’ roll. Now, it’s The…
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Mark Ogle’s family and several Shore Poets past and present. Alison playing. The Mark Ogle Memorial Poem trophy. Hamish Whyte, Jacob Polley and Diana Hendry relax. Angus Peter Campbell receives the trophy from Lizzie and Deborah. Angus Peter with Mark Ogle’s family. (These photos, with full tags, are also on the Shore Poets Facebook pages.)
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News just in: there’ll be a HappenStance Press reading at Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour in London on 26th May. Several HappenStance poets will read, including Rob A Mackenzie, Eleanor Livingstone, Michael Mackmin (editor of The Rialto), Gregory Leadbetter, me and Helena Nelson (Mme HappenStance herself). I’ve been thinking about trying to read in…
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On the train into Edinburgh for Polly Clark‘s reading the other night, I finally started to read Sean O’Brien‘s Forward and TS Eliot prize-winning collection The Drowned Book. Now, I might be missing something–I must be missing something, if the judges of both prizes aren’t–but I simply couldn’t get into it. It’s not that it’s…
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Out last night to Polly Clark‘s reading at Edinburgh Uni’s Office of Lifelong Learning, where she’s the Royal Literary Funding writer in residence. Polly was reading along with three OLL students. Debbie Cannon, who read at last month’s Shore Poets, was the only poet of the three. She kicked off with a reduced version of…
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One of the questions that one always faces with an anthology is what is its rationale, its purpose and aim? Like its team mates 100 Favourite Scottish Poems and 100 Favourite Scottish Poems to Read Aloud, 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems, edited by Alistair Findlay, hints at a kind of democratising of the canon in…
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Perhaps I was too harsh on Rob Mackenzie’s schedule for reading Paradise Lost: I made it to the same point as him yesterday. Rob is doing a good job of summarising the poem and there are already a few interesting comments on his first post, so I won’t repeat what’s already on Surroundings. I have…
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One question that arises for the new terminology is whether it can cover rhyme practice in languages other than English adequately. It ought to be able to, as it’s based on phonetic/phonemic correspondence rather than any single tradition of what does or doesn’t constitute a rhyme. In this post, I start to test it out…
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Rob Mackenzie has thrown down a gauntlet: to read Paradise Lost with him this month. “Paradise Lost in a month?” I hear you ask, as you fall off your chair in disbelief. It seems so. I will be joining him, although I guarantee I’ll fall behind his exacting and somewhat artificial schedule, which apparently works…
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I’ve only ever got hooked on two–ahem–reality TV shows: Musicality and Masterchef. Both, of course, are basically talent shows with a reality TV element injected into them. (Perhaps we could call them soft reality TV rather than the hard reality [sic] TV of, say, Big Brother. Who I’m not watching. Ever. Sorry.) Both also lack…
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I know this is a bit behind the times, but there’s an interesting post on “official verse culture” over at Eyewear, on the back of the result of the TS Eliot Prize. One wonders whether Edwin Morgan–one of those whom Todd Swift and other bloggers (well, Rob Mackenzie at least) hoped would win those laurels–didn’t…
Amy Jo Philip 