Amy Jo Philip
-
The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that, despite previous posts on the Forward prize shortlists, I’ve not yet commented on the results. The main reason for this, aside from the usual time pressures, is that so far I’ve read only one of the shortlisted collections in each of the book lists–John Burnside’s Gift…
-
Things are coming together for the Orkney trip. Besides the reading with Christine De Luca and local Orkney writers, I’ll be leading a workshop for an S1 class (non-Scots read 12-year-olds) at Kirkwall Grammar School on the Friday morning (an 8.50 start–gulp!). Should be fun, although the last time I was in an S1 class…
-
1 In contrast to prose — which, being continuous, pretends to a form of wholeness — poetry, because it is divided into lines, is equipped in its structure to reflect and deal with the brokenness of the world. This it holds in tension with a more intense and therefore more whole scrutiny of language. 2…
-
The Linlithgow Book Festival website has experienced a few–ahem–technical problems, but we’ve fixed ’em. If you’ve tried to access it and failed, all should now be well. The programme on the front page has also been updated with a little more information about the renga and the Wallace event I’m involved in. And you can…
-
One of the pleasures of living near Edinburgh is being able to see the major Festival-time exhibitions once the biggest crowds have gone. Although family circumstances are not the most conducive, I had the opportunity yesterday to see “Picasso on Paper” at the Dean Gallery. And I’m extremely glad I went. As the title implies,…
-
The visit to Orkney with the Shore Poets exchange in October is beginning to shape up. It looks like it will involve one reading–on Saturday 13th along with Christine De Luca and local writers in the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness–and at least one school visit the previous day. There might be other visits to schools…
-
Readers of Rob A Mackenzie’s blog Surroundings might recall a comments thread a while back about the idea of a Nov 4th reading with Roddy Lumsden, AB Jackson, Rob and myself. Well, the gig is confirmed. It should make for a good night, though I expect I’ll be frazzled by the end, what with it…
-
Remember “poems on pillows”? (New readers start here then follow the trail to here and here.) Well, I don’t know why I should further humiliate myself by saying this, but there’s a page for the project on the Ten Hill Place website. It features my commissioned poem just about legible on the postcard (not one…
-
I’ve been thinking about the way that I and other writers use the pronoun you in poems and realising how strong an antipathy I have to its being used to stand in for the first person. I’m not talking about the colloquial use of you as a replacement for the often bothersomely formal impersonal pronoun…
-
If you’ve been following my and Rob A Mackenzie‘s posts about our manuscript swap, you’ll probably be waiting for the more detailed comments I promised on Rob’s poems*, so here they finally are. There’s a lot of very good stuff in Rob’s MS, with a few really fine poems. Think of Rob A Mackenzie, and…
-
A quick update: Jennifer Williams will now be reading with me at the Linlithgow Folk Festival gig. I’m also trying to organise some music for it, but that’s not confirmed as yet.
-
I now have an entry on Poetcasting. Click here to go to the page and play or download MP3s of me reading “The Invention of Zero”, “To Bake the Bread” and “Tonguefire Night” as well as my Scots translation of Rilke’s “Der Panther”. It’s a long time since I heard myself reading my work, and…
-
Linlithgow Book Festival now has a website. Drop by and check it out. Note the additional event on the Sunday afternoon.
-
Readers of this blog and Rob Mackenzie’s might remember the reading that we did last year in Linlithgow as part of the Celebrate Linlithgow! arts festival. This year, I’m reading as part of the town’s longest running festival: the Linlithgow Folk Festival. At the moment, it looks like I have the bill to myself, despite…
-
Imagine my surprise, on flicking through this week’s Guardian Review to find that the book of the week is not only a collection of poetry but a new book by Geoffrey Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power*. At last! The Guardian has been supportive of Hill for a while, but I don’t remember the last…
Amy Jo Philip 