Amy Jo Philip

  • The previous post in this series examined the role of the onset in Wilfred Owen’s poetry. In this post, I’ll consider the subtle ways in which the onset participates in the rhyme scheme in a couple of poems by Simon Armitage. “Poem”Many contemporary poets exploit a wide variety of rhymes, often within a single poem.…

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  • I’ve been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term “mainstream” in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it’s fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which…

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  • Gists and Piths

    Gists and Piths is a newish British poetry and poetics blogzine, which seems to lean towards the experimental. I haven’t read the poetry on the site, but I enjoyed “Some thoughts on the mainstream” and the review of Daljit Nagra‘s book (which I also haven’t read yet). Should be worth following this blog’s development.

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  • Today’s Guardian Review includes a reasonable piece by Jennie Erdal on literary translation. It has no especially profound insights to offer on the process/art/act of translation but is more concerned with the profile of translators and translation in the world of books in the UK (woeful, but improving slightly). However, I liked the final sentence:…

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  • A Little Respect

    If you missed David Martin’s recent exhibition at the RSA, don’t despair, because there are images of the work from the show (including the “studio wall” collage) on his blog. I managed to get along to the RSA for a quick visit just before the exhibition ended. What struck me about the work was its…

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  • Inform Yourself!

    It’s getting a bit close to the Scottish Parliament elections to be posting a link like this one, but a Scottish voter (or anyone, for that matter) interested in culture could do worse than look at the Scots Language Centre‘s election pages. They contain details of not only the parties’* policies on the Scots language,…

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  • Rob A Mackenzie has been nominated for poet laureate of the blogosphere! Thing is, he says he doesn’t want it, which is tough, ’cause I’ve never heard of the other nominees. I don’t know much about what the accolade entails, either. First I heard of it was when Ron Silliman said his stint was now…

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  • is, as Bruce said, it always gets worse.

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  • Dark Matters

    I managed to scoot up to the Ingleby Gallery on Thursday to catch Alison Watt‘s installation “Dark Light” on its last day. Her shift from white canvases to black is logical: a further step in the stripping down that is represented by her progression from full-blown portraits to paintings of fabric to paintings of purely…

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  • Ecce Choco

    David Taylor at Diary of an Arts Pastor has a very good post on the stoushie about the

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  • Something else I had to miss because of Eilish’s sense of timing was the opening of the new show by painter David Martin: “The Cusp of Change: A Journey Through the Middle East“. This is Dave’s RSA show of work arising out of his Salvesen scholarship. There’s a lot of stuff from it appearing daily…

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  • What I Missed

    Looks like the 100 Poets Gathering at StAnza was a pretty incendiary event! You can catch up with some more of what went on at the festival with Rob Mackenzie’s series of StAnza postings at Surroundings. Rob, a fellow HappenStance poet, read at a pamphlet poets event this year, as I did last year. He…

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  • Readings Update

    Due to family circumstances, I’ve had to pull out of the 100 Poets Gathering at StAnza and won’t be able to make it to the festival at all. This means that my next scheduled reading is at the Shore Poets event in May, when I’ll be appearing alongside Kate Clanchy and my fellow HappenStancer, Rob…

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  • The Scottish Executive has finally announced a little more about the Scottish cultural academy that the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport promised us months and months ago in the Executive’s response to the Cultural Commission‘s report. There has been some muttering about the fact that the academy, which is based somewhat on the Irish…

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  • … but I couldn’t possibly comment.

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