Amy Jo Philip
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I’ve just had a poem accepted by The SHOp, a beautifully produced Irish magazine. The poem, “In Praise of Dust”, should be published sometime in the next 12 months. I’ve also been meaning to mention that Lallans recently accepted four poems in Scots, one of which is a translation of Rilke’s “Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes.” I’m…
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Rilke has been a significant figure for me for a while, although there’s much of his work I’ve yet to read. When I lived in Berlin in the early 1990s, a friend gave me his collected poems in German for Chirstmas. The same friend later gave me the Letters to a Young Poet (in English,…
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David Kinloch now has a website. It’s pretty easy to navigate and contains poems, essays, an interview with David, reviews, translations, news and other information. Worth looking at if you’re interested in his work.
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The shortlist for this year’s Arvon poetry competition is out. I entered, but didn’t get anywhere. However, Siriol Troup, who read alongside me at StAnza this year, is on the shortlist. Gaun yersel, Siriol!
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I headed to Dumfries yesterday for the second of my two New Voice events with the Scottish Poetry Library. Lilias Fraser from the Library and I took the train to Lockerbie–a very civilised Virgin conveyance–where we were picked by Andrew Forster, who took us to the venue at Crichton Campus via a pretty decent coffee…
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On Saturday night, the Shore Poets celebrated Stewart Conn‘s 70th birthday at the Counting House in Edinburgh. The evening, which was open to the public and more or less sold out with various bodies from the poetry world, involved readings from a number of poets whom Stewart admires and counts among his friends, including Anne…
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Went to hear the fine Gaelic poet, publisher and scholar Derick Thomson (or Ruaraidh MacThomais in Gaelic) read on Wednesday at the usual haunt. The audience was far smaller than that for Sharon Olds. That, I suppose, is predictable, but it’s also a poor reflection on the knowledge of the poetry-reading public in Edinburgh. Gaelic…
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I’ve only just discovered that “A Rough Guide to Monday Morning”, the first piece in Tonguefire, was poem of the week in Saturday’s Scotsman. If I’d known on Saturday I’d have bought the paper! Irritatingly, they have the title slightly wrong. I wonder whether that was a sub trying to shoehorn it into a preconceived…
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Thursday’s New Voice session went very well. For the first half of the evening, Helena Nelson gave a short workshop on how to raise your profile as a poet. In the second half, she interviewed me as a live case study. Poems were interspersed with the interview in roughly chronological order. Out of the 17…
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I spent a chunk of today preparing for the New Voices event in Glasgow on Thursday. It’s shaping up to be an interesting event from both sides of the podium, I think. I see from the Scottish Poetry Library’s events pages that it’s fully booked! Not that I can remember quite how many people that…
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Friday’s reading went really well. It was held in the lounge of Bryerton House, aka St John’s Christian Centre, in Linlithgow High Street. The lounge set-up lent a cosy, intimate atmosphere to the evening, but it was bittie cramped for some of the 20 or so folk who came! Guitarist Phil Melstrom kicked us off…
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There was a rare opportunity to hear American poet Sharon Olds read for the Poetry Association of Scotland on Wednseday night at the Scottish Poetry Library, so I took it. In the first half of the evening, she read mostly from her Selected Poems. After the interval, the usual PAS order was reversed, with questions…
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Although it irritates me somewhat that the BBC uses the entertainment section of its news website to trail some of its programmes, pretending that the reports are real news, I was interested to see this report of Radio 3’s plans for a Wilfred Owen week following rememberance day. I vividly remember reading some of his…
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My next reading is the Celebrate Linlithgow! one on Friday this week (27 October). There has been a slight change to the programme, as the line-up will now consist of me, Douglas Briton and my fellow HappenStance* poet Rob A Mackenzie, all bookended by jazz from Phil Melstrom. The event kicks off at 8pm in…
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Apologies for the length of time it has been since I added anything to the blog. I blame the cumulative tiredness I was suffering from before our week near Criccieth on the Lleyn peninusula in North Wales. It’s RS Thomas country that is, but my main reading matter for the week was The Bloodaxe Book…
Amy Jo Philip 