Amy Jo Philip
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Reading this review, I was struck by the American reviewer’s incomprehension of “the dichotomy … of accessibility vs difficulty” (an incomprehension I share to a great extent, as you might know if you’ve read my post on Geoffrey Hill). I was set to wondering what it is that makes this tribalism so British. It’s not…
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Listen to this before it vanishes from the internet next week.
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Monday 22nd May, at The Village, 8 – 11pm, £3: Foakies present: TRAVELLING WAVERLIES. The Waverlies line-up will feature Bob Shields, Mike Dillon, Tom Fairnie, Mark Barnett, Nancy Somerville and Jane Fairnie. Shore Poet ANDREW PHILIP Dutch singer songwriter BERNARD BROGUE, a superb songwriter and guitarist who will play an extended spot on what will…
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The Competition Commission has finally cleared HMV’s bid for Ottakar’s. Now tell me, how is it not lessening competition for HMV, which owns Waterstones, to buy Ottakar’s? In central Edinburgh, there are already three Waterstones stores and only one Ottakar’s store. The only other sizeable bookshop is Blackwells, and that company is in financial trouble…
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Heavens, Edinburgh is home to more festivals that you can shake a wad of tickets at! This one was brought to my attention by fellow Shore poet Nancy Somerville. I might be reading on the Monday night in the–ahem–Foakie Doakies event, but that’s still to be confirmed. That’s this Monday coming, by the way.
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and yt ys here.
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I’ve been dipping in and out of Geoffrey Hill‘s new book, Without Title, lately. It’s not his most immediately captivating work, but there are flashes of the Hill brilliance here and there throughout. Hill is one of those poets considered difficult. I’m not about to deny that his work is dense and challenging, but I…
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What would happen if, instead of constantly asking about the use of art, our society began to ask itself seriously about the art of use?
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The Debut Authors Festival now has its programme online. The organisers say the lack of poets this year is down to a lack of debut poets. All the more disappointing, then, that participation in the unpublished writers jam session is open to prose writers only.
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The City of Edinburgh Council’s 2006 Festival of Scottish Writing begins this weekend. Don’t think I’ll manage to get to much, if any, of it. It’s a varied line-up. There are a few Gaelic events on the programme, but I didn’t notice any specifically Scots-language events. There ought to be one or two at least.…
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Cambridge-based publisher Salt has created a bulletin board brimming with literary news and virtual space to exchange useful and interesting information. At the moment, the focus in the news sections is on Salt publications, but that’s only because the main people to have posted so far are Salt. Anyone can sign up and post. Looks…
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Roddy Lumsden has reviewed HappenStance and its publications for his blog on the Books from Scotland site. This is what he has to say about Tonguefire: My favourite of the bunch is Andrew Philip’s Tonguefire, a selection of careful, image-heavy lyric pieces dealing with the domestic and the numinous. I first encountered Philip, who now…
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A Rough Guide to Monday MorningBee PurpleFor Broken or Worse (sequence)Hairst Day (Scots translation of Rilke’s “Herbsttag”)Man With a Dove on His HeadThe Image of Gold and the Fiery FurnaceWaiting for the Rains to Come
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Here is Anna Crowe’s review of Tonguefire in issue 2 of Sphinx (the “Common Reader” comment is a feature of the magazine): What strikes the reader at once, reading Andrew Philip’s collection Tonguefire (with stylishly emblematic cover), is the sheer energy and power of these poems. The writing is muscular, urgent and assured, offering a…
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Just received an e-mail with the programme for this year’s Debut Authors Festival at the Traverse Theatre, 2nd to 4th June. Last year, there was a single event dedicated to poetry, with Matthew Hollis, Jacob Polley and Choman Hardi, chaired by Don Paterson; this year, the sole poet on the bill is Helen Farish, appearing…
Amy Jo Philip 