festivals
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My workshop at the 2nd Annual Merchant City Festival Writing, Literature and Cultural Conference* is set for 2:15 pm. Details are below; you can view the full programme at the link above. 2:15pm – 3:30pm, Fressh Cafe and Coffee Shop Cooking in the kitchen: ANDREW PHILIP, author of the collection The Ambulance Box, Highly Commended by
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Oscar’s in the air this weather: from Katy Evans-Bush’s poems about him and Henry James, through her post the other day about his poetry criticism* and, of course, the new film of The Picture of Dorian Gray to the theme Merchant City Festival writers conference, taken from an essay of his, “The Decay of Lying”.
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Blackwell’s on Thursday was a good night. A really varied bunch of perfomers — poetry, fiction, non-fiction and folk music — in a great venue, despite the traffic noise. It was a good audience, too. Heartening to see a mix of kent faces and new. Good on the bookshop for putting on such a good
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Anyone who has read David Gaffney‘s hilarious, dark, moving and imaginative collection of micro fiction Sawn-Off Tales or who enjoyed his sawn-off operas on The Verb a while back will doubtless want to check out his Fringe show, I reckon. Click the flyer image to go to the Fringe web page for the show. ‘Office
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Family circumstances mean I’m almost absent from Edinburgh this festival season, but I’ll be reading at Blackwell’s Writers at the Fringe on Thurs 20th. Rob A Mackenzie is reading there tomorrow night. There are, of course, numerous literary events going on in Edinburgh this month. I hope that I might manage to hear one of
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I’ll be busy on Saturday: besides the Word Power reading (see the post below), I’ll be popping up along with Rob A Mackenzie at the thePROJECT2. Twice, in fact: 2 pm at the Lot and 7:30 pm at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar. Booking information here. It’s a varied and interesting programme. thePROJECT is an exploration
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StAnza seems so long ago now that it’s almost hardly worth reporting any more on it, but there are a couple of things don’t want to slide into the dim and distant without comment. First and foremost of those is Roddy Lumsden’s reading. I’ve known Roddy since I was a student, since before he published
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My first event on the Saturday at StAnza was Bill Manhire’s masterclass: a one-off workshop with six writers selected from among a batch of submissions plus an audience. I was in the audience, not having submitted anything. Manhire was warm and engaging while still being quite thorough. As he pointed out, there was no time
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An oddity of this year’s StAnza is that one of the most defining events for me was something I wasn’t at. I refer, of course, to the poetry breakfast on the Friday, on the topic “Where are all the Scottish poets under 40?” I was dying to hear about it and asked one or two
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St Andrews was bathed in glorious sunshine this weekend past for StAnza, even if there was a bit of a chill to the wind. It certainly brought to mind Alastair Reid’s “Scotland”, famously burnt by the man himself two years ago. Reid was there in spirit, as you can hear in the podcast exerpt of
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A brief note on my plans for StAnza this year. I’ll not manage to get through until the Friday evening. That means I’ll miss the poetry breakfast on the relative absence of young Scottish poets. I have a ticket for the Bill Manhire and Simon Armitage reading, but I’m not certain I’ll make it through
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That’s got to have been the best wee festival in the world we had the weekend before last. What a cracker LBF 08 was! Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish Government education secretary and a Lithgae resident, launched the festival and christened our new participants autograph book. She stayed around for Christopher Brookmyre‘s sell-out event. There was
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A busy weekend ahead with this year’s Linlithgow Book Festival kicking off on Friday. I’m particularly looking forward to the workshop I’m running and to Alistair Findlay’s reading on Sunday. Alistair is one of Scotland’s sharpest voices and a hugely entertaining reader. He’s an unusually political writer for this era and can be a bitingly
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Busy busy busy at the moment here. It’s good busy, though. I’ve proofed my proofs, sent ’em back and had author photos taken for the book (of which more in due course); I’m gearing up for Linlithgow Book Festival and this month’s various readings; and I’m working on a Scots language writing project in the
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Here is the full information for my reading tomorrow at the Four Hour Festival: Venue: Evolution Cafe, Evolution House. This is the entrance to eca on the West Port. It’s a big glass building right on the corner of the crossroads, apparently. Time: I’m on at 3pm. The event starts at 1pm with Shore Poet
Amy Jo Philip 