media
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A wee while back, I speculated about the preception and truth of poetry sales. This was before the BBC’s admirable poetry season and Salt‘s cash crisis. Now, today, courtesy of Matt Merritt, I found this article on the effect the Beeb’s tranche of programmes has had on poetry sales. Or, to be more precise, the
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Well, I almost was: the covers for The Ambulance Box, The Opposite of Cabbage and Ian Gregson’s How We Met filled the screen momentarily as a clip from Salt’s Just One Book video was played. Priceless advertising! Chris got a few seconds on the campaign, on which you can read the latest here. You can
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I’ve just discovered that Michael Russell, the Scottish minister with responsibility for culture, held a meeting with artists yesterday at the Traverse Theatre. This is important stuff for anyone involved or interested in Scotland’s cultural life. There’s a short video about the event here; it includes reactions to the meeting from Ron Butlin and Margaret
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Here’s all I have to say about this story: The Pax can belt a Mac at NightxxMiscaw wir Bard and aw thatBut critic’s care’s abuin his might;xxGuid faith, he mauna faw that!For aw that and aw that,xxHis sarky sneers and aw that,The pith o sense and pride o worthxxAre higher ranks than aw that. Meanwhile,
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Just discovered this page of interview excerpts from a small gathering of big-name poets. It’s something of a mixed bunch to my eye (no great fan of Betjeman, me), but it looks worth investigating and at least it’s pretty international. I’ll certainly be commenting on Walcott‘s remarks on rhyme at some point once I’ve digested
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I’ve only ever got hooked on two–ahem–reality TV shows: Musicality and Masterchef. Both, of course, are basically talent shows with a reality TV element injected into them. (Perhaps we could call them soft reality TV rather than the hard reality [sic] TV of, say, Big Brother. Who I’m not watching. Ever. Sorry.) Both also lack
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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
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It’s worth taking 10 minutes to listen to the interview with Fiona Sampson from Woman’s Hour last week, helpfully drawn to my attention by my wife. She has quite a few interesting nuggets to share about poetry and editing Poetry Review. It’s encouraging to hear that she reads all the roughly 60,000 unsolicited submissions that
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The shortleet for this year’s Forward prizes is out and I haven’t read a single book on it. No surprise there, as I don’t ever seem to keep well abreast of these lists. I don’t own any of the titles yet either, although John Burnside‘s Gift Songs should already be in the post from the
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The Sunday Herald has launched a campaign for a new Scottish Constitutional Convention. Is it just me, or has the result of the Scottish election breathed new life into Scottish politics, not only in itself but in how it relates to British politics?
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So the notion of a “Scottish Six” is back on the agenda, though probably not very far up it. I don’t know how far this is an intitiative of Pete Wishart‘s or of the wider SNP but, if a Scottish Six O’clock News comes into being, I suspect it won’t happen in a great hurry.
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Read this, by Eliot Weinberger, and weep. Then read this, also by Weinberger, and weep some more. Finally, read this, not by Weinberger, and smile grimly.
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After the horror of the photoshoot, we settled down to writing, with Ken first recording an introduction to the renga for the BBC Radio Scotland arts show Radio Cafe. Elspeth had to shuffle off for a live studio interview with them at lunchtime, but Richard and I were left voiceless on the airwaves. Participating in
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I am beginning to think that the necessary qualifications for working in PR and media relations must include a degree of–perhaps that should be “degree in”–Schadenfreude. It seems to me a truth universally ignored, at least by PR people, that the unfortunates who have to appear in quirky publicity shots are never the folk who
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Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the headline “Poets’ work to form basis of city literature collection” in my daily e-mail from The Scotsman and found it was a report of the poems on pillows commission! As you’ll see if you read the piece, they’ve got rather confused about what is being written when
Amy Jo Philip 