music
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I should have written this post about a fortnight ago, but in my defence I was really under the weather until last week. Anyway, I was interviewed on Radio Scotland’s “Sunday Morning with Tony Kearney” on 3 November. They got in touch after hearing about Quirk!, the group I’ve started for LGBTQ+ folk at the
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It’s Pride month! Though this is obviously not my first Pride since coming out, it’s the first one I’ve marked in any way on the site. What better way to celebrate Pride than with poetry? Here are a few places you’ll find me over the next several weeks. First up, I’ll be reading a short
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Just a really quick update on the Marcella Althaus-Reid Spoken Word Theology Competition to say that I came second! The judges — playwright Jo Clifford, musician, theologian and URC minister Alex Clare-Young and poet Jay Hulme — chose Naomi Orrell’s “Antiphon for the Trans Body” as the winner and I have to say it was
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I’m just back through the door from a practice with Stewart Veitch and Frank Glynn — a.k.a. Holm — for Tuesday’s Hidden Door performance. It’s the first time we have tried out what we are planning to do for the gig and we are all really excited about how well the music and poetry are
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Hidden Door is back! This time, it’s a nine-day arts extravaganza featuring 40 bands, 70 artists, poetry, cinema, theatre and bars — yes bars plural — in the 24 disused vaults in Edinburgh’s Market St. It starts on Friday this week and runs until Saturday 5 April. I’m excited to be appearing on Day 5,
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A huge thankyou to everyone who came to the Linlithgow launch of The North End of the Possible last night. It was a great turnout and, from my and Holm’s point of view, an enormous success. Here are a few photos of the evening, courtesy of my good friend Thomas Ritchie: Stewart, Frank and I
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This morning was spent planning my sets for the Linlithgow launch of The North End of the Possible on Saturday this week. I’m excited about this event, because it’s not only a chance to give an extended reading from the book but to work with the violin and electric guitar duo Holm. It’s not just
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Poet and fiction writer Emma Lee tagged me in this internet meme. I’m answering about The North End of the Possible, as it is certainly the next big thing in my writing life! Where did the idea come from for the book? As I think is common with many poetry collections, the idea grew out
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Merry Christmas! I hope you’ve had a Christmas full of light, blessings and peace. I trust you haven’t eaten too much turkey (or whatever you dined on for Christmas day — some rather delicious pork in our case*). Equally well, I hope you’re not staring at a fridge full of leftovers for the next three
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Little did I know when I stepped on to the stage in Wigtown that it would lead to my appearing on Radio Scotland’s main Christmas morning broadcast. It just so happened that the producer of “Christmas Morning with Cathy MacDonald and Ricky Ross” was in the audience, not that I knew that until an e-mail
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Greenbelt 2011 was only my second experience of the festival and my first as a contributor but that’s easily enough to make me hanker more than ever after becoming a regular Greenbelter. I can think of nothing I wouldn’t classify as a highlight, although I know that sounds rather contradictory. The only possible exception is
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While song may share 99% of poetry’s DNA, it isn’t poetry, any more than, say, a chimpanzee is a bonobo. This, from Adam Newey reviewing Hard Ground, poems by Tom Waits, photographs by Michael O’Brien, in yesterday’s Guardian Review, strikes me as a shrewd snippet on the difference between song and poetry. (Newey has a
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When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be… I think I wanted to either be a poet, a priest, or a pianist. I decided by being a songwriter I could be all three at once. When I got serious about songwriting, it was the first time in my life that I
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There was a goodly crowd for the Scottish Poetry Library‘s flash mob outside St Giles this lunchtime. It was fun! I saw several lovely people I wouldn’t normally see of a lunchtime and was interviewed by a journalist, though I probably wittered nonsense away at her. There’s a video on The Scotsman website with footage
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It’s a busy one, week after next: not only will I be reading at the Salt gig on the Free Fringe, but I’ll be back at the Banshee Labyrinth on the Wednesday afternoon (2.50 pm to be precise) to read with Claire Askew, Sophie Cooke, Gavin Inglis, Jane McKie and Andrew Wilson as part of the
Amy Jo Philip 