poetry
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Having just worked out how to embed content from Vimeo, I thought I’d post properly Alastair Cook‘s beautiful video for Jane McKie’s “La Plage“:
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It is, apparently, World Poetry Day, a fact that nearly passed me by until I saw it mentioned on Facebook by those marvellous folks from the Scottish Poetry Library. I, er, marked it by not managing to get to StAnza at all this year. Ho hum. Still, I did manage to read the WPD message…
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I have my time slot for the this collection McEwan Hall reading on Friday. There will be two stages in the main hall and two in the upper gallery. I’ll be reading on the right hand stage in the main hall at 8:00 pm for around 20 minutes. Also on that stage are Russell Jones,…
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At last I’m able to unzip my lips and announce that The Ambulance Box has been shortlisted for the first book category in the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards 2010! I’ve had to sit on the news for about a fortnight until the Scottish Arts Council, which administers the prize, made it public. I…
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I mentioned this collection in the previous post. Here‘s* a video from the project by Alastair Cook for Jane McKie‘s poem “La Plage”. (Lovely poem. I particularly like “They will rubbish quieter worship”.) *Can’t get it to embed, unfortunately.
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I’ll be reading a 20-minute set at the this collection showcase in the University of Edinburgh’s McEwan Hall on Friday 26th. The event is free and runs from 7 pm to 9 pm. McEwan hall is a rather grand place to be reading. I danced in there at many a ceilidh as a student and…
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Hard to believe The Ambulance Box was officially published a year ago today. A lot has happened in that time, personally and professionally. I’ve met some great people virtually and face to face, outsold Keats, been shortlisted for a significant poetry book prize, reviewed here and there and delighted to have seen the collection chosen…
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Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s Crashaw prize. Here at Tonguefire, the biggest whoop of all — and I tell, you readers, it is a decibelicious whoop indeed — is for the fact that Ryan Van Winkle is among their number.
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I’ve just watched one of the most quietly beautiful films I’ve seen: “Basil Bunting”, Peter Bell’s 1982 film portrait of the Northumbrian modernist master, which comes bundled along with the new Bloodaxe edition of Briggflatts. The tone reminded me in some ways of “Into Great Silence” for the way it concentrates the mind on the…
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Hidden Door is a brand new mini-festival of the arts that takes place at the end of this month. On 30 and 31 January, 30 bands, 40 artists, 10 poets and 10 film makers will take over the Roxy Art House in Edinburgh and transform the space with an art maze, hidden stages and innovative…
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To celebrate the fact that The Ambulance Box is now available in paperback (£9.99, but there’s 20% off at the Salt online shop, of course), here’s that wonderful track from The Beatles. The harmonies! The guitar riff! Is there a more exemplary pop song?
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And the first blogly act of 2010 is to congratulate all those shortlisted for Salt’s 2009 Crashaw Prize, not least Ryan Van Winkle, the reader in residence at the Scottish Poetry Library and one of those forces for the good of (Scottish) poetry hid away in the Forest. It is much deserved and I have…
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Congratulations to Robert Crawford on winning the Saltire Society’s book of the year award and commiserations to my friend Alison Lang on not winning the first book award. News of the results is surprisingly hard to come by, with rather scant information in the BBC online report and naething ava on the Saltire Society’s own…
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Ron Butlin, the current Edinburgh makar, has chosen The Ambulance Box as one of his books of the year in today’s Sunday Herald. (The piece doesn’t seem to be online so I can’t link to it.) Recommending it alongside Brian McCabe’s Zero, Tom Pow’s Dear Alice and Polly Clark’s intimate and powerful Farewell My Lovely,…
Amy Jo Philip 