poetry
-
Jings, as my dad might say, Jen Hadfield has won the TS Eliot! Andrew Motion describes her as “a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career”, an assessment with which I wouldn’t quibble*. Nigh-No-Place is certainly an interesting, stimulating, rich book. The prize must be an…
-
Mick Imlah, whose second book of poems, The Lost Leader, won the 2008 Forward prize for best collection and is shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, has died. He was only 52. Timor mortis conturbat me.
-
Rob Mackenzie has blogged about using personas and characters in his poetry. One of the points he discusses is the degree to which a reader is likely to equate the I of a poem written in the first person with the writer. Anyone who writes in a persona — anyone who writes, I suspect —…
-
The jacket for The Ambulance Box has been revised, so I’ve replaced the photo in the post below with the new version. Also, the PDF sample is now available.
-
Things are moving on apace with The Ambulance Box, folks. No sooner had I dispatched my second proofs, than third proofs and a first cover design appeared in my inbox. (Okay, I confess to a slight exaggeration there. There was a time lag of a few days.) The cover looks as fabulous as all those…
-
Ryan Van Winkle, the Scottish Poetry Library‘s reader in residence, has just produced the first SPL podcast. Check it out here.
-
It’s a good season for poetry on Radio 3. The Essay last week was deeply under the influence: five contemporary poets each on a poet who influenced them. I’d recommend in particular Michael Symmons Roberts on David Jones; WN Herbert on Edwin Morgan (don’t ask me what the picture of Eilean Donan castle is about!);…
-
That ever-stylish blogger and Salt poet Katy Evans-Bush embarks tomorrow on a virtual book tour to promote her collection Me and the Dead. The tour, entitled “A Conversation About Dreams” will include feature interviews, pictures, audio, poems, jokes and a few serious moments — everything you’d expect from an in-person book tour expect flesh-pressing signing…
-
For any Facebook user interested in contemporary literary publishing — especially writers who hope to be published — Chris Hamilton-Emery’s notes should be essential reading. They are a blog in the strictest sense, a log of daily ups and downs that gives a fascinating insight into the struggle of juggling family life and the heavy…
-
The Ambulance Box grows ever closer to becoming a reality. Chris at Salt and I have just settled on 1 March 2009 as the publication date. If that seems far away to you, as it does to some friends I talk to, it seems tantalisingly close to me! Speaking of Salt, Will Stone’s collection Glaciation…
-
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…
-
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…
-
It’s really been a week for new audiences. Wednesday morning was filled with meetings about a Scots language poetry project in Bo’ness Academy. They lasted longer than I anticipated and ended up running into the afternoon but some extremely useful and exciting stuff came out of them. The project gets going in earnest on Monday;…
-
Got back on Saturday from a much-needed family break in Northumberland, then it was off to St Andrews on Monday for my Inklight reading, stopping off en route in Edinburgh for lunch with fellow HappenStance poet James Wood. With a bit of time to kill between lunch and my train to Leuchars, I popped into…
-
This being national poetry day, it seems a good time to wave Salt‘s new poetry book club, The Poetry Bank, under your nose. If you like the look of the Salt lists, you’ll like this: From just £40 you can subscribe to Salt’s Poetry Bank for one year and receive the following benefits: Four luxury,…
Amy Jo Philip 