poetry
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Sleepers. A fine idea if you can book a berth but a complete misnomer if cash and demand force you into a recliner (read “seat that hardly moves back”) for the eight-hour journey. And my seat on the way down to London was the worst possible option: right next to the door to the toilet…
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Sorlil has very kindly reviewed my sampler on her blog. As far as I know, it’s the first review of this pamphlet and I’m very pleased with what she has to say about it. She comments: “These poems are unlike most of the poems I read these days, there is something very different and at…
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As other bloggers have already noted, Angus Calder has died. I can’t claim to have known him well, but he was a kenspeckle character on the Edinburgh poetry scene and a fine writer. I have clear memories of him reading “Deer on the High Hills” at an event to celebrate Iain Crichton Smith and of…
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The audience for Sunday’s Shore Poets was a little thinner than usual, possibly because of the holiday weekend. Music was provided by Just Voices, a four-part acapella group, who treated us to French, Bulgarian, Scots and American songs. Beautiful stuff. Stephanie Green kicked off the poetry in the newcomer slot. I’ve seen Stephanie around the…
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Andrew Philip: A Sampler came through the post today, 12 author copies of a slim, simple and elegant pamphlet–slightly to my surprise, as I wasn’t expecting to see it before the Troubadour reading. And a lovely surprise, too: Helena Nelson has, naturally, done a fantastic job on it and it feels beautiful in the hand.…
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The final poem in the pre-Troubadour series is by Helena Nelson, founder and editor of HappenStance press. It is very much in the spirit of her wonderfully quirky and deliciously, irreverantly playful pamphlet Unsuitable Poems. LikeI was like Read this poemHe was like You must be jokingI was like PleeeeaseHe was like Fancy a drink?…
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Originally, I wasn’t going to post one of my own poems in this series, but I’ve changed my mind and am posting a piece from Tonguefire that hasn’t appeared anywhere else. Pedestrian Someone was standing in the middle of the road.She stood astride it, just beyondthe blind spot on a sharp, countryside bend,so hidden that…
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Martin Cook’s life has included soldiering, tea planting, advertising, marketing and social work–the kind of CV that once was almost de rigeur for a poet. His pamphlet, Mackerel Wrappers, was published in 2007. FallingAfter Chagall’s Los Novios del la Torre Eiffel We should never have climbed that phallus.We were, after all, Brits and when you…
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Not having been out in Glasgow for absolutely ages–possibly not since I read at Tchai Ovna west end in 2006, unless you count the Mitchell event Helena Nelson and I did with the Scottish Poetry Library–I really enjoyed heading west to join the audience for the reading at Tchai Ovna southside on Friday night. I…
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Eleanor Livingstone is artistic director of the StAnza poetry festival. Her chapbook, The Last King of Fife, from which “The Monimail Spider” is taken, was published by HappenStance in 2005. More recently, she edited Migraasje, migration o words, a pamphlet of Scots and Shetlandic versions of Frisian poems, published to accompany the reading by Frisian…
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Gregory Leadbetter has been an environmental lawyer, worked in TV production and written TV drama; he is currently researching Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His pamphlet, The Body in the Well, was published by HappenStance in 2007. The ScientistAll this talk travels years ahead of him,a laughing gas in the air-conditioningat the Royal Society and the British…
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I’ve often thought that I would have arrived a little more as a writer if my publications were to pop up in a second-hand bookshop or a charity shop. Not that it wouldn’t be a double-edged feeling, but I always assumed I’d take pleasure in it, knowing how many books I’ve found in such outlets.…
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Interesting short post about Christianity and poetry on Todd Swift’s blog Eyewear. Swift says: Christian poetry, in Britain, has become nearly as invisible as God – partially due, no doubt, to the fear on the part of would-be practitioners of such verse, that such discourse would lead away from the irony, or ambiguity, expected (or…
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DA Prince was born in Leicestershire of Welsh parents in 1947. Her book, Nearly the Happy Hour, published this month, is the first full-length collection from HappenStance. What time is it, Mr Wolf? Mr Wolf has eyes creased tight, his fistsballed into dumplings, concentratingon the rules. Today he’s learned thistles,a difficult door-handle, excuse me,crackle of…
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Tom Duddy teaches philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is the author of of A History of Irish Thought (2002). His first collection of poems, a chapbook entitled The Small Hours, was published by HappenStance in 2006. Side Street I don’t often pass through this part of the city,though it’s on my…
Amy Jo Philip 