poetry
-
The visit to Orkney with the Shore Poets exchange in October is beginning to shape up. It looks like it will involve one reading–on Saturday 13th along with Christine De Luca and local writers in the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness–and at least one school visit the previous day. There might be other visits to schools…
-
Readers of Rob A Mackenzie’s blog Surroundings might recall a comments thread a while back about the idea of a Nov 4th reading with Roddy Lumsden, AB Jackson, Rob and myself. Well, the gig is confirmed. It should make for a good night, though I expect I’ll be frazzled by the end, what with it…
-
I’ve been thinking about the way that I and other writers use the pronoun you in poems and realising how strong an antipathy I have to its being used to stand in for the first person. I’m not talking about the colloquial use of you as a replacement for the often bothersomely formal impersonal pronoun…
-
If you’ve been following my and Rob A Mackenzie‘s posts about our manuscript swap, you’ll probably be waiting for the more detailed comments I promised on Rob’s poems*, so here they finally are. There’s a lot of very good stuff in Rob’s MS, with a few really fine poems. Think of Rob A Mackenzie, and…
-
A quick update: Jennifer Williams will now be reading with me at the Linlithgow Folk Festival gig. I’m also trying to organise some music for it, but that’s not confirmed as yet.
-
I now have an entry on Poetcasting. Click here to go to the page and play or download MP3s of me reading “The Invention of Zero”, “To Bake the Bread” and “Tonguefire Night” as well as my Scots translation of Rilke’s “Der Panther”. It’s a long time since I heard myself reading my work, and…
-
Readers of this blog and Rob Mackenzie’s might remember the reading that we did last year in Linlithgow as part of the Celebrate Linlithgow! arts festival. This year, I’m reading as part of the town’s longest running festival: the Linlithgow Folk Festival. At the moment, it looks like I have the bill to myself, despite…
-
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…
-
I have it: a draft collection-length manuscript with an order I think works! Now to garner a few second opinions before I start seriously thinking about what to do with it. Rob Mackenzie and I will be swapping back on Monday, so I’m looking forward to reading his comments on my work.
-
I’m planning to take part in the Scottish Poetry Library’s courtyard readings tomorrow, Monday and probably Tuesday. Like all open sessions, they can be extremely hit and miss but they’re good fun and an interesting opportunity to read to an often entirely new audience. It’ll be a good opportunity to plug Postscript as well.
-
It’s August, there’s a downpour a day and Edinburgh has brigadooned into the Radio 4 consciousness once again. Must be festival time. Of course, by “festival” I mean not only the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, but the Festival of Spirituality and…
-
Wednesday’s interview for the Scottish Book Trust mentoring scheme seemed to go well, but I’m not really one to read aright the entrails of a 40-minute chat with two strangers, so who knows what the outcome will be? Two SBT staff grilled me in the nicest manner possible about my “project”, my expectations of being…
-
I’m off to a course with Matthew Hollis and Colette Bryce at the Lumb Bank Arvon centre tomorrow, so this online tongue will stop wagging for the next five or six days at least. Still, there’s a reasonably amount for you to enjoy in the virtual cupboard under the stairs. It should be a fun…
-
As you’ll know if you’re a regular visitor to these virtual parts, Rob A Mackenzie and I swapped manuscripts nearly a fortnight ago. I’ve had a read-through of Rob’s MS and will comment properly on it in due course, but suffice to say for the moment that it’s very good and a lot of fun…
-
In the absence of the inclination or opportunity to say anything else at this moment, due to a bout of summer indolence, I’ll highlight a couple of additions to Tonguefire: A list of the poems of mine that are published online. A poll on the Forward best collection prize shortlist (top of the sidebar). Additions…
Amy Jo Philip 