poetry
-
Just finished reading Alistair Findlay’s The Love Songs of John Knox, a sophisticated but hugely entertaining collection. It’s not often a book of poems has me chuckling aloud to myself almost every page. Even rarer is the collection I pass round colleagues at my day job to watch them chuckle and giggle aloud. Findlay takes…
-
My post on the back of part 1 of Yang-May Ooi’s interview with Rob Mackenzie is generating the most discussion yet on Tonguefire (still piddling by other blogs’ standards, I know). Katy Evans-Bush has reminded me that she addressed the same issues with Rob in an earlier interview for the e-zine Umbrella. Here’s the relevant…
-
It seems Matt Merritt will be recorded for Poetcasting at some point in the autumn. Alex Pryce, the brain behind the project, is planning a trip to Scotland in the summer and I’m hoping to be recorded. Perhaps HappenStance is poised for (virtual) world domination …
-
The next reading I have in the diary at the moment isn’t until October, but it’s one I’m particularly looking forward to. Pam Beasant, the first George Mackay Brown writing fellow, contacted Shore Poets convener, Christine De Luca early this year enquiring whether we would be interested in an exchange with some Orkney poets. We…
-
Rob Mackenzie has gone and got himself interviewed by Yang-May Ooi of FusionView. Part 1 of the piece is here. I was intrigued by the two following questions and answers: Is being Scottish a strong part of your identity? What does being Scottish mean to you? I’m not particularly nationalistic, until someone criticises Scotland. I…
-
Richard Dawson, musician of the month, provided a fine complement to the poetry, as on his previous Shore Poets appearances. In fact, to Richard goes the best rhyme of the evening: gregarious:areas. If I remember rightly, the lines were: “my pocketbook guide says they [bullfinches] are naturally gregarious; and found in cemeteries and heavily wooded…
-
Reading Kate Clanchy‘s Samarkand the other week, I spotted the word “rheumy” in two consecutive poems*. It stood out enough in the first as that unusual beast, a rare cliché**, but for it to be found twice in not only the same collection but in such close proximity struck me as a significant slip-up in…
-
(This post is in Gaelic* then English) Tha mi dìreach air làrach-lìn ùr mu bheatha is bhàrdachd Somhairle MacGill-Eain lorg a-mach. Tha mòran ann: dàin, eachdraidh-beatha, dealbhan, clàran is bhideo, is mapaichean. Chan eil facal Beurla ann idir ach anns na earrannan bhideo anns a’ bheil Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn neo Somhairle fhèin a’ bruidhinn…
-
Just got word that Kate Clanchy has had to cancel for Sunday due to bronchitis. Fortunately, we have managed to secure a last-minute replacement: Alastair Finlay, writer of Sex, Death and Football* and, more recently, The Love Songs of John Knox, both from Luath. The rest of the line-up and other arrangements remain as advertised.…
-
The programme for the the Debut Authors Festival 2007 came through the door this week. This year’s festival has a 100% increase on the 2006 poet count: there are two–namely Daljit Nagra and Annie Freud–but that’s still one down on 2005. Also as with last year, the poets are mainstreamed into the programme alongside the…
-
A little time to write today. I shouldn’t be spending it scribbling a note on the blog but I haven’t had enough mental space for poems to grow in since the baby was born, although I’ve had plenty feverishly paced thoughts about poetry, politics and various other matters. As a consequence, I’m facing the fear…
-
Salty ruminations on bad news from Bloodaxe. * Which come after Mark Ravenhill writes on arts funding vs sport funding in The Guardian. * Meanwhile, here’s a new poetry podcasting project. * And something else that could set poetry alight.
-
The previous post in this series examined the role of the onset in Wilfred Owen’s poetry. In this post, I’ll consider the subtle ways in which the onset participates in the rhyme scheme in a couple of poems by Simon Armitage. “Poem”Many contemporary poets exploit a wide variety of rhymes, often within a single poem.…
-
I’ve been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term “mainstream” in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it’s fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which…
-
Gists and Piths is a newish British poetry and poetics blogzine, which seems to lean towards the experimental. I haven’t read the poetry on the site, but I enjoyed “Some thoughts on the mainstream” and the review of Daljit Nagra‘s book (which I also haven’t read yet). Should be worth following this blog’s development.
Amy Jo Philip 