poetry
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The programme for StAnza 2007 is now available. It’s the 10th StAnza, and the line-up is a good ‘un. I’m particularly interested in hearing Jorie Graham, but I’m disappointed that the Eric Gregory Award showcase reading is at a time utterly inaccessible for me. However, I’m appearing in The Gathering: 100 poets reading a poem…
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The Spring programme for the Poetry Association of Scotland came through the door this morning. The blurb for my reading with Gerrie Fellows on 7 February proclaims us: “Two poets who describe the modern world with an ironic yet lyrical voice.” Other events in the season include a reading by Robert Crawford, Douglas Dunn lecturing…
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Just before Christmas, the Scottish Poetry Library asked whether I’d be willing to take on a commission for a new three-star metro hotel in Edinburgh, Ten Hill Place. The library and the hotel have put together a project to produce poetry postcards that will be left on the pillows at Ten Hill Place when guests…
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I like what Ruth Padel has to say about the so-called difficulty of poetry in her comment article last Saturday’s Guardian: Poetry, in other words, is not only good for you, and protects us against meaninglessness: by the pleasure it gives in its artifice, images and imagination, and in the little nudgy sensual relationships between…
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The Scottish Poetry Library’s third annual online choice of Scottish poems published in the past 12 months or so–Best Scottish Poems 2006–went live on St Andrew’s Day. As ever, it’s a highly inpidual choice by this year’s editor, Janice Galloway, as you can see if you compare it with the 2005 choice by Richard Price…
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This Christmas exhibition will include three poems of mine presented as a triptych. Readers of Tonguefire will be familiar with two of them–“His Wading Light” and “A Voice is Heard in Ramah”–but the third, which is called “Down Darkness Wide”, is new and takes a different view of the story. Interestingly, although the word triptych…
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Wednesday 7th February 2007, 7.30pm, Scottish Poetry Library with Gerrie Fellows for the Poetry Association of Scotland. Entry: £3 (£2 concessions) I’m very excited about this. I’ve been attending PAS readings since I was a student and have seen numerous fine poets read for the Association, so it’s a privilege to be booked by them.
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There was a good crowd in Mai Thai–the new Shore Poets venue–on Sunday night to hear Alan Hill, Jim C Wilson and Matthew Hollis. The readers strained a little bit to make themselves heard at the back, so I think we’ll might be using a small PA in future. Nonetheless, it was a good reading.…
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I’ve just had a poem accepted by The SHOp, a beautifully produced Irish magazine. The poem, “In Praise of Dust”, should be published sometime in the next 12 months. I’ve also been meaning to mention that Lallans recently accepted four poems in Scots, one of which is a translation of Rilke’s “Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes.” I’m…
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Rilke has been a significant figure for me for a while, although there’s much of his work I’ve yet to read. When I lived in Berlin in the early 1990s, a friend gave me his collected poems in German for Chirstmas. The same friend later gave me the Letters to a Young Poet (in English,…
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David Kinloch now has a website. It’s pretty easy to navigate and contains poems, essays, an interview with David, reviews, translations, news and other information. Worth looking at if you’re interested in his work.
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The shortlist for this year’s Arvon poetry competition is out. I entered, but didn’t get anywhere. However, Siriol Troup, who read alongside me at StAnza this year, is on the shortlist. Gaun yersel, Siriol!
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I headed to Dumfries yesterday for the second of my two New Voice events with the Scottish Poetry Library. Lilias Fraser from the Library and I took the train to Lockerbie–a very civilised Virgin conveyance–where we were picked by Andrew Forster, who took us to the venue at Crichton Campus via a pretty decent coffee…
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On Saturday night, the Shore Poets celebrated Stewart Conn‘s 70th birthday at the Counting House in Edinburgh. The evening, which was open to the public and more or less sold out with various bodies from the poetry world, involved readings from a number of poets whom Stewart admires and counts among his friends, including Anne…
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Went to hear the fine Gaelic poet, publisher and scholar Derick Thomson (or Ruaraidh MacThomais in Gaelic) read on Wednesday at the usual haunt. The audience was far smaller than that for Sharon Olds. That, I suppose, is predictable, but it’s also a poor reflection on the knowledge of the poetry-reading public in Edinburgh. Gaelic…
Amy Jo Philip 