Rob A Mackenzie
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After the success of Thursday’s Mirrorball launch, I’m very much looking forward to the launch for Rob A Mackenzie‘s book and mine on Wednesday at the Scottish Poetry Library. It’ll be a bigger affair than Mirrorball, I suspect. There’ll be wine and crisps (oooh, the extravagence!), and both of us will read. I’ve not yet
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Thursday’s reading at St Mungo’s Mirrorball with Rob A Mackenzie and performance poet Robin Cairns was a good night. As usual, Mr Mackenzie has got in ahead of me and blogged about it already. As he says, it was a varied evening but the audience was happy to switch mood and style along with each
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As a further celebration of the Appointed Day for Rob A Mackenzie and me, here’s a poem from Rob’s collection, The Opposite of Cabbage, originally published in Seam: Nuclear Submarines One day they will surely betray me.For now, they seem content to drowse resolutely without wit or purposelike autistic sharks ballooning through seaweed, rock and
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The day has come! Today, 1 March 2009, is the official publication date for The Ambulance Box and Rob A Mackenzie‘s marvellous book, The Opposite of Cabbage. To celebrate, here’s the title poem from my collection: The Ambulance Box No one can swear how it fellinto our hands. No one can fathom its substance or
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The Month of Book Launches is nearly upon me! First up is a triple launch: myself, fellow Scottish Salter Rob A Mackenzie and performance poet Robin Cairns. An eclectic mix, hosted by St Mungo’s Mirrorball in Glasgow. If you’re in the vicinity, come along. The reading is free, and there will be books to buy.
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Just spotted that Rob A Mackenzie’s The Opposite of Cabbage and my collection The Ambulance Box are both now on the front page of the Salt website. Rob is beneath Keats, and I’m under Vincent De Souza. Rob also has his first review, at the blog of Tony Williams, whose collection is due out from
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It’s fairly pointless to say this, as it’s blindingly obvious, but I’ve added the cover image for The Ambulance Box to the sidebar. Apparently, the collection is also one of several Salt books to feature in a back-page ad in the latest issue of the LRB!* I haven’t seen it yet as Linlithgow shops don’t
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I was jealous that Rob Mackenzie had got his books yesterday, so I just had to get up early this morning and zip down to the postal depot to pick up my author copies of The Ambulance Box, which the postman had failed to leave in our designated “safe place” yesterday. I wasn’t quite banging
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A quick update on the progress of The Ambulance Box: the book went to press on Friday! I can tell you, that was an exciting moment. It was made even better by the fact that I shared it with Rob A Mackenzie, whose collection The Opposite of Cabbage was sent to press at the same
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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 —
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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
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Mick Imlah, Kathryn Simmonds and Don Paterson. No real surprise on the main Forward prize and possibly not an enormous surprise on the best poem prize, but Kathyrn Simmonds’s win in the best first collection category seems to have been unexpected. To be honest, I can’t really comment, not having read any of the winners
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Busy busy busy at the moment here. It’s good busy, though. I’ve proofed my proofs, sent ’em back and had author photos taken for the book (of which more in due course); I’m gearing up for Linlithgow Book Festival and this month’s various readings; and I’m working on a Scots language writing project in the
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Fantastic news: my friend, fellow HappenStancer and fine poetry blogger Rob A Mackenzie has had his manuscript accepted by Salt to be published some time next year. The book (provisionally entitled The Opposite of Cabbage after a line in one of the poems–can’t accuse him of having a dull title!), is really strong and will
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The first issue of the new Salt webzine Horizon Review, edited by Jane Holland, is now online. It includes one poem of mine, “On Your Arrival“, as well as two poems by Rob Mackenzie, and work by Katy Evans-Bush, George Szirtes and Alison Brackenbury to name only a few. There are also fiction, reviews and
Amy Jo Philip 