Scottish poets
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A busy but doubtless exhilarating day awaits me tomorrow at Linlithgow Book Festival 2013. In the morning, I’m running a poetry workshop as I have done for the part several years. It’s at the Mel Gray centre at the canal basin from 10.30 to 12.30 and there are still some tickets available. In the afternoon,
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Don’t forget to join me, Michelle Bitting and host Robert Peake for the first ever Transatlantic Poetry on Air reading this evening at 8 pm UK time. The event page is here. There will also be prizes for those who tweet using the hashtag #TApoetry during the live broadcast.
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It must have been the summer of 1995, the summer following my first year at university. The book was Edwin Morgan’s Themes on a Variation, borrowed from the Scottish Poetry Library, which was still crammed into Tweeddale Court at the time. The beach was Cocklawburn near Berwick-upon-Tweed — a favourite of my family’s for heaven
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… to the person who came here searching for “Scottish poet + labyrinth” and variations thereon, the poet you’re looking for is most probably Edwin Muir.
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There was a goodly crowd for the Scottish Poetry Library‘s flash mob outside St Giles this lunchtime. It was fun! I saw several lovely people I wouldn’t normally see of a lunchtime and was interviewed by a journalist, though I probably wittered nonsense away at her. There’s a video on The Scotsman website with footage
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The entire poetry world is saddened to hear of Edwin Morgan’s death. I almost typed “the entire Scottish poetry world”, but Eddie Morgan was a true Scottish internationalist and his reach was global. Even that doesn’t sum him up. Morgan himself comes closest in the title of his collection From Glasgow to Saturn: from the
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Congratulations to Robert Crawford on winning the Saltire Society’s book of the year award and commiserations to my friend Alison Lang on not winning the first book award. News of the results is surprisingly hard to come by, with rather scant information in the BBC online report and naething ava on the Saltire Society’s own
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At last you can see me haver briefly about The Ambulance Box in the video that Jen Hamilton-Emery took before the Northern Salt reading at the Manchester Literature Festival. Here it is in all its autumnal Manucunian glory: Over at the Salt blog, you can also see new videos of Tony Williams (whose book was
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I didn’t want to sully my celebration of the wonderful news that Alison Lang has been shortlisted Saltire Society literary awards with this gripe, so I’ve held it over for today: where on earth are the poetry books on the shortlists? There’s Crawford’s biography of Burns, but that’s the closest we get. No Hunt in
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Yesterday, the winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize was announced as JO Morgan for Natural Mechanical. It’s a fine book and a deserving winner. A book-length narrative poem that so deftly handles shifts in time, perspective and voice would be an impressive achievement at any point in a poet’s writing life, but to produce
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The reason for the shortness of breathing space mentioned in the previous post was, of course, Linlithgow Book Festival. LBF is now in its fourth year and simply going from strength to strength. This year, I was nowhere near as involved in organising and running it as I was the previous two but, aside from
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Yes, it was a busy weekend. After the Golden Hour kneesings-up, it was off to Glasgow on Saturday for the Merchant City Festival writing conference. I wasn’t able to catch much of the event outside of my workshop and reading, but I did hear some of the panel discussion and contribute to the ensuing lively
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It was a week for anthologies last week, what with the Forward book arriving in the post and the launch of The Golden Hour Book Vol ii at Blackwell’s on South Bridge (the old James Thin shop, for those who remember that much-lamented Edinburgh institution of yore). The GH book is a triumph, I have to
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Despite holidaying in Eyemouth, on Thursday last week, I joined most of the other contributors* (inlcuding one of the translators) at the Italian Cultural Institute in Edinburgh to launch 5PX2: Five Italian Poets and Five Scottish Poets. The evening was slightly chaotic but enormous fun. A good-sized audience, too, for a Thursday in holiday time
Amy Jo Philip 