Poetry

Sex in the 21st century - Alternative Valentine’s

5 Feb 2009

‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for …?’ Some of the most romantic words ever written have come via the medium of song, so why not throw caution to the wind, and go all Sonny and Cher this February. Book you and yours into a recording studio for an hour…

Aoife Mannix & Raymond MacDonald - Other Voices

5 Feb 2009

JAZZ/POETRY Jazz and poetry has a lengthy if often problematic history of interaction, and remains a specialised taste. This collaboration between Irish poet and Glasgow saxophonist originated by accident. The two were brought together for an…

Scotland The Great - Nine Inch Will Please a Lady

22 Jan 2009

The Burnsian band I am in, with Malcolm Ross and my brother Russel, The Bum-Clocks, has a version of ‘Nine Inch’, a witty ditty in celebration of quantity. We usually locate it in our mash-up of the poetry of Burns and Iggy Pop which kicks off with ‘A…

Robert Burns: Rampant Robbie

1 Dec 2008

Seducer, sex machine, womaniser, charmer, bragger and a bit of a bastard. Scotland’s national poet, Rabbie Burns, was a loose-limbed man with one hell of a sex drive. His love life reads like something from a daytime TV show. There are illegitimate…

United Press poetry competition

27 Nov 2008

Poets are being asked to lift their pens in a bid to pocket a £1000 prize, as part of an initiative by United Press. ‘It’s free to enter, and the aim of the competition is to encourage more people to try writing poetry,’ said Peter Quinn, managing…

Laura Dockrill - Mistakes in the Background

30 Oct 2008

The emergence of a sassy-tongued poet who can relate to the yoof should be a good thing. And Laura Dockrill, aka MC Dockers, truly does seem to be articulating, in her unaffected, unchecked, stream of consciousness way, the existence of the Facebook…

Lemn Sissay - Listener

16 Oct 2008

POETRY COLLECTION Lemn Sissay’s latest poetry collection is not exciting fare. The main problem is that it simply lacks freshness with little that is striking or exceptional, largely because he borrows so heavily from idiom, cliché, and adage. There…

Hispanic Festival

16 Oct 2008

Delude yourself into thinking that there was actually a summer this year with the sun-drenched programme of this year's Hispanic Festival. Sweaty samba clubs, civilised poetry readings and a chance to learn flamenco. Various venues in Edinburgh, Thu…

Licence Pending

4 Sep 2008

Drew Taylor, compere and promoter of the Tron’s Licence Pending night, is outlining the ideas behind the event when he stops and checks himself. He’s just used the words ‘performance poetry industry’ and he feels the urge to add the caveat ‘if you can…

Simon Armitage

Pop poet turns wordy rock star

21 Aug 2008

Simon Armitage is a very modern poet, as happy to ruminate over Arctic Monkeys’ lyrics as he is to translate 14th century romantic poetry. During the 15 years since he handed in his notice as a probation officer to concentrate fully on his writing, he’s…

Kevin Williamson

Writing poetry on the run

14 Aug 2008

‘Rebel Inc involved a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion,’ says Kevin Williamson, founder of the one-time cult Edinburgh imprint. ‘And I can tell you that my days as a publisher are definitely over. I gave it all I could for ten years and wouldn’t go…

Afr-I-Can

17 Jul 2008

Running between June and September, Afr-I-can is a loose series of events, talks, workshops and concerts led by artists of African origin and celebrating African achievement. Although the events are mainly aimed at families of African and Caribbean…

Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce - In Person: 30 Poets

22 May 2008

POETRY DVD/BOOK (Bloodaxe) Tucked inside the book of the same name comes a smart pair of DVDs which platform the depth and range which poetry publisher Bloodaxe have been offering us for three decades. In Person is a celebration of the intimacy that…

Glasgow Subway Festival

10 Apr 2008

The weather might, finally, be on the upswing, but underground at the Clockwork Orange they’re praying for rain. The first ever Glasgow Subway festival is set to launch on Thursday 10 April, with a packed out programme of events, underground in the…

Patience Agbabi - Bloodshot Monochrome

10 Apr 2008

POETRY ANTHOLOGY (Canongate) There’s definitely something about the label ‘radical feminist bisexual performance poet’ that conjures up images of a woman with multiple axes to grind. Luckily, Patience Agbabi, a former Eton writer-in-residence and…

From Saturn to Glasgow: a celebration of Edwin Morgan

28 Feb 2008

POETRY EVENT Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Sun 9 Mar While the guid folk of Edinburgh are enjoying Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this year’s Glasgow City Read focuses on a new poetry collection, From Saturn to Glasgow: Fifty Favourite Poems by Edwin…

Burnsong - Songhouse

29 Nov 2007

When it comes to songwriting, only the brave or the stupid would be prepared to take him on. In just a couple of decades Robert Burns wrote over 360 songs that cover the whole gamut of human emotion from love and lust to loss and longing. Weighty issues…

Alistair Findlay (ED) - 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems

29 Nov 2007

POETRY 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems (Luath) When it comes to transferring the beautiful game into the arts sphere, all we can see is a litany of own goals. Can you remember a half-decent football film? No, Escape to Victory doesn’t count…

On the Buses

29 Nov 2007

In the run up to International Human Rights Day on Monday 10 December, Edinburgh and Glasgow bus passengers just need to look up to do their bit. After a series of workshops run by Oxfam Scotland and the Scottish Poetry Library, five poems written by…

Why Scotland's writers are talking about Glasgow's sidestreets

4 Oct 2007

Think about the route you take to work every day. Between worrying about the day ahead, checking for your train pass, sorting your hair and laughing at last night’s jokes, how aware are you, actually, of your surroundings? There are spaces like this in…

O’Brien wins Forward Prize for Poetry a third time

4 Oct 2007

The Forward Prize for Poetry has been awarded to Sean O’Brien for his work The Drowned Book. It marks the first time the £10,000 prize has been won three times by one person, with O’Brien also named winner in 1995 and 2001. Chair of the judging…

Dylan lyrics to be studied in schools

7 Sep 2007

Bob Dylan will feature in the curriculum for students in schools across the UK, with the musician’s lyrics to be studied as part of National Poetry Day. Pupils are expected to dissect I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and Three…

Murray Lachlan Young

23 Aug 2007

When only one person in his audience (a polite reviewer) applauds a less than blazing entrance, Murray Lachlan Young positions himself somewhere between crestfallen and carefree. It’s a decade since he was propelled into mini-celebrity status for just…

How to make it

16 Aug 2007

Talent. Britain has it, apparently. The airwaves are clogged up with fat, snaking queues of wannabes who want nothing in life so much as the chance to perform an acapella version of Rihanna’s Umbrella to a sneering celebrity panel. We’re in an age where…

Daljit Nagra

9 Aug 2007

Daljit Nagra is very popular with the pupils he teaches English to at a north-west London school. Not because he lets them off with throwing paper aeroplanes across the room or allows them to bunk off early, but because he has injected them with a love…

Modern Cautionary Tales for Children

9 Aug 2007

From the moment Murray Lachlan Young bounds onto the stage, hair wrapped in a towel, dressing gown flapping, you know you’re in for a good time. Young is clearly one of the most likeable performers not just at the Fringe, but in the world. His poetry…

Emergence - See!

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

It’s hard to know which is more inspiring about Daniel Beaty – his own story, or the one he tells. The young African American poet and performer was plucked from impoverished obscurity in the third grade of primary school, where his essay about…

Records - Various - Ballads of the Book

Various

13 Mar 2007

POETRY POP Of course, just because dozens of the county’s finest bands and authors have collaborated on this album, doesn’t guarantee it’s going to be any good. But thankfully it is, it’s really very good indeed. The end product is unsurprisingly…

Edwin Morgan

A Book of Lives (Carcanet)

12 Mar 2007

POETRY COLLECTION Every so often, a collection of poems comes along which warrants closing the door, leaving emails unopened and the phone unanswered to read it from cover to cover. A Book of Lives is one such publication. As Scotland’s Makar, it’s…

A less traditional Burns Night

Getting fou and unco happy

12 Jan 2007

1 Wi’ sangs an’ clatter It’s pure coincidence that Edinburgh’s Big Word performance poetry evening falls on 25 January but when organiser Jenny Lindsay realised the date, she decided to make the most of it.

Daljit Nagra

Look We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber)

12 Jan 2007

POETRY COLLECTION Daljit Nagra’s parents moved from the Punjab to Britain in the 1950s and it’s no real surprise that his poetry should be knitted together from bits of his cultural heritage and present environment. So, in the opener ‘Darling & Me!…

Patti Smith - Auguries of Innocent

Patti Smith

7 Dec 2006

POETRY In the recent Punk Night documentary on ITV4, John Lydon was being characteristically, boringly dismissive of the New York acts (Ramones, Television, Patti Smith) who arrived as the British wave exploded. They were just too educated, too…

Word Order: Concrete Poetry and its Influence

The Changing Room, Stirling, until Sat 21 Oct

28 Sep 2006

SCULPTURE, INSTALLATION AND PRINT Although the main space is minimal, the Scottish poet Alec Finlay’s playful wall works adds gusto to Stirling’s Changing Room. Welcoming us to the exhibition is ‘Loop’ (2006), cut out letters spelling the title four…