If anyone happens to be near enough to Edinburgh, our new season begins at
the end of the month and I thought I’d drop you folks a note about it. We
get under way on Sunday September 30th with readings from Polly Clark, Ian
McDonough, and Jilly Garnett.
Polly Clark is originally from Canada, though most of her formative years
were spent on one side of the Scottish border or the other. She is already a
much-decorated poet, having won the Eric Gregory prize in 1997, and her
second Bloodaxe collection, Take Me With You, being a Poetry Book Society
Choice shortlisted for the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the new Royal
Literary Fund Fellow in the department of continuing education at Edinburgh
University.
Jilly Garnett has been writing seriously for five years, after graduating
from Heriot-Watt in art and design. Her work has already appeared in several
anthologies, most recently the United Press anthology Waking Dreams (2006).
No word yet about music. All this takes off at the usual place and time:
Mai Thai cafe bar, The Tun, 111 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AE, September
30th @ 7.45pm.
Admission is still £2 with £1 concessions for the time being. We may well
need to change this soon, so hurry while stocks last (as the saying goes).
Next month, on October 28th, we have readings by Gillian Allnutt, Christine
De Luca, and James W. Wood.
Combining the cerebral intensity of her formative Cambridge milieu, the
metropolitan feminism of 1980s London, and the grounded reality of a
professional life spent mostly in Northumbria, Gillian Allnutt is one of the
outstanding poets of her generation. She has published several collections,
most recently How the Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2007).
Peter Forbes writes that ‘in its inwardness, its emblematic use of nature
and its intense spiritual quest, her poetry is in the line of Hopkins and
Geoffrey Hill. Her tone and verbal music is quite her own.’
James W. Wood’s poetry, articles and reviews have appeared in The Times
Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, Poetry Review, Scotland on Sunday
and a wide variety of other publications. He has published two chapbooks:
Swingtime (Southside Press) and The Theory of Everything (HappenStance
Press); another (Inextinguishable) is on its way.
Our own Christine De Luca is just back from Brittany, where the bilingual
edition of her Parallel Worlds (Mondes Parallèles, published in France by
editions fédérop, 2007) won the Poetry Prize at the 9th Salon International
du Livre Insulaire.
Best wishes
Peter Cudmore
Shore Poets www.shorepoets.org.uk <http://www.shorepoets.org.uk/>
Supported by SAC & Live Literature Scotland
|