For our October event, we’re delighted to present readings from new collections by Edinburgh-based poets Alan Gillis and Medha Singh. And since, like our season opener, this event is taking place a week earlier than is usual for the Shores, on the penultimate Thursday of the month, you don’t have to face the dilemma of making a call between bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins etc., and sashaying behind The Waverley’s big velvet curtain for your monthly fix of poetry and live music! Leave off stitching trick-or-treat costumes and hacking at swedes and squashes for a spell (no pun intended) and join us for a great evening’s craic … We can’t promise you a broom to get home on, the company of a feline familiar, or even a supermoon – but we can absolutely promise that you won’t regret coming along. Also featuring open mic performances and music from house band, Dekoy 👻🦇🎃🧙♀️
The When & the Where:
Thursday 23rd October 2025
7.15pm – 9pm (doors open 7pm)
The Waverley Bar, 3-5 St Mary’s St, Edinburgh EH1 1TA
Admission: Our standard entrance charges are £7.50 (waged) and £5 (concession). This includes one raffle ticket, which will also be your receipt of entry. For those keen to increase their chances of a raffle win, we’ve also introduced a Golden Ticket: at £10, this covers entry plus five raffle tickets. Entry is payable by either card or cash, but it’s worth bringing the latter so as not to miss the opportunity to buy a book from one of our readers.
The Readers:
ALAN GILLIS
Over Here is Alan Gillis’s sixth poetry collection, newly published by The Gallery Press. It follows The Readiness, published by Picador in 2020, and four earlier books from The Gallery Press. He has previously been nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now award, won an award for best first collection in Ireland, and been named a ‘Next Generation Poet’. As critic he is editor of The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Paul Muldoon. He is also the author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s, and was editor of Edinburgh Review for several years. He is Professor of Modern Poetry at The University of Edinburgh.
MEDHA SINGH
Medha Singh is an award-winning poet based in Edinburgh. She has published widely across India and the UK. Her work has appeared in anthologies released by Penguin, Harper Collins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster. Her book Afterbody was released in 2025 through Blue Diode Press, and she won the New Writers Award conferred by the Scottish Book trust, a program through which she won a mentorship by Don Paterson, who trained her in form, diction, style. She completed her MSc in Creative writing at the University of Edinburgh. Singh functions as Editor-at-large at Pen and Anvil Press, Boston. She’s currently working on a novel.
Signing up for the Open Mic:
We have four open mic spots each month. These are booked in advance. To request an open mic spot in the future, please email us at shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com (remove the spaces)
The Raffle:
Entry includes a raffle ticket; additional tickets are also available to buy when you arrive, should you wish to increase your chances of winning this month’s scrummy lemon cake. Or you can boost the odds of snaffling that piece of home-baked glory by purchasing one of our Golden Tickets (further details above, under ‘The When & the Where’). The raffle also frequently boasts other no less wonderful but definitely less edible prizes, in the form of pamphlets or books.
See you there!
Shore Poets 
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