Once again, it’s our Open Night!

Sunday 25th November 2018
7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)
The Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY
Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Yes, it’s time for Shore Poets’ Open Night, where much of the event is handed over to up-and-coming poets. The signup period has closed, and we’ll be drawing names out of our poetry hat and contacting everyone in due course. (If you have any questions or need to snatch your name back out of the hat, please contact us at shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com.)

SHORE POET: IAN MCDONOUGH

Ian McDonough was brought up in Brora on the East Coast of Sutherland. He has published four collections of poetry, most recently A Witch Among the Gooseberries published by Mariscat in 2014. His work has appeared widely, including Poetry Review, Times Educational Supplement, Physics Review, New Writing Scotland and The Scotsman.  A member of Shore Poets, Ian lives in Edinburgh with his partner and daughter. When not writing he works as a mediator and trainer.

MUSICIANS: SIMMERDIM

Simmerdim is an Edinburgh-based a cappella trio; named after the long summer twilight in the far North of Scotland, when the sun briefly dips below the horizon and it’s never truly dark.  We sing mostly original arrangements of an eclectic mix of songs.  We’re currently working on a programme for house concerts; so if you have a big living room and want to fill it with a cappella music for an evening, here’s the website for more information:  http://simmerdim.weebly.com/

SHORE POETS RAFFLE

The raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. Place your bets for our famous Lemon Cake. It’s truly delicious. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

 Useful information:

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Before we get on to this month’s event, a word about Sunday 29th April, which is our Open Night. If you’re interested in reading at Shore Poets, then throw your name in the hat for a 5-minute reading by emailing shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com by the end of the day on Saturday 14th April. [Please don’t use any other email address or leave a comment on a social media platform.] We’ll draw names from that hat and also create a reserve list in case of dropouts.

But first we have the March event! We have three fantastic, varied poets. Please join us this Sunday for a great line up –

Sunday 25th March 2018
7pm (doors open 6.30pm)
Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY
Admission: £5 (concessions £3)
Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: WILLIAM HERSHAW

William Hershaw is a poet, playwright, folk musician and Scots Language activist. His Stars Are The Aizles – Selected Poems In Scots 1976-2016 was published in 2017 by The Neepheid Press. In the same year the Roncadora Press published Buirds featuring linocuts by Fiona Morton. He is the leader of The Bowhill Players, a musical and dramatic group who perform the works of Joe Corrie and other Fife based miner poets. In 2018 Grace Note Publications will publish The Sair Road, his Scots version of the Stations of the Cross. Other works by the author include: Tammy Norrie (novel); Postcairds Fae Woodwick Mill – Orkney Poems in Scots (poetry); The Tempest in Scots, Michael – A Ballad Play and Jennie Lee’s Homework Project (plays).

SHORE POET: HAMISH WHYTE

Hamish Whyte was born near Glasgow where he lived before moving to Edinburgh in 2004. He has published several collections of poetry and edited many anthologies of Scottish literature and runs the award-winning Mariscat Press. He has worked as a librarian, indexer, bibliographer and crime fiction reviewer and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. He plays percussion with the band The Whole Shebang. He has published three collections of poems with Shoestring Press, most recently Things We Never Knew (2017). A new pamphlet of poems is due from HappenStance Press, called Now the Robin.

NEW POET: TESSA BERRING

Tessa Berring is interested in the shifting and often random relationships between the body, objects, language, and the creative process. She studied sculpture and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, then turned her attention to words as they seemed a lighter/more flexible material to work with (and require far less studio space!). In her practice she regularly writes in tandem with visual artists, and enjoys how visual forms lend themselves to different styles of narrative. Recent work can be found in Adjacent Pineapple and Rialto Poetry. She also has a sequence of short poems ‘Paper, Dust, and Donkeys’ published by House of Three Press (Vol. 1), and a chapbook, Cut Glass and No Flowers by Dancing Girl Press. She is 1/12 of 12, a Scottish collective of women poets, who performed at StAnza poetry festival earlier this month.

MUSICIANS: THE NORMANS

The Normans (Norman: Normaunds; French: Normands; Latin: Normanni) were the people who, in the 10th and 11th centuries, gave their name to Normandy, a region in France. They were descended from Norse (“Norman” comes from “Norseman”) Vikings from Denmark, Iceland and Norway. This group isn’t them.

Based around the vocals of Norman Rodger (ex TV21), the Normans play an eclectic mix of songs, with an eclectic mix of musicians, sometimes several, sometimes just two or three. This gig sees a cut down version of the line-up, with just Norman on guitar and vocals, joined by Al Gray on bass guitar and Frank Glynn on fiddle, playing a short acoustic set.

It’ll be one in the eye for Harold!

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

See you on 25^th March!

Useful information:

1) we have a mailing list, and if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s your chance: just click right here and fill in the few bits of information. This is usually only for event notifications and things like ‘looking for slam/open night participants’. You can unsubscribe anytime you want to, although we would be sad if you did.

2) Our email address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com. Emails sent to any other email address go to the great rubbish bin in the virtual sky.

Join us for four exciting Scottish poets and the presentation of the annual Mark Ogle Memorial Award.  Mark was one of the very early Shore Poets but sadly he died relatively young.  Since then his family has provided an annual sum which we use to commission a poet to respond to one of Mark’s poems.  So, this month, we will have the pleasure of hearing Miriam Gamble, this year’s MOMA poet, read both a poem of Mark’s, Coastal Walk: Islay, and her response poem, Feldspar.

Sunday 25th February 2018
7pm (doors open 6.30pm)
Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY
Admission: £5 (concessions £3)
Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: BRIAN McCABE

Brian McCabe has held various writing fellowships, including those at Edinburgh University and the University of St. Andrews and he was editor of Edinburgh Review 2005-2010. He was Royal Literary Fellow at Glasgow University 2010-2012 and 2014-2015. Currently he is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

He has published three collections of poetry, the most recent being Zero (Polygon, 2009). He has published one novel and five collections of short stories, the most recent being A Date With My Wife (Canongate). His Selected Stories was published by Argyll.

NEW POET: KATE TOUGH

Kate’s piece, People Made Glasgow, was selected as a Best Scottish Poem 2016 and her poetry pamphlet, tilt-shift, was Runner Up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, 2017, and noted in The Bottle Imp’s Best Scottish Books, 2016, and the Times Literary Supplement’s notable pamphlets, 2017.

Her novel, Head for the Edge, Keep Walking has five stars on Amazon and is a library lending favourite.  Kate has received three Creative Scotland funding awards, for fiction and poetry, and held literature residencies at Cove Park, Vermont Studio Center and Outlandia.  She is a children’s literacy volunteer, and chairs book festival events.  She gained a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and is completing a collection of short fiction.

SHORE POET: MÀRTAINN MAC AN T-SAOIR (MARTIN MACINTYRE)

Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir (Martin Macintyre) and his family live in Edinburgh.   He has been an Edinburgh ‘Shore Poet’ since 2010.  He works as a medical doctor and a writer and is involved in a number of Gaelic initiatives in the city.  He was brought up in Lenzie near Glasgow, his father being originally from South Uist.

He is an author, bard and storyteller and has worked across these genres for many years now.  His early poetry was published in Let Me Dance With Your Shadow in 2006, and in 2007 he was crowned ‘Bard’ by An Comunn Gàidhealach.  He has been interested in Gaelic songs and singing for many years and has competed at various National Mods and reached the final on a number of occasions including 2017.

Besides his poetry and two novels he has written two collections of short stories: the first in 2003, Ath-Aithne (Re-acquaintance) – soon to be translated into French – won The Saltire Society First Book Award; while his latest collection, Cala Bendita ’s a Bheannachdan (Cala Bendita and its Blessings), was shortlisted for both The Donald Meek Award and The Saltire Literary Book of The Year in 2014.

He is currently writing a new novel and new collection of poetry and will appear at Stanza 2018.

MOMA POET: MIRIAM GAMBLE

Miriam was chosen as the Mark Ogle Memorial Award poet for 2018, and will be reading her response to one of Mark’s poems. See the MOMA page for more information. Miriam was born in Brussels in 1980 and grew up in Belfast. She studied at Oxford and at Queen’s University Belfast, where she completed a PhD in contemporary British and Irish poetry; she now lectures in creative writing at the University of Edinburgh.

She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007, and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award in 2010. Her pamphlet, This Man’s Town, was published by tall-lighthouse in 2007. Her two collections, The Squirrels Are Dead and Pirate Music were published by Bloodaxe Books, in 2010 and 2014. Squirrels won her a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011.

MUSICIANS: THE WHOLE SHEBANG

The Whole Shebang is an Edinburgh-based collective, formed in 2011, who play good-time music, from show tunes and standards through blues, country and western to contemporary pop.

The full line-up is: Kerry Houston (vocals), Fiona Shivas (vocals), Gail Turpin (vocals), Frank Glynn (fiddle and viola), Doug Govan (guitar and ukelele), Al Gray (bass), Bill Haddow (mandolin), and Hamish Whyte (percussion). They don’t have a website, but do go visit and follow their Facebook page.

AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, and of course provides one lucky winner with an excellent lemon cake. We will not be having a wildcard spot, though, as we are bursting with poetry.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

See you on 25^th February!

Useful information:

1) we have a mailing list, and if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s your chance: just click right here and fill in the few bits of information. This is usually only for event notifications and things like ‘looking for slam/open night participants’. You can unsubscribe anytime you want to, although we would be sad if you did.

2) Our email address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com. Emails sent to any other email address go to the great rubbish bin in the virtual sky.