Hard to believe it, considering how youthful we look (*snaps selfie*), but Shore Poets turns 25 this month, and we’re ready to party! (Admittedly, we’re likely to be tucked up in bed by half-past ten with a mug of cocoa and the Man Booker winner.) We hope you can help us celebrate.

Sunday 30 October 2016
7pm (doors open 630pm)
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.

Don’t forget the clocks go back early that morning. (Your electronic geegaws will probably remember for you, but it can’t hurt to be reminded.)

We have three great poets and one fantastic band:

STEWART CONN

Stewart Conn, Edinburgh’s first official poet laureate, 19/03/2005.At StAnza Festival, St Andrews.

Stewart Conn is Honorary President of Shore Poets and one of Scotland’s most distinguished poets. His work, with its distinctly rhythmical and lyrical qualities and passionate interest in music and art, has been widely published and translated.

He was born in Glasgow and now lives in Edinburgh, where until 1992 he was Head of Radio Drama at BBC Scotland. From 2002 to 2005 he was Edinburgh’s first Makar, or poet laureate. The Breakfast Room (Bloodaxe, 2010) won the SMIT Poetry Book of the Year in 2011. His The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe) was published in 2014 to much acclaim. His latest poetry publication is Against the Light (Mariscat, 2016): poems of love and Edinburgh. And he has recently recorded a selection of his work for the Poetry Archive. Learn more about Stewart at his website.

JOHN PURSER

John Purser was born in Glasgow and now lives on Skye. He is a man of many parts: composer, musicologist, broadcaster, playwright and poet. His ground-breaking radio series and book, Scotland’s Music, is the essential authority on the subject, the 1992 edition of the latter winning the McVitie’s Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. He has published several volumes of poetry and his collection There Is No Night: New and Selected Poems (Kennedy and Boyd) was published in 2014. Of his many radio plays, Carver won a Giles Cooper Award and was published by Methuen. He has also recently released three CDs of his musical works. Learn more about John at his website.

TOM POW

Tom Pow was born in Edinburgh and now lives in Dumfries. He has been a commanding presence on the Scottish poetry scene for many years. Dear Alice won the SMIT Poetry Book of the Year in 2009, the same year In the Becoming: New and Selected Poems was published by Polygon. Concerning the Atlas of Scotland and Other Poems (National Library of Scotland) came out in 2014 and his latest poetry publication is the pamphlet At the Well of Love (Mariscat, 2016), which includes poems written when he was a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow in France in 2015. He was the first Writer in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He has also written a number of radio plays, young adult novels, picture books and a travel book about Peru. Learn more about Tom at his website.

Music by 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.

We sure do hope to see you!

Useful information:

1) we have a new 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 likely only going to be for event notifications.

2) we have a new email address; the old one will not forward anything to the new one, though there should be an auto-reply. That new address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is: shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com

3) Date for your diary: the November event will be Sunday 27 November, part of Book Week Scotland. After that we’ll be back with the Quiet Slam in January (more news and signup information about that next month).

Have a good October!

Our first Shore Poets event of the season! We hope you had a nice summer. At least two of the Shore Poets went to Greece, and one to Latvia.

Before we get started, here are a few brief housekeeping announcements:

1) we have a new 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 likely only going to be for event notifications.

2) we have a new email address; the old one will not forward anything to the new one, though there should be an auto-reply. Apologies to anyone who emailed us and waited for a reply over the summer! That new address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is: shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com

And now that information you’ve been waiting for:

Sunday 25th September 2016
7pm (doors open 630pm)
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: PAMELA BESANT

Pamela Besant is one of Orkney’s best known writers. She is originally from Glasgow but has lived and worked in Orkney for many years. She is a poet, freelance writer and editor. In 2007 she was awarded the first George Mackay Brown Writing Fellowship in Orkney, and later became chair of the organisation, which runs the Orkney Book Festival. Although she writes mainly poetry (Running with a Snow Leopard, Two Ravens Press, 2008, and Orkney: A Celebration of Light and Landscape, with photographer Iain Sarjeant, 2010), she also writes non-fiction and plays.

NEW POET: DOMINIC HALE

Dominic Hale was born in 1993 in Blackpool, Lancashire. As a teenager he won the Foyle Young Poets Award in 2009 and 2010, and his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the Edinburgh Review, Clinic, the Morning Star, the Quietus, the Literateur, and Datableed. This month he began a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, researching the earlier poetry of William Wordsworth and tracing its influence on English poets of the twentieth century.

SHORE POET: DIANA HENDRY

Newly-announced: Honorary Shore Poet Diana Hendry will be reading for us! Primarily a poet, Diana also writes short stories and is the author of many children’s books. She’s worked as a journalist, English teacher and a tutor at the University of Bristol, University of the West of England and the Open University. She has tutored many creative writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and for a year was writer-in-residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary.

MUSICIANS: MIRKA

Shetland band Mirka, formed in 2011, are Danny Garrick (fiddle), Karis Garrick (piano), and Loris MacDonald (accordion). They are, individually, successful award winning students, firm fixtures on the Shetland music scene, and seasoned music travellers outwith Shetland too. Danny is a winner of the prized ‘Shetland Traditional Young Fiddler of the Year’ award.

Mirka’s music contains a whole host of mainly up-tempo,‘go-for-it’ tunes that you can simply listen to and enjoy in their own right, or, alternatively, dance yourselves’ into a ‘soolp of sweat’ to – as the old Shetland saying goes.

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).

THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION AGAIN

Sunday 25th September 2016
7pm (doors open 630pm)
Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

We hope to see you there!

Our email address has changed! Contact us at shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com (remove those spaces on either side of the @).

You can also join our Facebook group and keep an eye on our Twitter feed.

Shore Poets: readings by mainly Scottish poets on the last Sunday of every month

We’re getting things into place! To help you make notes in your diary, here are our upcoming event dates through the end of 2016.

We are still at Outhouse on Broughton Street Lane, starting at 7pm (doors open 630pm), but please check back in case there are any changes in the meantime.

Sunday 25 September. Confirmed readers: Pamela Beasant and Dominic Hale
Sunday 30 October.
Sunday 27 November.

Also, we don’t currently have anyone to handle most of our social media, so things will be pretty light until we’re able to fill that position. If you or anyone you know is willing to help out, please drop us an email at shorepoetsedinburgh at gmail.com. (This is our new email address – the old one no longer works.)

We hope to see you soon!

Sorry for the delayed post! We’re happy to announce our March lineup. (Oh, and by the way, we are well aware that something is screwy with the font sizing on this blog. It involves something called “CSS”. This does not stand for Cryptogamic Society of Scotland, sadly. We’ll fix it as soon as we are in the same room with our Technical Advisor.)

Sunday 27th March 2016
7pm (doors open 630pm)
Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY
Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Please do get there early to make sure you get a seat. Our last two events have been packed and we cannot put more people in the room than the fire regulations allow.

Also, yes, that is Easter Sunday. (We thought about changing the date but it turned into a world o’ confusion so we didn’t.) Also, don’t forget the clocks go forward, though your smart devices are likely to remember that on your behalf. Those of you with non-smart devices may have the joy of explaining to a nearby teenager what it means to “wind a watch”.

After the Quiet Slam in January and the bumper event of February, we’re pleased to be returning to our usual format, but we haven’t let up on the poetry goodness. Oh no, we have NOT. Tonight’s event is being brought to you by the letter M because (if you want to be alliterative about it, and who doesn’t) we have MacLaverty, McKie, a Makar, and an MBE, plus musicians. STOP PRESS! We will have TWO Makars, as Jackie Kay has just been announced as the new Scots Makar.

MAIN POET: JACKIE KAY

Photo credit: Mary McCartney

As we so often do, we turn to the excellent Scottish Poetry Library website and find that:

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. She has published five collections of poetry for adults (The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize, a Saltire Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award) and several for children. She was awarded an MBE in 2006.

But none of that describes how entertaining she is as a performer, so you simply must come along and see for yourself. Also, she has an MBE. That’s just nifty. And she’s the new Scots Makar!!! *webmaster expires in excitement*

NEW POET: CIARA MACLAVERTY

Yes, that’s Ciara’s…mug shot. *ba-dum-tish*

Ciara MacLaverty is a Clydebuilt mentee, working with Liz Lochhead (the previous Scots Makar, just to keep that theme going). Her first pamphlet, Seats for landing was well received in 2005, with ‘Peeled’ chosen as a Scottish Poem of the Year 2006. Ciara was among the 12 poets who wrote commemorative poems for Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in 2015, and her poems have appeared in The Scotsman, New Writing Scotland, and Gutter. She blogs about motherhood and writing at ciaramaclaverty.blogspot.co.uk/.

SHORE POETS: CHRISTINE DE LUCA AND JANE MCKIE

Christine De Luca, who writes in both English and Shetlandic, is a native Shetlander who has lived in Edinburgh since student days. She enjoys her dual identity and is the current Edinburgh Makar. Her latest collection is Dat Trickster Sun (Mariscat 2014).

Jane McKie’s first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. Her most recent publication is Kitsune.

MUSICIANS: GLADSTONE’S BAG

Well, half of Gladstone’s Bag – Lawrence Dunn and Judith Butters. Gladstone’s Bag was formed in 1993 to play popular light classical music from the Victorian era. They also play “music from the wireless” and provide live music for classic silent films. (Please take a moment to explain to the nearest teenager what a “wireless” is.)

THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE AND THE WILDCARD SPOT

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 for the donors thereof.)

The wildcard spot is back! If you’re interested, please tell the person at the door when you pay for your entry, and they will put your name in the hat. The wildcard poet will be drawn at the very start of the event and will be able to perform one poem, up to three minutes, so be sure to have your poem ready the moment we kick off.

THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION AGAIN

Sunday 27th March 2016
7pm (doors open 630pm)
Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

We hope to see you there! Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations might mean we will have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

P.S. If you would like to receive regular news about our events straight into your inbox, e-mail us at newsletter (at) shorepoets.org.uk

You can also join us at our Facebook group and keep an eye on our Twitter feed.

Readings by mainly Scottish poets on the last Sunday of every month

The webmaster is still recovering from her post-StAnza poetry hangover, sorry! Full March entry to go up within the next few days. If you’d like to mark your diaries, here are the dates for the final Shore Poets events of the season (all poets subject to change – well, poets do need to change or we stagnate – YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN – but this is what we’re pretty sure of schedule-wise):

Sunday 27 March [yes, Easter Sunday, and remember the clocks go forward!]. Main poet: Jackie Kay. New poet: Ciara MacLaverty. Shore Poets: Christine de Luca and Jane McKie.

Sunday 24 April. Our open night. Email us at publicity at shorepoets.org.uk to ask for a spot. Shore Poet: Claire Askew.

Sunday 29 May. Main poet tbc. Shore Poet: Ian McDonough. New poet: Michael Hough.

Sunday 26 June. Main poet: Tracey Herd. Shore Poets: Frank Glynn and Tracey S. Rosenberg. New poet: Ross Hanlon.

All events scheduled to start at 7pm at the Outhouse on Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh. Doors open 630pm. We’ve been packed for our first two events there, so please be sure to arrive in plenty of time if you’d like a seat!