Lovely return to our Friday afternoons together for BULB! in the Creative Writing Gardens🌻 Genni Meikleham, Candice Chung & Anthony Vahni Capildeo shared a harmonious melding of the prosaic and the poetic. We’ll be back on Friday 22nd for more! 🌸🌻✌🏻⛅️

'Your society's broken. So who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, let's blame the people with no power and no money and immigrants who don't even have a vote yet. Yeah, it must be their fucking fault.' - Iain Banks

Come join us Friday 8th May for the first BULB! We have Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Candice Chung & Genni Meikleham reading 🙌🏻 POEMS…PICNIC…PROSE…& PALS! 2.30pm in the garden of 5 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12. Hope to see you there! Colin & Claire 🌸✌🏻🍃🌻❤️🍄‍🟫

Procrastination in the sun today! Sanding & staining, a stack of protein pancakes for next 4 breakfasts, clean windows & upcoming nap are not getting this book written.

**NEW POST** I'm starting a slow listening club on my Substack. It's an invitation to come offline & listen instead. To explain why, this is why classical music is so important to me, and why I think slow, deep, engaged listening is such a powerful thing. leahbroad.substack.com/p/im-startin...

🚙🚗🚙💨💨💨 In our most recent episode we relive recent & not so recent road trips through the lens of car snacks. We discuss writing by Zain Rishi, Jayne Cortez & Bertolt Brecht & Claire shares a piece of work too. Link to listen in bio, but available wherever you listen to your podcasts 🍽️❤️✌🏻

Sweet potato falafel, Normandy Crème fraîche & Kimchi on flatbread in bed. First Monday off since January ☺️

BULB! is the delight of new words blossoming in nature, listening to artists perform in the sanctuary of the garden of UofG’s Creative Writing Department at Lilybank Gdns, with food, drink & friends…all welcome…tba another few events later in the summer. Hope to see you there! Claire & Colin 🌸✌🏻🍃🌻❤️

Tiles in the close of 34 West George St in Glasgow. Going down a rabbit hole to find out more…see ya🪰

In The Banality of Power, James Byrne anatomises the everyday mechanics of harm, tracing how cruelty becomes procedure, how violence is normalised, and how authority hides in plain sight. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

First of our new monthly episodes where we interview a writes, lots or literary sorts is out now! 🥰💌❤️🍽️✌🏻

Finally had time to go see Hamnet yesterday & I’m still caught in a strange, soft gloamin. Can’t stop thinking about it & feel compelled to watch it again. Make up free this time.

What's so amazing about Jim Henson as a puppeteer is that he could literally be explaining that Kermit is made out of felt and ping pong balls and yet Kermit still feels alive the whole time he's doing it

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), b. #OTD, 11 Feb. Recently her nature writing & her memoir THE LIVING MOUNTAIN have gained attention—but she was also an important #modernist novelist. Charlotte Peacock weighs her contribution to Scotland’s literary renaissance 🎂🧵 1/9 www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/quie...

Our Valentines gift to you 💌 HONEY!

Yes!…or rather Oui! Aside from laughing our little derrières off at the name, I remember it being the best tasting lemonade I’ve ever had.

Let us remember the stillborn: how they cede their places here with such good grace that no one ever speaks of them again… —John Burnside, “A Footnote to Colossians” published in RUIN, BLOSSOM (Penguin, 2024) #poem #poetry www.penguin.co.uk/books/456120...

There, there…

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 2023. It’s a dark and rainy day in Portland, Oregon, and I felt the need for some color in my life. I think this fits the bill. #Photography #Architecture #Interior #Paris #France 📷

2026 marks 100 years since the birth of Agnes Owens. A year-long centenary programme will celebrate her life, writing, and legacy through archives, exhibitions, reissues, and public events. Full details via link in bio.

Once had privilege of listening to Ian McKellen perform at Oxford. Seemed timely then - even more so now.

Our most lenticular episode to date is out now, LENTIL SOUP 🥣 We discuss poetry by both Zharad & Maria Sledmere, & an extract from a short story by David Toulmin. Link in bio to listen, but available wherever you listen to your podcasts 🍽️❤️✌🏻 What’s your secret to a good bowl of lentil soup?🧐

Et voilà! Overnight oats topped with port stewed rhubarb. Made again as I forgot to photograph the pots we had when recording on Sunday morning. Love how you can see the layer of honey through the oats. Returned to bed to eat it, looking at the sky on this gorgeous sunny morning & lazing around.

Please give the latest episode of my podcast with Colin Herd a listen! We have such fun making them & hope our love of all thing food & literary comes across in the shows🍽️📚 Also - please give us a follow we’re new to Bluesky @letthemeatbooks.bsky.social

I did another illustration today. In a lot of Palestinian folktales, the heroine who is on an adventure will spend the night in a palm tree. I wanted to be less realistic with this one.

Glaswegian attracts a puzzled gaze by taking his haggis for a walk on Robert Burns' birthday, 25th January 1967 (photo: Keystone).

The amazing fifth installment of Who Owns The Clyde?

The Discoveries writing development programme and prize for unpublished women writers in the UK accepts novels in any genre of adult fiction, with entrants invited to submit the first 10,000 words of their novel and a synopsis

Midway through my weekly ‘big clean’ (house not self) and reminiscing about Wednesday’s lobster feast & wondering if ‘Wednesday lobster feasts’ weren’t a thing, I could probably hire a much needed lovely cleaner. Then realising my friend bought my lunch, and I still can’t hire a cleaner.

Hey Bluesky it’s been a minute. Well a big long year of a minute. (I tend never to write the word minute as I can’t spell & second guessing is my life blood…’min-ate, mine-newt? min-ate, mine-newt?’ three times like a spell before I remember they’re both spelled minute).

Autumn on Campus 🍂🍁🍂🍁 Day of writing, Creative Conversations in the Uni Chapel, pasta at Little Italy (most important part) & dusk walk up to professors’ Sq.

Imagine going to a ‘Design your own Sleep Demon’ workshop Imagine being in a almost trance like state, being guided towards your own sleep demon & finding out it’s 🥁🥁🥁 YOU!

I got shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in ⚡️Flash Fiction⚡️ Thanks @bridportprize.bsky.social My first attempt at such a lean piece of FF & I wrote it on my phone just before the competition closed, just to see if I could. Turns out I could 🫶🏻

Jubilant, joyous evening at Glasgow Women’s Library celebrating #Herland Our Lives in Protest👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Poetry, comedy, song, dance, activism! Women cheering other women on so loudly & with so much love. Just beautiful🫶🏻

Is it bad that the only commentary I want to hear is Jerry hall’s

Self-consciously ate a yoghurt in public. Suddenly wondered if I would be chewing it. Can’t stop thinking about it.

I hope you enjoy my story, ‘Full Moon For a Dying Light,’ with a nod to the town where I have lived for the last quarter century. 🙏 themolotovcocktail.com/vol-14/vol-1...

Having a duvet day. Reading Irenosen Okojie’s short story collection, Speaking Gigantular. Totally matching my fever dream energy. Such a trip.

Going for brunch with besties/cousins Someone’s going to drink to much & cry I’ve decided it’s not going to be me Please, baby Jesus, don’t let it be me🙏🏼

Thank you Sunshine Thank you Alanis Thank you Sancerre & codine Thank you lie-ins Thank you dog-child Thank you, thank you Shamshad Khan

What’s up with the world not delivering me coconut & pandan, with mango & calamansi soft serve until the age of 43?

Scottish Covid Vaccination helpline…if we assault them with acid jazz hold music 70% of callers will hang up. Bagpipes were too obvious. Proclaimers too expensive.

Illustrating Myths & Folktales 5 Sep, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh – tickets by donation Join illustrator Jordan Hunter to discover more about creating convincing characters, landscapes, & supernatural beings inspired by Scottish myth & folklore www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/illustrati...

Eddie’s 3pm sun puddle has been stolen by Autumn 🍂🍂🍂

Well. This is nice.