I'm running two workshops on Sunday 22 February as part of Beacon Book Festival in Greenock Introduction to Poetry: Rhyme and Reason | 10am–12 noon Introduction to Creative Writing: Unleash Your Story | 12 noon–2pm Tickets on sale via their website or Box Office: 01475 723723 #BBF26 @powanpoetry

‘With each whispering cartwheeling flake’ 🌀 ❄️ Laurie Donaldson in our Christmas - Winter anthology. @powanpoetry.bsky.social www.blackboughpoetry.com/news

delighted to have three poems in the new edition of SHINE, a fabulous international poetry series, alongside some great poets and published by the incomparable @poetrybysamanthaterrell #shinepoetry

really happy to feature in the latest @wingedmoon substack open.substack.com/pub/thewinge...

it's that time of the month... Our monthly Fun Loving Liminals open mic is tonight in Greenock. I will be emceeing the first half and reading in the second, so the stomach butterflies have already started their fluttery work.

We are accepting submissions for our very first issue! 🌴 Into the Liminal Light – poetry, short stories and visual art that explores ideas of utopia, exile, bliss, longing and transition. 🌀 Minimal Liminal and Visual Liminal – flash fiction or images that live between boundaries. Deadline: 31 August

Our submission window is now open! We are looking for short stories, poems, flash fiction, visual art, photography and everything in between! The loose theme of our first issue is 'paradise' Visit our website: funlovinliminals.org/submissions-... #FolkOanTheEdge Insta: @funlovinliminals

just had three poems published in the fab SHINE international poetry series, so I have my happy face on: samanthaterrell.weebly.com/shine-poetry...

I have a new block of in-person creative writing classes starting in August, really looking forward to these. If you are in the west of Scotland or know someone that might be interested, let me know.

looking forward to reading at this event on Sunday with some fabulous poets

Thanks very much to @roguestrands.bsky.social for reviewing my debut @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social poetry collection New Famous Phrases. I've enjoyed reading the Rogue Strands blog over the years, so great to be featured on it!

oooh, I'm diving into this

Scots Language Publication Grant 2025 is open for applications. Closes on Wed 18 June. Created to support publishers to publish & promote work written in Scots. Covering costs e.g. editing, advances, illustrations/design, typesetting, printing & marketing. www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-...

🎙️ JOHN BURNSIDE A treasure from the SPL's audio archives: a talk in 2008 by poet and novelist John Burnside on fellow Scottish poet WS. Graham. John Burnside talks about poetry and visual art, the poet as nomad and ‘feeding the dead’. #SPLarchives splpodcast.podbean.com/e/john-burns...

Looking forward to teaching more surrealist Japanese poetry tomorrow morning, with generative prompts. Tickets here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1309577203...

New Book: Anthologisation and Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling by Paul Delaney This original new study explores the recent flowering of short fiction in Ireland. Specifically, it discusses the cultural, material, and ideological usages of the short form.

delighted to have a poetic polemic on book burning a censorship in this new anthology, 'Orange is Not a Colour: Poems Against Totalitarianism' www.lulu.com/shop/fin-hal...

Tom French's poem The End of January was @irishtimes.com Poem of the Week recently. Tom will be at WCLF for a special @thegallerypress.bsky.social event with Vona Groarke & Aifric Mac Aodha on 13 July 🎟️https://www.westcorkmusic.ie/events/2025/gallery-goes-to-wclf/ www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Everyone is welcome to the launch of the Fish Anthology at WCLF this summer. Congratulations to Justine and all of the shortlisted authors whose work will be in the anthology. #FreeEvent www.westcorkmusic.ie/events/2025/launch-of-the-2025-fish-anthology/

"It’s not the fact that copyright law is a problem here, it’s about transparency and enforcement." Thank you to @wendychambld.bsky.social for speaking on behalf of Marion Todd on the use of pirated work to train AI. "We need to see a full response from Meta" We Agree. #MetaBookThieves

a great article on the classic Bela Lugosi' Dead – still got my copy in white vinyl...: www.electronicsound.co.uk/features/lan...

doing an open mic in Edinburgh tomorrow at the Traverse (www.eventbrite.com/e/writers-ed...) and the monthly Word @ the Warehouse in Greenock on Saturday, and then running another of my writing workshops on Sunday, busy time...

Scousers: the next Salt & Ash event is at your mega indie bookseller on Smithdown Road, @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social where I'll be in conversation with my friend and colleague, the wonderful writer Helen Tookey. Get doon!

Fans of the late great #poet, #vegan, #dyslexic and all round fabulous person Benjamin Zephaniah, check this out! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/festival-o...

the refrain returns three times—I wrote these sections to mimic curlews' songs, adding more voices each time it comes back.

DISSECTING MANCTOPIA 🐝 Readings & Ramblings from Book of Manchester Authors 📍 Feel Good Club, MCR 📅 Mar 20, 7-9pm 🎟️ eventbrite.co.uk/e/dissecting... What does Manchester mean to you? Join as we explore, celebrate & critiques the city Manchester was, and the one it has become...

“who would believe them winged who would believe they could be beautiful who would believe they could fall so in love with mortals that they would attach themselves as scars attach and ride the skin sometimes we hear them in our dreams” Lucille Clifton #poetry #writer

📢 Applications open: Scots Scriever for Dundee and Angus We're seeking applications for a year long residency as Scots Scriever.

'Anti-Pastoral: Nature Writing on the Front Line' is a creative writing course based in the rich and evocative landscapes around South Kirkby in West Yorkshire. More information: https:/www.eventbrite.com/e/anti-pastoralnature-writing-on-the-frontline-tickets-1243308231389?aff=oddtdtcreator

🎵 10 March is #InternationalBagpipeDay! A 🎶🧵 1/5 “It looks as if a Man could Toot himself to Heaven upon the Whore of Babylon’s Bagpipes” —how 18th-century English satirists used bagpipes to signify Jacobitism & Catholicism, & the threat to the Establishment www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/the-...

Excited to announce that I will be launching my debut @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social poetry collection, New Famous Phrases, on the 1st April alongside brilliant books by @daraghfleming.bsky.social @postpran.bsky.social Aled Turner, Esme Allman & Lakshmi Gill. Be there or be an April fool!

Friends and poetry lovers, SHINE, Issue 2 launches March 15th and includes work by Vandana Kumar and 31 other established & emerging poets from 13 countries. Can't wait to share it with the world! #shinepoetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #internationalcommunity #poetrylovers #poetsofsky

I have written a poetic polemic about book banning and censorship for an event tonight, never done one before, not sure how it will go down...

Just arrived! New stories by @willwiles.bsky.social from @saltpublishing.com. very much looking forward to reading these #shortstories

Our flagship talent development programme for poets aged 11-17, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, is open for entries! Judged this year by the fabulous Colette Bryce & Will Harris! Free to enter. Poems can be any theme and must be under 40 lines. Deadline = 31 July foyleyoungpoets.org

interesting piece on #ecopoetics by @kate-elspeth.bsky.social theconversation.com/how-poetry-c...

🎙️NEW SPL PODCAST The famous Welsh poet RS Thomas is the subject of this month’s Nothing But The Poem podcast, hosted as usual by our own @samueltongue.bsky.social www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/noth...

got a wee poem about winter and Celtic mythology in the new (published today) Mythology zine by @coinoppress.bsky.social It looks great, happy me!

I weep.

trying to write a monologue for the first time, veering away from it being a soliloquy and it's certainly not a stream of consciousness or a rant (but it might be...)

if you write some poetry, however bad, and then put it into Garamond it is improved, I won't be dissuaded from this ;-)

'Songwriters stir up a living tradition, poets make flowers grow in air.' — Glyn Maxwell, 'On Poetry'

I am officially mesmerised: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz2b...

Lilith is a question mark that haunts our ideals – She is abjection, rage, doubleness, shadow, the notion of destruction at the root of creation, and a fierce protest against forgetting. Abridged 0 - 105: Lilith. Submission Call. Tomorrow.

Delighted to have a poem in this wonderful anthology: High-Rise: Brutalist Poetry Edited by @alanparry83.bsky.social this anthology builds poetry like concrete: raw, unshakable, impossible to ignore. @brokenspinearts.bsky.social #poetry #brutalistpoetry www.amazon.co.uk/High-Rise-Br...

It's a great poem too! We're very lucky!

🎟️ A few extra tickets have been released for A History of Ireland in 10 Poems: A Reading By Paul Muldoon! 🗓️ Thurs, 20 February, 7:30pm 📍Thomas Davis Theatre, @tcddublin Reserve Tickets here: www.eventbrite.ie/e/a-history-...