Blog
Festival Poetry: BBC Poetry Slam 2012
21 August 2012
Image: Rachel McCrum, winner of the first heat, BBC Poetry Slam 2012 Slam – such a violent word for a peaceable, friendly, good-natured contest. All this week, the Beeb is sponsoring a series of face-offs at Potterrow, featuring one or...Festival Poetry: Paul Durcan
20 August 2012
Paul Durcan last read at the EIBF in 1995, far too long an interval to wait for his triumphant return this year. Durcan was in town to promote his new collection Praise in Which I Live and Move and...Festival Poetry: Heaney, Miller and O’Hagan
19 August 2012
Nature writing, it is fair to say, is having something of a moment. Karl Miller’s latest collection of essays, Tretower to Clyro, is a survey of writing about the countryside by authors recent and past. One couldn’t help but...Festival Poetry: Literary Death Match
18 August 2012
“Come away o human child! This is the fifth Edinburgh Literary Death Match.” A packed Spiegeltent did not know what to expect. The contestants may or may not have known what to expect. Certainly I didn’t know what was ahead...Festival Poetry: Edinburgh’s Book Fringe
16 August 2012
Word*Power Books by kaysgeog, under a Creative Commons licence Edinburgh’s Book Fringe consciously sets itself up, if not in opposition to the EIBF, as an alternative. Events are held at the Word Power bookshop, admission free. We took the chance to...Festival Poetry: Kathleen Jamie, Slave to Vision
15 August 2012
Only halfway through August and already the amazing events are coming thick and fast. Last week I dropped in on James McKay reading Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno in Westport's Pulp Fiction Books. This was part of the marvellous Inky Fingers'...Festival Poetry: Memorial
15 August 2012
It's only happened once or twice before in my life, and I've been writing poems since I was about 8-years-old, but I occasionally come across a poet who makes me question whether I should keep writing at all. That...Festival Poetry: True North
15 August 2012
What a delight it was to be at this gathering of voices at Summerhall. Four Canadians and one Scottish voice treated us to an hour and a half of poetry spanning centuries, and dealing with life, death and literature....Festival Poetry: Something like a confessional with jammy dodgers thrown in
13 August 2012
Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel takes place in the sort of space you half-expect a poet to shack up in: somehow dark and yet fiercely coloured; a rackety typewriter in one corner and a suitcase ready to...A Festival of Poetry this August
10 August 2012
Edinburgh Festival 250811_0172-27.jpg by Hugh Simmons, under a Creative Commons licenceFestival Poetry: Busy Making Nothing Happen
7 August 2012
Image: Liz Lochhead at Neu! Reekie! 18, by Damien McGlynn August is a busy time for everyone taking part in Edinburgh’s many festivals, but few performers this year have agreed to take on as much as National Poet Liz Lochhead.
Competition time!
6 August 2012
jump for joy by matt.hintsa, under a Creative Commons licence