I was unable to attend a recent launch event at the Scottish Poetry Library for Beyond the Swelkie anthology in celebration of George Mackay Brown so was asked to contribute a video reading of my poem to be played at the event instead and here it is!

It was lovely to receive my contributor copy of Marble Poetry Magazine with a poem in it I wrote about my counselling room! The magazine is  beautifully put together and is filled with poems and reviews, copies can be purchased here.

I've been invited to read my poems to an Edinburgh-based 'Poem and Plant Hunters' group run by artist, Brigid Collins, who is the artist-in-residence at the secret treasure that is Dr Neil's Garden in Edinburgh. 

I've had such a pleasant time looking out 'plant-themed' poems to read and was surprised to see that I have even more flower poems in the manuscript for my new collection than in my previous collections!

Relieved to be past the height of summer - always feel not quite myself in summer and the quiet space for writing poetry disappears in the busy summer months. 

I now feel, in the back-to-school lull, the autumn urge to write falling over me and I'm preparing for it by reading a poet who is new to me and I'm utterly bowled over by her poems - Mary Szyblist. Always a joy to come across a new poet whose poems feed and inspire. Not just her themes of nature, spirituality, female experience; but her hard, crisp imagery, her music, the bringing together of metaphysical and the sensual external world reminds me of Akhmatova.  

I find myself looking again for a large theme to work within and to write a series of poems around rather than going from writing opportune poem to poem. 

It's been lovely to have poems in two Scottish anthologies that have come out this summer: Summer Anywhere published by Dreich (a new and very dynamic press on the Scottish poetry publishing scene), a bumper anthology containing poems by around 200 poets. 

And Beyond the Swelkie edited by Jim Mackintosh & Paul S. Philippou, published by Tippermuir Books and is a collection of prose and poems to celebrate the centenary of the birth of George Mackay Brown.

Click on the links for more info on both books.

I've also had a few poetry acceptances (in the midst of several rejections!!), especially pleased to have some poems taken for Stand literary mag where I've never published before, they will appear in the magazine sometime next year.

It was lovely to receive a parcel from Athens last month with my contributor copy of a selection of Scottish poetry translated into Greek. The anthology contains poems from Niall Campbell, Penny Boxall, Stewart Sanderson, Janette Ayachi amongst others. Now I know what my name looks like in Greek!

I've been reading poems by the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski. I attended his zoom reading recently as part of the StAnza poetry festival online, which was really great. Then sadly he passed away just over a week later. It's an oddly different experience reading someone's poems just after they've died, as if all of their poems now take on the spectre of elegy regardless of what the poem is about. 

I was asked to contribute a poem inspired by George Mackay Brown to a book coming out this year celebrating the centenary of his birth. So I spent a very pleasant few days reading through my collected GMB which I hadn't done for a while and wrote a poem inspired by a line from his poem 'Beachcomber'.

It's an odd place to be - at the end of a collection of poems and inevitably at the start of another. Plus the process of submitting to publishers and the endless cycle of acceptance / rejection and re-submission endemic to writing and publishing. The endless waiting for responses... such a slow process.

Except for a few intense writing spells, last year was not a hugely productive poetry writing year for me. I hope this year will be different and I've certainly found myself writing my way though this month so far and seemed to have, without planning to, joined in with national poetry writing month! Lots of dross coming out but I'm long enough in the tooth to know, if I persevere, I'll get past the dross. 

Mary Evans Picture Library/John Maclellan

I don't think about the old world now - pre-covid life - in fact it barely crosses my mind. I'm living in the here and now, taking each day, each week with its own plans, expectations, pressures and commitments. I'm lucky to have enough in my life to occupy me during this slow snail's pace existence. I have essays to write, reading to do, children to look after, counselling commitments, a dog to walk. The days and weeks are ticking by in ultra-slow motion. I dare not look ahead to the end of this lockdown or imagine life beyond covid - that would make the present unbearable. 

I stopped my ekphrastic writing spree at twenty poems and have since culled three from the sequence of poems as not up to standard. But the remaining seventeen poems I'm happy with! I recently re-read Sharon Olds' beautiful collection Stag's Leap and I so much admire how she shines a light on the tiny, mostly unnoticed moments in daily life and relationships and yet which encapsulates the essence of those relationships.  

Being called 'young' in the poetry world has a decidedly different meaning from how the rest of the world defines 'young'! So bearing that in mind I'm happy to have a selection of poems translated into Greek in a newly published anthology of contemporary young Scottish poets (featuring also some genuinely young Scottish poets!!). 

I have a poem showcased on the Mary Evans Poems and Pictures blog which you can read here.