Time for another word-cloud created on here!

So I've written twelve poems this year - not a huge amount, three of which I wrote last week which saved the end of the year for me!! I hate writing less than twelve in a year.
My word-cloud is made up of this year's poems so lots of water (as usual!) making an appearance, flowers and body parts!

My favorite reading this year has been by Anne Carson. I've been sadly disappointed by Sharon Olds' latest collection, Arias - the poems are so hit and miss. Not the spectacular collection that Stag's Leap was at all. Of course I'm still a huge fan of her work but wonder if she felt under pressure to bring out this collection or if she lost some objectivity over the editing process!!
I absolutely loved Kathleen Jamie's Surfacing - so beautifully written, I'll be re-reading these essays several times over.

It's been a slow few months poetry-wise with so many other commitments going on. However I did write a poinsettia poem yesterday (which was also my birthday!) and without fail it's flower poems that are the most enjoyable for me to write - the mix of bags of room for playfulness in terms of metaphors and similes and bucket loads of symbolism make flowers the perfect objective correlative (for me anyway).

My current reading includes Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie - her most recent gorgeous collection of lyrical essays exploring different landscapes and lives. And Sharon Olds' new collection Arias which I'm slowly savouring.

I'm halfway through reading Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land by Robert Crawford and it's easily the best literary biography I've read in years, well, since Richard Holmes' wonderful two volumes on Coleridge anyway! Extremely detailed and readable it is a fascinating piecing together of Eliot's early years. I was interested to read there are a vault of letters Eliot wrote to a female friend which will be opened in 2020 - I wonder what they will add to our knowledge of Eliot. It's been so enjoyable to sink into the world and thoughts of that great poet, I want to eek the book out as long as possible though there is a volume two to look forward to which Crawford is currently working on.

At the WS Graham event in Greenock I picked up a copy of Kathleen Jamie's Selected Poems, a beautiful book and just published. It was really great to hear Kathleen Jamie read at last, I particularly enjoyed hearing her read Graham's 'Loch Thom' poem and also reading an early poem of hers called 'Crossing the Loch'.

It was a good turnout - moving to see Graham celebrated in Greenock, thanks to the hard work and organisation of Rachael Boast and Andy Ching. Very enjoyable to hear Crawford read and Bill Herbert delivered a fascinating talk on Graham's work.

Well I'm definitely on a roll of Inveraray themed poems at the moment. I have a series of individual poems which I think may be turning into a playful sequence. I'm fascinated by Durs Grunbein's sequences and the influence on him by Joseph Brodsky. So that's my poetry reading at the moment!

"Brimming with images of body, blood and flowers, this sequence politicises and analyses the purpose and process of birth"

Nice to get a review of Our Real Red Selves in the Scottish Review of Books which you can read here. 

It was a pleasure to read again with Harry Giles and Jennifer Williams as we read in Edinburgh from Our Real Red Selves at the Edinburgh Fringe Book Festival run by the amazing gem of a bookshop Word Power Books. There are free book events going on there every day till the end of the month, well worth a visit.


I was invited by the editor of Berfrois to contribute a poem to an e-book collection of poems called Poets for Corbyn. I submitted a poem that was originally published in my pamphlet collection, Vintage Sea, called The Red Road. I wrote it in 2010 after reading about a triple family suicide - three Russian asylum seekers who leapt to their death from one of the infamous multi-storey flats on the Red Road in Glasgow, their application to remain in the UK had been refused. 
You can read Poets for Corbyn here - it's free and includes poems by great poets such as Pascale Petit and Michael Schmidt.



When I was at Word Power Books I was delighted to pick up a signed copy of Kathleen Jamie's selection of essays Sightlines which I've been meaning to get for years. The writing is even more beautiful than I had imagined, delighted with it. This morning, inspired by Jamie's writing, I wrote the first draft of a reflective essay on visiting Culloden last month. It's the first such essay I've written and so very much enjoyed writing it. I feel it's possibly a new doorway opening to me. 

My three most wanted books at the moment are:

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie, a book of essays / meditations about her journeys and exploration of the natural world.

Thin Slice of Moon - the newly published New and Selected poems of Hugh McMillan

Weaving Songs, a collection of poems by Donald S. Murray, the collection was inspired by Murray's father who had been a weaver.

The great thing about the new house is that there will be room for more bookcases!!!

I've just noticed that Kathleen Jamie is reading at StAnza 2012! I'm really excited about this, she's one of my favourite Scottish poets and she reads her poems wonderfully. You can hear her read some of her poems on the Poetry Archive website here.  The full list of participants is available here and looks like it'll be a great festival one again. Just from scanning the list I'm interested in hearing Niall Campbell and Richie McCaffery, a couple of young Scotland-based poets whose poems I've been impressed by when I've come across them in mags. I'd also like to get a chance to hear Michael Symmons Roberts, Robert Crawford and Simon Barraclough. I see Alistair Cook, an Edinburgh-based photographer who also creates wonderful short films to accompany poems, will be there. I can't wait!

The other day I was delighted to receive through the post a gorgeous new collection of poems by Morgan Downie interlaced with just as gorgeous photographs by the very talented Roxana Gita who also provides Romanian translations of Downie's poems. I'll be reviewing it on the blog sometime soon.