"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. 

Unsurprisingly I've done little in the way of writing over the school holidays, and there's still two more weeks of it to go! We visited Culloden on our wee holiday to Inverness and I have some images and thoughts for a poem but it's impossible to get into the 'writing zone' with the kids about!
I had an incredibly vivid dream with Ted Hughes in it last week and so have been reading his early work, essays in Winter Pollen and a biography of him by Elaine Feinstein that I've had for years.
Continually feel the need for something bigger to work on though no idea what. All I want to read poetry-wise at the minute is Ted Hughes and D. H. Lawrence!

I'm excited to be reading at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month with Harry Giles and J.L. Williams from Our Real Red Selves. We'll be reading at Word Power Books, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh on 22nd Aug at 1pm. It's a free event!

Tariq Latif is launching his latest pamphlet, Smithereens, from Arc Publications at Dunoon Bookpoint on the 12th Aug at 7pm. I'm privileged to be reading one of his poems written in a female voice.

Something that has been a pleasant surprise is how far my Wild Poppies poem has travelled - it's certainly traveled far further than any other poem I've written. It pops up in gardening blogs, wedding pages, eco travelling websites, paired many times with poppy pics on instagram, it's even been put to music and reshaped into a sculpture poem! Every now and again I do an online search to see where it will make an appearance next! It's made me think about why it's so popular, it certainly helps that it was published in such a high profile mag - I think it comes up high on results for anyone doing a search on poppy poems. It's been described as an ode to poppies or a celebration of poppies. The poem itself was whittled down from three pages of notes from intense concentration on the poppies. It was originally three times the length and a three part poem and eventually pruned down to what is left. I think flower poems are generally popular anyway as they cover so many bases emotionally and symbolically. But it's such a pleasure to see how my poem has made its own way into the world!