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!

Hello blogger, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again...

It's been rather busy since I've updated. The most miraculous news is that after all these years of writing alone on my little peninsula I've finally come across some other local poets and we have formed a monthly poetry work-shopping group. Wonderful to get a chance to meet up and talk poetry with real live people - there are four of us and bizarrely we all live within two streets of each other!

Dunoon hosted it's first Mini Book Festival which I read at with Tariq Latif - it was a good opportunity to try out some of the new poems. Hoping it'll be the first of an annual local book festival which would be wonderful. Tariq and I also did a poetry reading in the summer in the local bookshop which seemed to go down well - it's so good having someone else locally to read with!

I put together a book list for the Scottish Book Trust of some of my favourite contemporary female poets which you can read here.

I was pleasantly surprised to come across a lovely five star review of Tree Language on Amazon. It feels wonderfully good to get the feedback and simply that my book has found a happy home in some complete stranger's life!

Very pleased to have some poems in Be The First To Like This, an anthology of new Scottish poetry with a foreword written by Liz Lochhead. Colin Waters from the Scottish poetry library (editor of the anthology) has put together a great webpage for it here. It's being launched next week in Glasgow and Edinburgh and tomorrow we're all getting our picture taken at the Scottish Poetry Library for the Saturday Herald and Sunday Herald Magazine, so that's quite exciting!

Next month I'll be reading and chatting at the Portobello Book Festival in Edinburgh as part of a Scottish Book Trust event along with two other recipients of the SBT New Writer's Award. Check out the dates of the book festival here and if you're around please come along - I've heard there will be wine!

Finally, good old Highland Mary's voting yes and so am I. Only four more days until the referendum and it's all up for grabs!!