Set fair for Callander Poetry Weekend, Scotland

Sally Evan the poet and editor of Poetry Scotland is the force behind the Callander Poetry Weekend. Poets come from all over to take part in this special event.

This year you can hear Elizabeth Rimmer, Sheila Templeton, Judith Taylor, Fred Beake, Colin Donati, Sheila Wakefield, Kevin Cadwallender, Ann MacKinnon, and that is pretty much just some of Day 1. Bridget Khursheed of p&g is reading at Callander this afternoon.

Alastair Cook is also talking about the making of filmpoems, Alan Gay leads a group from the Edinburgh Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra and Colin Will on sax backs Bryan Johnstone.

What is not to love. Events at King's Bookshop (open all year round) and the Kirk Hall and elsewhere all weekend. Find out more at http://www.desktopsallye.com/page22.htm

Blog tour signpost: Elizabeth Rimmer

Now the blog tour has brought you to p&g and you have explored a little. Here is another blog you may enjoy as your next destination:

Elizabeth Rimmer was born and educated in Liverpool and moved to Scotland in 1977, where she lives beside the river Forth. Poet, gardener, river-watcher, and grandmother, her roots are Catholic, radical, feminist and green. She is inspired by weather, landscape and tradition, the work of craftsmen, gardeners, foresters and musicians, and writes about language, legends and heritage. Her first full collection Wherever We Live Now was published in 2011 by Red Squirrel Press.

Her poems have been widely published in magazines such as Poetry Scotland, Northwords Now, Gutter, Stravaig, Eildon Tree and Dark Mountain. More recently her poetry has reflected a growing interest in the philosophy, psychology and spirituality of ecological movements, and she is particularly interested in the mythology of women in connection to the earth and to nature. She is an active member of The Scottish Centre for Geo-Poetics and helps to edit its on-line magazine Stravaig.

Her blog The gleam of light on water can be found here http://burnedthumb.co.uk/blog/.

Blog tour: you are here

Welcome to p&g - if you are on the blog tour, take a walk round and see what the weather is like...if not, just do what you normally do!

Thanks to Jules Horne for giving directions to here. She has asked some questions which I will attempt to answer. (Don't normally do this stuff - click on a few topics on your right to get a feel for our everyday p&g.)

1) What am I working on?
Well, too many different things probably - my own collection, the Fragments project (http://fragmentsinwords.tumblr.com/), a longer poem on commuting, Bimblebox 153 birds (http://bimbleboxartproject.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/bimblebox-153-birds/), constantly distracted by vintage petrol pumps, disused buildings, Elizabeth Bishop, old roads, shepherds, Victorian engineering, taxidermy, lichen, John Leyden, renaissance gardens, elegant code etc.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Good question - in fact like all poets I respect what went before and try to learn from it. I have been working on a verse form based on William Shakespeare's satiric use of a courtly style of speech in Much ado about nothing (based on John Lyly's Euphues the anatomy of wit, a speech style hailed at court as the new English). This involves for me balancing opposites like black and white, harmony by mentioning each seasons, or times of day, and adding whatever else I feel like to a poem structurally - preferably so the reader is unconscious of it - unless they look closely - in which case they can share the joke. Above all, I value a human response to poetry. Nothing is set in stone.

3) Why do I write what I do?
I used to write and put on plays at school (crocodiles, nightclub singers...) and always thought I would be a novelist. But poems scare me. They are the most ancient form of all. And also the most up-to-date. Generations use poems to remember history, laws and family history from ancient manuscripts to birthday cards. They have no boundaries.

4) How does your writing process work?
Walking round in circles helps. Outside. Usually. Or driving the car places. Then sit somewhere and write stuff down. Edit it later. And again. But sometimes it all happens quickly. And that's cool too.

Next stops on the tour (and more on these 3 shortly) Elizabeth Rimmer here http://burnedthumbblog.blogspot.co.uk/, Andrew McCallum here http://andramccallum2013.wordpress.com/, Dorothy Bruce here http://jingsandthings.wordpress.com/ and back to Jules Horne here http://juleshorne.wordpress.com/

And if that isn't enough for you try Jane Aldous' Jane's Writing Shed http://kitchenpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/

Burn your thumb

Take a look at Burned Thumb in its Facebook entity. (The story of the burned thumb is a good one known to me from the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill and concerns gaining an understanding of all the languages of the world and salmon - subjects close to p&g's heart.)

Elizabeth Rimmer its host describes herself as "poet, gardener and river-watcher". And her site and poetry are full of things pleasing to p&g readers. She is also one of the editors of Stravaig the online journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics.

Find out more here http://burnedthumb.co.uk/ and here https://www.facebook.com/burnedthumb?fref=ts and here http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/RimmerBIOG.html

A p&g magazine plug

Why not treat yourself to a holiday glance at our www.poetandgeek.com magazine?

Featuring the work of poets including Elizabeth Rimmer, Andrew MacCallum, Richie McCaffery, Rafael Ayala Paez, Giles Goodland, Alistair Noon, Vivien Jones, Maeve Henry, Yann Rousselot, Peter Hughes, Michael Pedersen, Tom Murray, Tsead Bruinja, Fiona Sinclair, Daniel de Cullá, Stella Pye, Zion Lights, Shaun Belcher, Natascha Scrivener, Natalie Moores, Susheel Kumar Sharma, Jennifer Sizeland, Bianca Sarafian, B.Z. Niditch, Mary S. McLuskey, Sarah Flint, Jennifer Martin, Allan-Alexander Lawson, Sy Roth, Frank C. Praeger, John Quinn, Phil Isherwood, Felino A. Soriano, Anne Pia, Austin McCarron, Amado Storni, Rehan Qayoom, Joan McNerney, Paul Tristram, Daniel Roy Connelly, Fanni Suto, Marc Carver, Thomas Clark, Sheree Mack, Roger Hickin, Jane Aldous, Michael Lee Johnson, Sara Clark, Sye Sanders, Amy Ekins, B.Z. Niditch, Walter Ruhlmann, Stella Pye, Michelle D'costa, and Ed Waverley.

(And yes of course the qr code works! What do you take us for?)

Tangled web

Spring arrives and the indefatigable Borders poet writes about death.

Andrew McCallum Elizabeth Rimmer Clanjamfry Biggar 2012

Andrew McCallum, the man from Biggar, whose work you can also read in the soon to be released Issue 6 of poetandgeek.com, does what he does best. Enjoy his enigmatic twist on contemporary Scots life with a gothic dash here http://andramccallum2013.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/poking-dead-things-with-a-stick/

Stravaig Scottish geopoetics

Issue 2 of the the online journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics is out now and features new work from Scottish poets and writers including Elizabeth Rimmer (who also edited this issue), Bridget Khursheed and Susan Richardson.

Stravaig is a Scots word meaning a special kind of walk or tour; infinite and open-ended and minded...Robert Macfarlane gives a good definition in his book The Old Ways.

You can view it here http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/online-journal-stravaig/stravaig-issue-2/

Moment of possibility

Sometimes in poems a+b=z.

That moment of transition is something that I hunt out.

Here is an example from Peter Bennet that I return to from the end of his poem the Doll (The Glass Swarm 2008):

...And later, when my light stays on
night after night as I grow fatter
and try to feed its canvas face
with doll food from a doll-sized spoon,
I'll teach it that you told me what to do.

Another from Elizabeth Rimmer from her poem Marrying a Selkie (The Eildon tree magazine 2012):

...He does not think he disapproves,
but all the same on moonless nights
he thinks of women knitting, trays
of tea and scones, with rhubarb jame
blood red on flowered saucers,
and the sound of heads, soft-thumping
into baskets, while the needles click.

And finally from Celso Emilio Ferreiro (Eiquí Será):

Quero morrer eiquí (cando me chegue
a hora da viaxe que me aguarda).
Eiquí  niste silencio
de pompas arroladas,
niste vento que dorme nos piñeiros
un profondo sono de arelanzas.

I would like to die here (when I arrive
at the journey's hour that I hope for).
Here in this silence
of still doves
in this wind that sleeps in the pines
a deep dream of desire.

You can hear the full poem sung here http://celsoemilioferreiro.org/2012/01/%E2%80%9Ceiqui-sera%E2%80%9D-poema-de-celso-emilio-ferreiro-na-voz-de-m-a-gomez-naharro/