Blog tour signpost: Andrew McCallum

And one more signpost from p&g to a blog we like a lot:

Andrew McCallum was born in Wellhead Farm Cottage, just outside Cleghorn, brought up in Carnwath, far frae his hame did wander on reaching his majority, and – after an absence of 25 years – bides back in Biggar, where he can see from his bedroom window, in a cleuch of the Hartree Hills, the farm cottage under the roof-tree of which his mother was born; a circumstance from which, being fond of circles and the completion thereof, he derives great satisfaction. He scribbles poetry, which has been reluctantly and against his better judgement published in twa-three magazines and a wheen o anthologies in Britain and America.

He is currently Secretary of Biggar Museum Trust’s Brownsbank Committee, which sponsors the Brownsbank Writing Fellowship, and convenor of Biggar Writers’ Group. His chapbooks and pamphlets includes Poems Scots and Inglis (2007); ony sma’er thocht (2008); fieldpath and forest trail (2009); Fifty Biggar Little Poems (2011); Angina Pectoris (2012); pièces d’occasion (2013); Tam o Shanter: a post-MacDiarmidean Tale (2013)

You can find his blog enchevêtrements here http://andramccallum2013.wordpress.com/

Blog tour signpost: Dorothy Bruce

And another signpost to an award-winning blog we enjoy.

Dorothy Bruce has been involved with an annual walking and arts festival, destination development, the restoration of a Victorian pier, and wrote a book on Alexander Reid, Vincent van Gogh's Scottish sitter. She seeks to capture her world in words and photographs, an expert at neither, a striver at both. (She says! although she has been featured on Freshly Pressed.) Her novel In the Wake of the Coup will shortly be available as an illustrated, interactive iBook.

Discover more here www.jingsandthings.wordpress.com

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/

Blog tour welcome

p&g is taking part in a blog tour.

An exploration or (if that sounds too energetic) a stravaig through blogs interconnected by friendship, shared interests, common themes - and no doubt some professional rivalry too in some cases!

My wayfaring buddy is Jules Horne prize winning playwright and an extraordinary advocate and mentor at the Creative Arts Business Network of the Scottish Borders (I will tell you more about what they do another time - it would make a good model of practice).

p&g will be signposting you to some more blogs that we think you'll like next week.

You can find Jules' elegantly named Melodious Plotting blog here with a real journey to Estonia http://juleshorne.wordpress.com/ and more about CABN here http://cabn.info/