Edinburgh live poetry at its best

Eleanor Livingstone lives in Fife. She has been widely published in the UK, Ireland and the US, and some of her poems are presently being translated into Lithuanian.
Recent publications include her chapbook collection, The Last King of Fife (HappenStance, 2005) and, as editor, Skein of Geese (The Shed Press/StAnza, 2008) and Migraasje: Versions in Scots and Shetlandic (Stravaigers, 2008).
She is Artistic Director of StAnza: Scotland’s Poetry Festival.

how to watch a seagull die

The parent birds must build a nest
on the brick cliffs of our chimney stack
three hundred yards from the promenade;
and the first we’ll know of it will be
when two pompoms of grey fluff
land on the half roof overlooked
by the photocopier and the fax machine.

And though the mother gull
will dive at us, squawking every time
she sees us dart from car to office door,
we’ll watch as spring warms into summer
and the fledglings sleep and peck and flap their way
into adulthood, growing sleek grey feathers,
discarding the fluff of their infant lives.

Eyeing us through the glass, impatiently they’ll pace
the five square yards of roof, measuring by hops
and runs and wingspans, readying for take-off.
Then some fine morning, we’ll arrive to find one
not asleep but huddled, less, trying again
and again to shake his fractious feathers
into place; and again. All day

while the fax machine bleeps
and the photocopier hums away
we’ll watch from our side of the window
one eye on the clock, knowing that at five
we’ll pull down the blinds, switch off
the photocopier and leave the office,
avoiding the eye of the waiting mother bird.

– Originally published in Magma.

Taster No. 1 – Mike Stocks

Here’s an updated programme for the Great Grog poetry readings in Edinburgh from now until February 2009. All events start at 8pm. The address is 43 Rose Street (take the first left going up Hanover Street. The Great Grog is thirty yards along the road)

I’ve given links to the June 2008 poets: websites of Kapka Kassabova, Mike Stocks and Jim Carruth, and Eleanor Livingstone’s HappenStance page. I hope to have bios and poems coming soon to this site.

Sunday 8th June, 2008
Kapka Kassabova
Mike Stocks
Eleanor Livingstone
Jim Carruth

Sunday 14th September, 2008
Michael Schmidt
Helena Nelson
Dorothy Baird
Charlotte Runcie

Sunday 12th October, 2008
Kei Miller
Hamish Whyte
Rob A. Mackenzie
Alice Howlett

Sunday 9th November, 2008
A.B. Jackson
Colin Will
Patricia Ace
James W. Wood

Sunday 8th February 2009
Tim Turnbull
Andrew Philip
Andrew Shields
Alan Gay

and coming after that (among others) – Claire Crowther, Kevin Cadwallender, Brian Johnstone, Ivy Alvarez, Julia Rampen etc.

*
And previously at the Great Grog:

Sunday 11th May, 2008
Alan Gillis
Sally Evans
Barbara Smith
Claire Askew

Sunday 13th April, 2008
Tom Pow
Joy Hendry
Margaret Christie
Elizabeth Gold

Sunday 10th February 2008
Cheryl Follon
Hazel Frew
Alexander Hutchison
Christie Williamson

Sunday 4th November 2007
Roddy Lumsden
AB Jackson
Andrew Philip
Rob A Mackenzie

Sally Evans lived in Edinburgh for many years where she developed Poetry Scotland broadsheet . Sally and Ian now live in Callander and continue to publish diehard poetry books. Sally’s new book is a long poem, The Bees, and she is delighted to read from it in her old stamping ground, at the Great Grog .

Hares in Camp (from The Great North Road)

The dandelion clocks are closed.
A stir of wind will open them
and April showers will weigh them down
to wet flock, their pink hollow stems
oozing white stain like setting glue
that blackens children’s hands.

Hares’ bold paws bounce.
They are bound by spring
to race round acres in a ring,
to box and feint and frighten horses,
to impress their cousins, trump their mates
with poetry performances

we cannot emulate
as we lean on the wooden fence
beside our footpath, watching them
in their arena shared with gods
and Romans, this field still marked out
a playing-card game for their courses.

You can read another poem of Sally’s, That Moment, in Juliet Wilson’s Bolts of Silk blogzine.

Here’s a brief bio and poem from Claire Askew, one of four poets reading at the Great Grog on Sunday May 11th.

Claire Askew’s work has appeared in Brittle Star, Pomegranate and the Glasgow Herald, and is forthcoming in the Edinburgh Review, Textualities and Snakeskin. She is the Editor in Chief of the ‘Read This,’ a magazine which encourages submissions from new and young writers. Claire was awarded the Grierson Verse Prize 2008 and the Lewis Edwards Award for Poetry 2008, and was also joint-winner of the Sloan Prize for a short story in Lowland Scots.

Built in

I am still in here, despite the siege. Still here,
behind the maze of scaffolding and duckboards –
business almost as usual, though I daren’t leave.

I watch the men through the drawn blind like TV,
as they paint over the rotting windowframes,
drink tea from flasks, sandblast, dig up pipes outside.

I keep the windows locked, just in case – paranoid,
I hide the jewellery box . On cold days, they slither
about on the slats, four floors up – a precarious ballet.

Some nights, I like to haul myself through
the wet window with a steaming cup, and sway
on the scaffold, scaring myself. I can choose –

to look out over the rainy slates, streetlights, the stretch
of council yards, or plunge. (Cobbles wink in the alley
below, its discarded mattress a festering fall-breaker.)

But it will be gone soon, this crows’ nest, climbing-frame
for drunks, this cage. They will come in the morning,
wake me early, and pack it away, whistling.

Its been good to read blog reactions to the last gig at the Great Grog, particularly as they have been so positive. It was a superb evening and, if you missed it, you can read reports from Andrew Philip, Colin Will, and my inevitable fluff on Surroundings.

The next gig was going to be on Sunday 8th June, and that is still on. However, I can now reveal that there will be an extra date, on Sunday 11th May 2008! The line-up? Well, I’m still working on that, but I hope to have everything finalised very soon…