Surroundings

As ever with this annual blog feature, these are collections I read or finished in 2014, but were not necessarily published this year. Go...

So that’s a No vote in the referendum and I hear people from both sides of the debate already looking to the future, a future in which the S...

1. We are asked whether we want to be an independent country. Someone from the Conservative Party says we’d be better with the UK’s “safety ...

Friday 15 August, The Fruitmarket Gallery , 45 Market St, Edinburgh: you can hear six poets for the price of only £5, and it's a great...

Fleeting tails in a corner of emptiness just leaving the frame, the photographer filming swallows has to learn to love failure, how the ...

The Hidden Door Festival took place over nine days in Edinburgh from 28 March–5 April 2014. HD had hired 23 of the city’s disused vaults a...

I really love this poem, ' When Someone Goes Away, Everything That's Been Done Comes Back ' by Macedonian poet, Nikola Madzirov ...

I have read four books, all completely different from one another and all brilliant in their own way. I will try to write more soon about Je...

What came through my letterbox yesterday? A selection of leaflets advertising carry-out pizzas and other foods, two envelopes containing jun...

The last year hasn’t exactly been the most productive for me in terms of writing new poems. I have tried and mostly failed, with a few excep...

I went to the StAnza International Poetry Festival for the first time in 2006, commuting for a day or two and knowing hardly anyone there, b...

There are, of course, many books I have not yet had a chance to read this year, some of which might have sneaked into this Top 10 list e.g. ...

There have been moments when I’ve stopped doing readings, more or less, and even stopped attending them (with occasional exceptions made), m...

While many poets seem to have got their knickers in an unsavoury twist over royal shindig invitations, I (good republican that I am) have be...

Seeing as I am in a mood for list-making, and seeing that I have been reading (and have now almost finished) Morrissey’s Autobiography , whi...

I recently read an article on Edinburgh’s live poetry scene – not the best informed of articles, as it managed to omit two of the best regul...

Jonathan Mills, director of the Edinburgh International Festival, has said that the festival next year will not feature events concerned wit...

There are moments in a poet’s life - few and usually far between - that begin to take on a surreal quality, when a poem you wrote seems to g...

I now can't find the link to this, but the judges of this year's Forward Poetry prizes have said that there will be 'surprises...

I wasn’t looking forward to listening to Never Let Me Down . Bowie himself said it was the worst album he’d ever made and that opinion seem...