Of poems and canapes

Well, Roncadora and The Green Tea House in Moniaive are a wholly delicious combination. Not often enough are words inadequate to describe canapes, but they were on Saturday.
Hugh's art covered the big wall, the woodburner glowed on the other and all the little tables and rush-seated chairs were filled with poetry lovers. 

Andrew Forster read from 'Territory' and 'Digging' (after he'd reminisced about the lovely food he'd eaten in The Green Tea House when he was D&G's Lit Dev Officer).  Andy's work weighs every word carefully in its beautifully conversational cadences.  A treat.

Rab Wilson read from his recent collection 'A Map for the Blind' and from '1957 Flying Scot'.  All about a bike - and a passion:  'Finely bred racing greyhound of a bike'.  This Roncadora work of art comes with cds of Rab speaking, and saxophonist Ben Bryden playing the music he wrote for Rab's words.  (I'm listening to it now).

Hugh McMillan, widely acknowledged as a brilliant reader.  You brace yourself to laugh till it hurts (the letters excusing attendance at Culloden etc, due to difficulties with Apex tickets and the like. 'My heart bleeds in this Travelodge'.).  But Hugh does much more than funny.  He writes unerringly along some risky brink.  I often find it heartbreaking.  Look out for Hugh's New and Selected - A Thin Slice of Moon, published by Roncadora, and out Very Soon.

Hugh Bryden's listening.  But he did read too, (there's nothing Hugh B can't do).  Everyone liked the seagull poem (one for Dumfries, you see).  It went:
Seagull
Sees gull
Seize gull

Here I am, reading from 'Lost at Sea'.  I do look as if I've just noticed a very large spider approaching across the ceiling, mid-line. 
But it was a lovely chance to try out new poems from 'The Dark Farms'.  I kept noticing how ghostly they are. I do hope they were scary. Here's a few lines from 'Names Spoken in Kirk':

And by the light of elder stars
I know the people of this kirk
have slipped their names.

O constellations hear our prayer.
There's no wood in this kirk any more.
It eyes the sky.  It's purely stones and air.

Roncadora Poets read in The Green Tea House Sat 3 March

I'm looking forward to reading among the talent and bone-dry wit of the Roncadora Poets in what must be one of the most perfect settings for verse - The Green Tea House in Moniaive. We're all published by Dumfries and Galloway’s award-winning Roncadora Press and will endeavour to woo and wow you on Saturday 3 March at 7pm. Tickets are £6, available from 01848 200099.

Here's the infamous team photo (as once captioned by Hugh McMillan: 'Roncadora are a family firm purveying mutton pies, butteries, mince rounds and bread and butter puddings. The present board of directors, photographed here, pride themselves on providing high calorie fare for the most discerning of palates."  Speak for yourself Hugh.).

More truthfully, you, the audience, can expect varied and engaging poetry helpfully complemented by a free glass of wine and canapés created by The Green Tea House. Hot drinks will also be available.

Roncadora Press is owned and managed by Hugh Bryden, renowned artist, teacher, writer – and increasingly well-regarded publisher. Roncadora Press was shortlisted in 2008 for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for Pamphlet Poetry with Hugh’s own pamphlet ‘If Ah Could Talk tae the Airtists’; then won the prize in 2009 with well- published poet Hugh McMillan’s ‘Postcards from the Hedge’, and was shortlisted again in 2011 with Jean Atkin’s ‘Lost at Sea’.

Roncadora has also been successful in the prestigious Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet competition, shortlisted in 2010 with ‘Devorgilla’s Bridge’ by Hugh McMillan and again in 2011 with a selection of work by the poets reading at this event.

The reading at the Green Tea House will feature work by Jean Atkin, Hugh Bryden, Andrew Forster, Hugh McMillan and Rab Wilson. We'll read from recently published work, but promise also to provide a taster of new poems on their way to publication, in a conversational evening.

 

Poem of the 18th century Publican: Robert Burns, you're bard!

...by Hugh McMillan.  Well, who else?

 

The sun was shining on Dumfries, and I was tempted out a-Poem Hunting again with my trusty point-and-shoot. 

Inside the Coach and Horses on the Whitesands lurk short poems built on dreadful puns; Jackie Galley's marvellously strange thoughts on the Gulls of Dumfries;  Pippa Little's feline first footer...

I walked up Bank Street and back past The Stove, which already had a few window-readers.  So I moved to the next window and this time I read Chrys Salt's poem about Angus McPhee.  I read Roger Hutchinson's book at Christmas, and there's a wonderful blog too, written by artist Joanne B. Kaar http://joannebkaarbakersbotanistswhalers.blogspot.com/ Thanks Chrys.

 It really was a crisp and lovely day.  Through the narrow vennel to The Globe, which is packed with poems.  Where to start - Sarah Hymas (love this one), Josephine Dickinson, Polly Atkin, Rebecca Sharp, Angus MacMillan...  No sun down by The Globe, but I stood there freezing and reading.  So did a couple of other passers-by.

I warmed up on the way across to Burns' house.  Swarms of escaping schoolchildren packed the street end, while I read poems by Mike Barlow, Stephanie Green (very witty - see below), Jane Routh, Vivien Jones, JoAnne McKay, Fiona Russell and many more excellent verses. 

What fine places to place fine poems.  Thank you, Hugh Bryden and Dave Borthwick, who have probably seen enough melinex to last them till next January.

And I still haven't had time to read them all.

Scotland's Poetry Capital

I've returned from my first visit to St Andrew's and StAnza 2011, head spilling over with words.  It's felt like a long weekend because so much was new and so much was going on, and now I'm back, a short one.

The town seemed almost constantly sunny, crowstepped, winding, full of people.  Hey, it's nice, though I did think the high-end shopping must reflect the royals-at-uni element.   

The only regular festival dedicated to poetry in Scotland had chosen as themes for 2011 Timepiece and The Poet's Ark.  Certainly I heard great discussions of history in poetry - and some great poems - at a delicious Poetry Breakfast (pastries, poetry and coffee, I rest my case).  And interesting thoughts about how writing about place implicitly invites us to write about time.  And Polly Atkin did a great reading (at pointblank range, standing in for a missing poet) which addressed the Ark.   Eerie, feral foxes and a wonderfully exact little poem I've heard before featuring frogs in a child's red tin wheelbarrow.

A treat for me was to be there with what Hugh Bryden calls the 'Roncadora Stable'.  www.hughbryden.com  Roncadora featured in the StAnza programme as one of the invited exhibitions ‘Black and White’, which was installed in the picturesque – and appropriate – half timbered surroundings of the Trust House Museum. 

Rab Wilson and Hugh McMillan both read on the main programme.  Rab was launching not only his new pamphlet (though that is too small a word for this creation) ‘Ye’re There Horace!’, a Scots version of Horace’s Odes, but also his great new collection from Luath, ‘A Map for the Blind’.  (I still want one Rab).

Hugh McMillan’s reading was likewise at sell-out, with the audience emerging still grinning.  His new Roncadora pamphlet, a nifty version of drystone origami, ‘Cairn’ is a bit of a beauty.

Andy Forster, who was Literature Development Officer in D&G for 5 years before he went off to work for The Wordsworth Trust over the border in Cumbria, was at StAnza with his lovely Roncadora pamphlet ‘Digging’.  He was very good at being there for the craic, too.    

I went to see my Roncadora pamphlet, ‘Lost At Sea’, looking beautiful in an old fashioned glass-topped museum case in the Trust House Museum.  I met many new friends in the space of three days, and was made very welcome.

From Catriona Taylor's 'A Thousand Sails' inspired by Sorley McLean

 Sleep was short and the gaps between readings, workshops, exhibitions, discussion groups and talking a lot in the café-bar were extremely short.  Highlights were the Poet’s Market, the SPL's gigantic Knit A Poem (it’s a Dylan Thomas poem and would cover a village green), Philip Gross, Ciaran Carson, Douglas Dunn, Marilyn Hacker, Catriona Taylor’s gorgeous exhibition ‘A Thousand Sails’ inspired by Sorley McLean, and more…

Stones, Motels and Roncadora Press

Graham Fulton reading from Black Motel



Hugh McMillan reading Cairn



The cafe bar at Gracefield Arts Centre was filled with laughing people this evening, who just now and again emitted The Pause, followed by The Slight Sigh.  So it was cracking good poetry from Graham Fulton, visiting us from Paisley, and from Hugh McMillan, who must have rowed in from Penpont.

Roncadora Press has its beautiful work all over the walls.  There was Rab's 'Horace's First Buik o Satires', and Andy Forster's 'Digging', the Devorgilla Bridge (that got its piccy in The Guardian last year) and John Burns' new pamphlet with the glorious coloured cover. Hugh B has made such an amazing job of 'Lost At Sea' that I feel no shame at all standing in front of it admiringly.