Windows for Burns Night 2013 (there's just time)

Now we've, roughly speaking, survived 2012, the inspired combo of Hugh Bryden and Dave Borthwick are once again calling on living poets to help celebrate Scotland's best dead bard, Robert Burns.

Handwritten poems will fill the windows of the Globe Inn, The Coach and Horses and the Robert Burns House Museum from 14th January to 11th February, and as Mr Burns' birthday was on 24th January, there'll be plenty of time to raise a glass to his memory.  

Windows for Burns Night 2012 expanded rapidly into an international event with hundreds of poems being submitted from Scotland, Europe and the USA.  If you want to take part this year, you should write your poem in a bold black pen onto an A4 sheet of paper, scan/save as jpeg and email to roncandorapress@gmail.com by Monday 7th January.  

A ballot of Globe Inn customers selected one poem written by Kelloholm poet Kris Haddow which has been engraved on a window pane in the pub.

And here's the original, by the Man himself.

Windows for Burns - poems all over Dumfries

It's January in Dumfries.  Which means the wind whistles through the streets, and it's nearly Robert Burns' birthday.

He would surely raise a glass to see the windows of some of his favourite hostelries covered in poems. 

On Friday afternoon I took a camera to find poems on windaes. (It was windae all right). And a cheerful man was holding onto the roof of his market stall with both hands. "I'm surfing!" he cried.

'Windows for Burns', invented by artist, poet and publisher Hugh Bryden and Glasgow University lecturer Dave Borthwick, expanded rapidly into an international event.  Hugh and Dave invited contemporary poets from Scotland and as far afield as the USA, Sweden and all over Europe to submit their own work for display as window poems, and received hundreds in response.

Tucked away around the participating venues, see below, you'll find poems from Jen Hadfield, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, Jean Sprackland, Andrew Greig and many other fine poets.  Hugh (who must be travelling even faster than the wind through Dumfries this month) even zoomed round Primary seven pupils at Heathhall, St Teresa’s, Loreburn, Holywood and Shawhead Primaries, who also have their window poems displayed.  How good is this?

So go poem-hunting. Windows for Burns is out there till 31 January, and you can find poems in

• The Globe Inn
• The Stove on the High Street
• Robert Burns House Museum in Burns Street
• The Coach and Horses on the Whitesands

And as part of the Big Burns Supper event in Dumfries 27th and 28th January, 30 of the finest poems will be projected onto The Stove, to mark its opening as Dumfries' new arts centre.  Have a poem and a pint with the Bard.