Just before Christmas I was browsing in my local bookshop and I came across a journal called ‘Scribble-out Poetry’. In this journal there are individual pages of sample text from some of history’s greatest works, ready to be blacked out with a marker to form poetry. But what is Scribble-out Poetry? A quick internet search […]
Tag: Poems
Words and Music at MILK Café is one of Scotland’s longest running open mic nights, which I co-host with fellow poet Gayle Smith. It was founded by writer and former reporter Pamela Duncan, poet Janet Paisley and poet Hughie Healy in 1990. They met every month in Sammy Dow’s pub in the south side of […]
When reading a great book you will always come across a few lines or paragraphs that will make you pause for a moment, they will make you laugh, cry, gasp, look inwardly at yourself, and say ‘wow’. These parts of the book are often quoted again and again by other readers in book reviews and […]
I Submitted My Poems and Prose To 100 Different Places… Now What? For the past two years, I’ve taken part in a challenge I’ve named the 100 Rejections Challenge. I’ve explained a bit more about it and my reasons for undertaking such a challenge in another blog post, but for the purposes of this one, […]
The opportunity ambushed me, in a way. A dear poet friend of mine, Gayle Smith, needed another member for her team in the Greater Glasgow slam, and I had offered myself. Three days before the slam was to start, I thought ‘might as well’. You could read from a sheet of paper, notebook or folder, […]
Belated Happy holidays. Holly, jolly holiday season. It was that time of year again. The Christmas adverts were out, Christmas films were back-to-back on the TV, we had Christmas snow (or, in the case of my hometown, a slippery slick of sugar-coated sheet ice), the same five Christmas songs were on a loop in all […]
In life, you have groups you work well in, and ones you don’t. It applies just as much to writing collaboratively as it does to everything else. I conveniently forgot about the horrible experiences I’ve had working with others when I eagerly signed up to contribute to an online magazine in August last year. I […]
I was a bit worried. Not overly worried, just a little. My little brother was having a party. (I can’t call him my “little” brother anymore, seeing as he’s 6 ft and I’m 4’11” but oh well). He wanted me out of the house, not because he hated my company or anything but because it […]