If you have not managed to link in with tell it slant, Ellen McAteer’s poetry bookshop, check out the fb page.
You can also now buy the book in Aye Aye Books, based in the wonderful Centre for Contemporary Arts at the top of Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow and run by Martin Vincent.
The Poem of the Month for November is wedding, a poem written some years ago when the idea of gay marriage was less fashionable and any ceremonies were not legal and generally hidden.
The poem features in my 2010 collection Good Morning. You can buy the book on-line (PayPal accepted) or at several retailers – ideal Christmas present!!
For any writer, the search for an agent is a hard one. I have recently started and have three rejections to my name to date. I feel confident that the novel To Live With What You Are will fire an agent’s imagination. Till then, I am in good company with the best of novelists facing a similar journey.
So, a positive message taken in the rejection message from Rogers, Coleridge & White of London whose submissions team described the novel thus: “To Live With What You Are is intriguing and original”. Let’s hope the next time it is original, intriguing and spot on for us.
More to follow, folks
The poem of the month for May is a tiny taste of the work of W B Yeats.
From the expansive poetry on Irishness to the yearning of the love poems to Maud Gonne, Yeats, like all great poets, captures the enormity and the insignificance of the human condition.
The Song of Wandering Aengus was sung beautifully by The Waterboys and equally wonderfully by Christy Moore.
I have a poem published in the current edition of Northwords Now.
Page eight (In Blanchland again).
Northwords Now is edited by Chris Powici and available on-line as well as in many outlets. The magazine is excellent and well-produced. And free to all. It is always worth a read.
Follow the link to see February on the Moss, the poem for MarchÂ
You can also find out more about West Moss-side, a farm transformed by Kate Sankey to create a high-quality venue for a range of get-togethers, meetings and craft events. Plus the Trossachs Yurts – a low impact, slow get away. Well worth a visit!
It is a place of real beauty, a “vast expanse of all things damp and wonderful.” (NNR site)
February on the Moss is seen in the photo on the wall at West Moss-Side.
A departure this month. Follow the link to the Red Ensemble video of their interpretation of my poem Right. The ensemble used a recording of my recitation of the poem and Palestinian poet Ghazi Hussein’s recording of his Arabic translation as part of their improvisation. The piece was recorded at Glasgow City Halls.
The accompanying film features dancer Joan Beattie of the Vito Dance Theatre.
Right was originally published in “Chapman†and is in my collection “Good Morning“.
A short review of the collection in the latest edition of Northwords Now.
Guest reviewer Lesley Harrison writes:
“Charlie Gracie’s poems aim to capture the clear, tender moments of beauty around us – how rain brings light with it, the warp and weft of a single-track road, Tam o’ Shanter at bedtime. Good Morning (diehard, 2010) is a quiet celebration of life and living:
“and even when the sunshine bakes us / the rain is only hiding / smirring off the surface of the sea /gathering its breath / for the big Heave Hoâ€.”
The start of a new year and hopefully more joy for our country. Katrina Shepherd’s haiku series was first published in Poetry Scotland: Luckie Mucklebackit (Winter 2012/2013). She celebrates the success of Andy Murray and his visit back home to Dunblane.
With a love of the living beauty of the natural world, Katrina is often inspired by people and nature. Her haiku are published in Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Some have been given awards.
Katrina’s poem In the stillness is now a Christmas carol with music composed by Sally Beamish.