Blue Diode showcase at Mirrorball

by St Mungo's Mirrorball

We’re looking forward to a wonderful evening of poetry on the 26th October from Blue Diode Press supported by readings from Rob A. Mackenzie, Petr Hruška, Jane McKie, Lady Red Ego and Georgi Gill.

Our next Mirrorball Showcase will be held in the CCA Clubroom on 26/10/23 from 7-9pm.

The event will be live streamed on Zoom, for Mirrorball members, thanks to our tech support Mark Cunningham

Tickets: £7 / £5 on the door (Mirrorball members free)

Ages: 18+

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible

Blue Diode is an independent publisher of quality books, mainly poetry, based in Leith, Scotland. their first publication was Spark, a poetry anthology containing many poems written in response to the novels of Muriel Spark. Since then they have published several individual poetry collections. one of which, Juana Adcock’s Split, was the Poetry Book Society Choice for Winter 2019. This book, along with Tessa Berring’s Bitten Hair was highly commended in the Forward Prizes.

Petr Hruška is a poet and literary scholar who lives in Ostrava and works at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He has published eight acclaimed poetry collections, including Darmata (To No Travail, 2012), for which he was awarded the Czech State Award for Literature. His poems have been translated into many European languages and books of his selected poems have been published in Germany, Poland, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia.Everything Indicates, a selected poems, in English translation by Jonathan Bolton, is published by Blue Diode Press in October 2023.

Rob A. Mackenzie is from Glasgow and lives in Leith. He has had three previous full collections published, The Opposite of Cabbage (Salt, 2009) The Good News (Salt, 2013) and The Book of Revelation (Salt, 2020), and two pamphlets, The Clown of Natural Sorrow(HappenStance, 2005) and Fleck & the Bank (Salt, 2012). A fourth collection, Woof! Woof! Woof!, was published by Salt in July 2023. His poems, criticism, reviews, and translations have appeared widely in literary publications. He runs publishing house, Blue Diode Press.

Jane McKie’s first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. Recent collections include Quiet Woman, Stay (Cinnamon Press, 2020) and Jawbreaker (2021), which won the Wigtown Poetry Festival’s Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2021. She works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Blue Diode Press) was published in May 2023.

Lady Red Ego is a Chinese and Scottish lesbian writer concerned with intimacies. Her first pamphlet, The Red Ego, was published in 2019 with Wild Pressed Books and her second pamphlet, Natural Sugars, was published in 2020 by Broken Sleep Books. Your Turn to Speak! (Blue Diode Press) is her debut collection.

Georgi Gill is a writer and researcher whose poems explore a range of themes including the personal and cultural impact of illness and disability, and queer history. Georgi was the inaugural poet-in-residence at the Anatomical Museum in Edinburgh and editor of The Interpreter’s House magazine. Limbo, published by Blue Diode Press, is her first collection and was shortlisted for Scottish First Book of the Year in the 2022 Saltire Society Awards.