November 16th Mirrorball

by St Mungo's Mirrorball

A showcase of the best new Scottish poetry collections with: William Letford, supported by Marjorie Lofti, Andy Jackson, Eleanor Livingstone & Tracy Patrick.

Our next Mirrorball Showcase will be held in the CCA clubroom from 7pm-9pm on 16th November 2023, and will be live streamed on Zoom for members – thanks to our tech support, Mark Cunningham Guest price is £7 or £5 conc

William Letford first appeared in Carcanet’s New Poetries V (2011) and published his first collection of poetry, Bevel (2012), while working as a roofer. Since then, his work has been adapted into film, projected onto buildings, carved into monuments, adapted for the stage, written onto skin, cast out over the radio, and performed by orchestras. He has helped restore a Medieval village in the mountains of Northern Italy, taught English in Japan, fished with his bare hands in Indonesia, and been invited to perform in Iraq, South Korea, Lebanon, Australia, Germany, India, Poland, and many more countries. Billy now has three books published, all with Carcanet Press. The latest of these is From Our Own Fire which has just come out.

Marjorie Lotfi is an Iranian-American who has lived in the UK for over 20 years. She’s a winner of the inaugural James Berry Prize, and her first collection The Wrong Person to Ask was published by Bloodaxe Books in October. She’s regularly commissioned to write new work, most recently The World May Be the Same with Hannah Lavery (supported by The Edwin Morgan Trust) and also writes and performs regularly with the 12 Collective of women writers.  Marjorie is a Co-Founder and Director of Open Book, which runs over 1,000 shared reading and creative writing workshops each year across Scotland, the Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees for StAnza and an editor for New Writing Scotland.  

Andy Jackson is author of four poetry collections, including A Beginner’s Guide to Cheating (Red Squirrel Press, 2015) and The Saints Are Coming (Blue Diode, 2020). His new collection Games Night was published by Red Squirrel Press earlier this year. He is also editor of a dozen anthologies including Scotia Extremis with Brian Johnstone (Luath, 2019). Andy was Makar to the Federation of Writers Scotland in 2017. He is co-editor of the magazine Poetry Scotland, runs the Otwituaries blog and is currently developing the Lonely Funeral project in Scotland.

Eleanor Livingstone’s first full collection, Even the Sea, re-issued in 2023, was shortlisted for the 2010 inaugural London New Poetry award for first collections. Selections of poems from Even the Sea have been translated into six other languages. Her other publications include The Last King of Fife, A Sampler, and as editor Skein of Geese, Migraasje, Bridging the Continental Divide, Necessarily Looking Backward and The Arch. Her new collection, Surprising the Misses McRuvie, is from Red Squirrel Press, 2023. She lives in Fife where she worked as a paralegal and creative writing tutor before becoming Festival Director for StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival from 2010 to 2021.

Tracy Patrick‘s new pamphlet, Out of the North, published by Maytree Press, is an original long poem sequence based on the life of the Reverend Joseph Johnston in his letters to thePaisley & Renfrewshire Gazette during the First World War. Tracy is a former Clydebuilt mentee and has an MLitt from Glasgow University. She is the author of one novel, Blushing is for Sinners, and three poetry publications, Wild Eye Fire Eye, Portrait and Painting San Romano.