December showcase

by St Mungo's Mirrorball

Martina Evans will headline our December showcase with readings from James McGonigal, CD Boyland, Medha Singh and David Ross Linklater. The event will take place in the CCA CINEMA (ground floor) on December 14th at 7pm. Members – fee entry, guests £7/£5 on the door.

There will also be a Secret Stanza festive book swap, for those that want a surprise poetry present. Bring along an anonymously wrapped book for the lucky dip if you want to join in (a poetry book that you’ve bought and read, and is still in good condition).

Martina Evans is an Irish poet, novelist and teacher. She grew up in County Cork in a country pub, shop and petrol station and is the youngest of ten children. The author of twelve books of prose and poetry, her work has been highly accoladed including: winner ofPremio Ciampi Internazionale di Poesia 2011 for Facing the Public; winner of The Pigott Poetry Prize 2022 for American Mules which was also a TLS and Sunday Independent Book of the Year. Martina has been Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London from 2003-2007 and again in 2011-2012. She has run workshops and seminars internationally. Currently she is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and Books Critic for the Irish Times. The Coming Thing was published by Carcanet in 2023.

CD Boyland is a poet, visual poet and editor from Cumbernauld. His pamphlets are User Stories; Vessel; SMC (pronounced ‘Seh-mik’) and Ptchdk (‘Pitchdeck’). Together with Julie Laing, he organised ‘off-page’, first in a series of anthology/exhibitions held at Many Studios, Glasgow in March 2023 with support from St Mungo’s Mirrorball. His first full-length poetry collection (Mephistopheles) will be published by Blue Diode Press in November 2023. Other work has been published in magazines and anthologies such as: 3AM Magazine, Gutter, The Interpreter’s House, The North and New Writing Scotland. He also co-edits the Glasgow Review of Books.

James McGonigal is a poet and editor, formerly a schoolteacher, teacher educator and professor of education. He is Edwin Morgan’s biographer and literary executor, and has published selections of his letters and uncollected prose, and a critical introduction for school students. His poetry has appeared from the 1990s onwards in Mariscat Press pamphlets and in three collections from Red Squirrel Press, most recently Life Sentences (2023). Cloud Pibroch (2010) won the Michael Marks Award.

Medha Singh is a poet, translator, and editor. She is editor of Berfrois, London. She has published a collection of love letters that she translated from the French, penned by Indian modernist painter Sayed Haider Raza during his time in France, I Will Bring My Time: Love Letters by S.H. Raza (Vadehra Art Gallery, 2020). Her work has been published widely and translated into Hindi, Spanish and French. Medha was longlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Awards (India) in 2019 and 2020. She took her MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. Winner of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award 2023 for Poetry, her collection of poems is forthcoming.

David Ross Linklater is a poet from Balintore, Easter Ross. He is the author of four pamphlets, most recently Star Muck Bourach (Wish Fulfillment Press, 2022). His work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Butcher’s Dog, Bath Magg and New Writing Scotland. He won the 10th Ó Bhéal’ International Poetry Competition, was awarded joint first place in the 2022 Neil Gunn Poetry Competition, is the recipient of a Dewar Arts Award and has been shortlisted for both the New Writers Award and the Edwin Morgan Award. He lives and writes in Glasgow, where he works as a screen printer.  @DavidRossLinkla / www.davidlinklaterpoetry.