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This Friday artist Michelle Elrick will be in The Forest Café with “Notes from the Fort”, a series of performance installations that create intimate places in unfamiliar environments through the play act of fort building. Using only existing structures and a suitcase full of hand-crafted materials, each fort is constructed, inhabited, noted and dismantled in a live poetic document of sense of place and the origins of home.

She will be double-billing with Viewmaster, myself and Dan Gorman’s poetic slideshow for your eyes and ears only. You choose the journey and we will bring you on a sometimes surprising, sometime surreal, tour accompanied by the ambient sounds of the man they call Dan. Performances are one-to-one-to-Viewmaster, and last under 10 minutes. A rare chance to travel, listen and pause in one beautiful space.

What: Notes From the Fort / Viewmaster

Where: The Forest Café, 141 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh

When: 10 May, 8pm

How Much: FREE

In case you’ve missed them in the past few weeks, here’s the most recent editions of the Culture Laser podcast for you listening pleasure. Brew up a steamy cuppa tea, put your feet up and enjoy!

Paper Trails with Mandy Haggith

I got rid of my printer a few weeks ago because I’d stopped using it. So is everyone reducing the amount of paper they use? Considering the sheer volume of my literary output, I obviously have a very special relationship with paper, and so I was fascinated to sit down to talk with activist and writer Mandy Haggith, author of Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash – the True Cost of Paper, a book about where all the paper we use comes from. She shares a number of alarming statistics- including the fact that catalogue retailer Argos used to be responsible for 1 per cent of the UK’s total consumption of paper. We also feature the track ‘Ghosts’ from Hiva Oa.

Elena Alexieva

During a recent trip to Sofia, Bulgaria for Literature Across Frontiers, I put out a call for interesting people to meet and was put in touch with the Bulgarian writer Elena Alexieva. Although initially described to me as a crime writer, I soon discovered she was much more than that. I also caught up with poet and translator Ivan Hristov while he was in Sofia and we feature one of his songs, Rado Fair Rado.

Richard Holloway

Art can change lives, change societies and start revolutions. So we find out on this week’s episode featuring broadcaster and writer Richard Holloway, chairman of Sistema Scotland, a charity set up in the belief that children can gain huge social benefits by playing in a symphony orchestra. Richard also discusses his work with LGBT Youth Scotland and some of the reasons why he stepped down as Bishop of Edinburgh. We also feature a poem from Jacob Sam-La Rose (@jsamlarose) about young people describing their own lives in a poetic way. And we squeeze in the fantastic track ‘I Believe’ from Edinburgh based singer Lake Montgomery.

In one fascinating conversation, Singaporean poet Alvin Pang discusses language identity, Singapore literature and poetic practice with at the StAnza 2013 poetry festival. Alvin reads his poems and a selection from his anthology TUMASIK: Contemporary Writing from Singapore. Alvin has a great sense of humour, a marvelous reading voice, and shares some razor-sharp perspectives on the political power of both his poetry and its playfulness. Elsewhere, he talks about how Seamus Heaney influenced his work, his grandmother’s deadly Cantonese aphorisms and he reads a poem of his written in the distinctive unofficial language of Singapore, Singlish, the existence of which, he argues, has huge potential political power. I learned a lot, and if you click the play button, I just know you will too.

My poems “There is No Library for What I Know of Books”, “Untitled (Ristovic)” and “Opinions, Not Facts” have all been published by the handsome 3:AM Magazine. They involve travel, making out, fights, books & hypothetical sex (is there any other kind?).

The site features writing of many stripes, and you can while away many a wistful hour reading artists’ thoughts on a great many topics. It is humbling company, and I urge you to take your computing device for a spin around the 3:AM poetry section.

Exciting news! This May I’m heading to continental Europe to join our friends Zoë Skoulding, Alan Holmes and the good people at Literature Across Frontiers for a joint English/Czech reading. If you’re in Prague this Spring/Summer come and join us!

Literature Across Frontiers

Tuesday 14/5/2013, 20:00 hrs

Presented by Alexandra Büchler in Czech and English
Divus (South Wing), Bubenská 1, Praha 7
Literature Across Frontiers presents two poets from Britain known for taking innovative approaches to performing poetry using multimedia, new technology, and theatre settings. Zoë Skoulding’s performance features sound art and photographs by Alan Holmes, with recordings of her poetry in Czech translation. Ryan van Winkle, an American settled in Edinburgh, makes poetry into theatre and uses video clips, podcasts and other ways of communicating with audiences.

Hope to see you there!

On Tuesday 23 April (which is only WORLD BOOK NIGHT) I’ll have the great pleasure of chairing an evening with Scottish novelist, poet, writer, musician and all round good guy Andrew Greig at Edinburgh’s own Blackhall Library. Andrew is a marvellous writer whose recent play Found at Sea had a sell-out run at the Traverse Theatre and whose upcoming novel Fair Helen will be launched at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.

Andrew will be reading from his latest work & we’ll be chatting about his books, poems, career and upcoming releases. It’s going to be great fun and we’ll all have a merry old time.

What: Andrew Greig

Where: Blackhall Library, 56 Hillhouse Rd, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH4 5EG

When: Tuesday 23 April, 6.30pm

How Much: Free!

Hope to see y’all there!

At the Edinburgh International Science Festival we took the time to sit down and talk with Peter Lovatt (aka Dr Dance) to discuss the importance of improvisation for creativity and the science of dance. In a really cool conversation we get some of Peter’s tips for improvisation (for example, wherever you go, look for one new or unexpected thing) and he shares his amazing story of how he taught himself to read at the age of 22, how a whole world of meaning opened up to him, and how language skills are damaged, learned and recovered through dance. If you want to find out more, check out his TED talk, and if that all seems terribly prosiac, we also feature a great song to dance to, the Banana Song from Bobok.

In this edition of the Culture Laser we talk with playwright Jo Clifford about Spanish theatre, particularly her translation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, becoming a performer and how being a trans* woman has influenced her writing and informed her cultural views. Jo says, “I’m not a male playwright, I’m not a female playwright, I’m a transsexual woman playwright”. We had a fascinating discussion about the dangers of writing, cultural misogyny, the power of adaptation, the power that theatre can have over an audience (and a playwright!). You can find out a whole lot more about Jo on her website! We also feature the track ‘Won’t Wait’ from Turtle Lamone’s album Bedroom Walls.

Click the tiny triangle for a fantastic half hour of words.

Today I’ve got some great news for all y’all who’ve been following our podcasts! The World Wide Poetry Studio is my new blog series for the Prairie Schooner magazine. In it, we’ll be featuring some of my favourite and most interesting poets in conversation from around the world. The first installment features one of my true literary loves, the brilliant poet, critic, and artist Mary Ruefle. Follow the link to visit the Prairie Schooner and to see how Mary ‘recognises the knock.’ There will be more of these throughout the year.

Glasgow’s Outskirts Festival is back for its second year in Platform, Easterhouse, and I am joining them. Outskirts celebrates art that crosses boundaries, blurs the lines between disciplines and salutes those artists who thrive on the edges, and got huge praise from all and sundry for their inaugural show last year.

This time round I’ll be reading some poems, and later in the evening putting my conversational skills to work as host/interrogator for journalist, novelist and comedian Rob Newman. Rob is a really talented writer and an ardent ecologist (which we love), he’ll be talking about his new book The Trade Secret, published by our friends at Cargo, and I’ll be posing him the tough questions, like “what is the secret of the trade”.

If that weren’t enough, the day-long festival features music from A Hawk and a Hacksaw, The Crying Lion and Frist Frugt, performances from Sonata for a Man and a Boy, Xana Marwick – You Suffer but Why, plus some excellent installations and exhibitions that will give you pause then blow your mind. See you there.

What: Platform presents: Outskirts Festival 2013

When: Saturday 20 April, 3.30pm-10pm. There’s a bus from Mono Café to Platform at 2.30, and one back at 10, for a pleasant £4 round trip. (I’m on about 6.45 and in conversation with Rob about 8pm)

Where: Platform, The Bridge, 1000 Westerhouse Road, Glasgow, G34 9JW. Platform has a handy guide on how to get there.

How Much: £15 / £12.50 LOCAL LINKS – Ticket with food
£10/ £7.50  LOCAL LINKS
Under 12s Free without food
Recommended for the whole family.

I’m really excited to be part of this, and it would be mega cool to see you there.