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Delighted to announce I’ll be reading at the launch of a new science fiction magazine from Scotland, Shoreline of Infinity, edited by friend and poet Russell Jones. It will feature new fiction, art, articles and reviews, and will have both a digital and old timey paper edition. It’s on Thursday 2 July from 7.30pm, at Paradise Palms, 41 Lothian Street, near the Edinburgh University campus. Hope to see you there!

It’s a night of science fiction performances, with music from Painted Ocean, poetry from Claire Askew and Ryan Van Winkle, story reading from the magazine performed by Debbie Cannon, plus SF inspired artwork, cocktails, books, fun, frivolity and photon cannons.

Free entry. Costumes welcomed. Live long and preposterously.

2nd July 2015 at the wonderful Paradise Palms, Edinburgh, starts 7.30pm

For all our fans in sunny Germany, the Fort Gorgast Festival is on this July, from Thursday 23 to Sunday 26, and I’ll be reading at 2pm on Friday 24. If you’re in town, if you like big fields, camping, sunshine, music and poems and general partytimes, do come along. It’ll be a blast.

Myself and Dan Gorman are taking Viewmaster on the road again, this time for the closing evening of the 46th Poetry International Rotterdam Festival. Get your fix of intimate, nostalgic, private-space poetry in one of the most beautiful poetry festivals on the planet.

Really delighted and honoured to be on one heck of a show for the final Rally & Broad of Season 3, next Friday 19 June. I’ll be joining the incredibly talented poets Ross Sutherland and Hannah Silva, the heartbreaking tunes of Dan Willson aka Withered Hand and Caro Bridges, and of course your congenial hosts Jenny Lindsay and Rachel McCrum. It’s going to be one hell of a night, it’s as ever a bargaintastic £5, really hope to see all of you at the Bongo Club, Cowgate, Friday 19 June, doors at 7pm.

The Poetry School welcomes you to this new poetry podcast, our very first!

For our pilot outing of The Line Break, host Ryan Van Winkle re-visits his 2013 interview with TS Eliot-prize winner, Philip Gross, ranging across making up names for colours, comparing the similarities of poetry and making scones, and asking what happens in the thought vortex of ‘What if, what then?’

Listeners to The Line Break can also join the The Line Break group on CAMPUS, the Poetry School’s free online community for poets.

My poem “Prayer of the Heart” has been included in Communion #3, a literary magazine from Walleah Press in Tasmania. It’s all free online, do check it out.

Delighted to be chairing Tomasz Różycki this Sunday 7 June at Word Power Books.

Word Power Books and Interaktywny Salon Piszących w Szkocji (Interactive Writing Salon in Scotland) are pleased to present an event with one of the most remarkable Polish poets Tomasz Różycki about his work and its translations into English.

Różycki, 45, is the author of seven poetry volumes which have been very well received in his native country and abroad. He was given the Kościelski Award for Dwanaście stacji /Twelve Stations and was shortlisted for the Nike Award (Polish Booker prize) for Kolonie /Colonies. The latter volume translated into English by Mira Rosenthal was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize last year and won the Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation.

Różycki is also a translator in his own right, bringing French authors to the Polish audience.

The event will include readings in both Polish and English as well as conversation with the author. Chaired by Ryan van Winkle.

The event is supported by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Edinburgh and the Polish Cultural Institute in London.

My poem, “Wait, Listen, If”, has been published in The Missing Slate‘s inaugural print issue, 2014: In Retrospect. It appears alongside work from Pakistan, India, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Austria, Barbados, the United Kingdom, the United States, Slovakia, Hungary, Iran, Canada, Ghana, Singapore, Germany, Lebanon, Poland, and Bangladesh, and I’m totally chuffed to be in such fine company.

“The Missing Slate’s inaugural print issue features the best work we’ve published in 2014 — in both web and digital — PLUS content exclusive to the anthology. This issue marks the first time the magazine takes a definitive socio-political stance against the political crises of the moment, with commentaries on the Gaza conflict, nodding at the nature of “freedom”, the increasingly misogynous portrayals of women on TV, dissecting the political undercurrents in superhero mythology, highlighting the forms of sexual power showcased in Pakistani Urdu writer Ismat Chugtai’s work, and humanity’s constant quest for “more”, in thoughtful editorials of current events as part of a larger conversation.”

Good news! I’ll be hosting a brand new podcast, ‘The Line Break’ for The Poetry School, starting tomorrow, Wed 3 June. It’ll appear monthly, and we hope you’ll lend us your ears.

“The Line Break is a free monthly podcast about writing poetry, hosted by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser. For over 7 years Ryan and Colin  have been providing high-quality podcasts for the Scottish Poetry Library and the Scottish Book Trust, in addition to their own Creative Scotland funded Culture Laser programme. Now, we’re very happy to welcome them to CAMPUS for this new podcast series.

During The Line Break, Colin and Ryan will be re-visiting the archives and bringing you some of their favourite interviews and readings with poets from around the world, the ones which have stuck with us most over the years. Blended with the archive recordings will be Ryan’s exclusive new commentary, introducing fresh themes, additional ideas, and creative provocations.

Each episode, Ryan will also offer a few ‘poetry sparks’ for you to try out, opportunities to pause the podcast and work on your own poem-writing assignments. You might have ten minutes to free-write names for an imaginary paint chart, or be asked to describe what a boat made of poetry might look like; every episode will offer a multitude of fun exercises that can be easily fitted into a lunch break or the commute home.

Listeners to the podcast will also be able to subscribe to the The Line Break CAMPUS group, where Ryan will be dropping in supporting material and other poetry bits and bobs, as well as providing a free space where everyone can upload their own poems written in response to each episode.

You can listen to The Line Break on CAMPUS, on Podamatic, and also via the Scottish Poetry Library, as well as subscribing using all the usual services (iTunes, Instacast, etc.) Just look us up! The Poetry School has commissioned an initial season of ten episodes of The Line Break, and with enough success and support, we hope to bring the podcast back for another season.

We sincerely hope that The Line Break becomes your regular poetry coffee break, a little creative lacuna away from the workstation where you can pause your day-to-day thoughts and find some time to listen to and think about poetry, and write some poems of your own.

Listen in this Wednesday 3 June for the launch of the pilot episode.”

Very excited to announce an IRL book tour to go with the virtual tour being made by poems across the internet. If you live in London, Cardiff, Glasgow or Edinburgh, I will soon be in your cities, reading some poems. Here’s the itinerary:

– London — Waterstones Piccadilly, 7pm, Monday 1 June

w/ Penned in the Margins poet Naomi Booth

– Cardiff — Waterloo Tea – Wyndham Arcade, 7pm, Tuesday 2 June

w/ Nia Davies & surprise special guests!!

– Glasgow — Tell It Slant Bookshop, 7pm, Wednesday 3 June

w/ Matthew Siegel: (Matthew Siegel’s Blood Work is out from CB Editions. The deceptive directness of Matthew Siegel’s debut is remarkable’ – Mark Doty)

– Edinburgh — Blackwell’s Bookshop, 6.30pm, Thursday 4 June

w/ Matthew Siegel

– PLUS FREE AFTERPARTY at The Forest Café from 8pm, featuring Supermoon, Hailey Beavis & more!

Hope to see you there.