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This is always one of my favourite typesetting & design projects of the year: luxuriantly austere & beautiful production values & printed on gorgeous paper stock; the pamphlet as artwork in service to the poems.

A little (Nestling) bird tells me that poetry’s premier fountain pen aficionado will be on BBC Radio Scotland this morning to chat about the art of handwriting… while we wait, why not enjoy this Royal Literary Fund piece by the very same Stylophile? The Dark Horse rlf.org.uk/posts/the-styl…

The Met Office is saying there’s supposed to be FIFTY MILE AN HOUR GUSTS here RIGHT NOW; I’m looking out the window and it appears to be practically FLAT CALM. 🤷‍♂️🤦🤣🤣

My conversation with Caite and James - two journalistic stars of tomorrow, you heard it here first! ✨ - was a brilliant Book Week Scotland highlight. Listen again thanks to the technical magic of the SLIC award-commended team at Libraries South Lanarkshire Lending Voices 🎙️🎧

🧵A year before my own hounding started, there was another poetry stramash involving many of the same people, directed at the poet Toby Martinez de las Rivas. I don't know Martinez, felt outside of it all, but observed it fairly horrified at the time. /1/

Fantastic piece here, by poet and publisher Rob Mackenzie. Just one reason I balk at wilful misinterpretations of texts. Martinez was not and still is not even on this site, I believe. Nevertheless, it was a very ugly event, with serious impacts: thedarkhorsemagazine.com/Featured/poetr…

A wee special offer in this season of gifts: 👇

A fellow literature lover is getting this gem for Xmas - if you’re also a fan of poetic prose and nature-nurtured adolescent adventures, DM The Dark Horse to order! 🤞the wet weather doesn’t make my seed paper gift bag start sprouting before it reaches its new home… 🦊💝🪺

Four winter solstice poems. 🌅

A great conversation about Kirsten's fine novel—a work of deep scholarship but, more, of imaginative insight & loving attention, with some of the most powerful scenes I recall reading. & the more powerful because she doesn't fall into "Raine: saintly", "Maxwell: demon" binaries.

Thanks to the brilliant poets who shared advice for this Poetry News piece Isobel Dixon Gerry Cambridge of The Dark Horse Neil Astley of @bloodaxebooks @gretastoddart @mcgoughroger @salenagodden The Poetry Society @janerace

Characteristically interesting & on-point from Jenny Lindsay on this relatively recent phenomenon & associated matters.

A fine, insightful review of my new book. Close, sustained attention may be the rarest thing a writer can experience, even where one may disagree (minorly) with this or that aspect or interpretation—the thing's in the hands of readers. Also: "An instant classic"! 😳😳🙏🙏

R.I.P Michael Longley, who died yesterday. Signing books in Toppings in St Andrews in March 2020, & with Douglas Dunn at the EIBF a few years earlier where they were both reading. Lux aeterna keep him. A magnificent poet at his (frequent) best. 🙏❤️😢

I have just finished reading The Ayrshire Nestling by Gerry Cambridge The Dark Horse . A beautiful and evocative memoir, of being in the middle of past and future, the small things and the big things.

An event! Congratulations to the editor.

This is a lovely thread; 🙏🙏 & as Mathew kindly points out, my book is now available directly from my redoubtable publisher, Red Squirrel Press & Sheila Wakefield, its founder/owner.

This compendious new issue of one of the more interesting poetry journals out there, Naush Sabah’s PBLJ—which I was v pleased to typeset & in which I have a 7,000-word review-essay on Anthony Hecht, & a poem. Lots of other, & pleasingly various, work too! Recommended. 👏👏

This really is a great essay and worth your time. I'm not in agreement with all of it, but these are precisely the conversations we've been needing to have about Scottish culture and politics for a very long time. Original in Irish Pages, reproduced below. ⬇️ 👏don paterson