The Circumflex

It was not my intention to do films.  Films are films.  It is a low art form involving actors, cameras and a scandalous amount of money.  They are shallow, superficial, short lived.  They are the nuts and crisps of our cultural diet.  They are entertaining.  They encourage passivity.  They are the (almost) perfect consumerist art-product [...]

I was amazed.  Tell tell tell.  Tell tell tell tell tell.  Has this woman – Iris Murdoch – never read the most elementary self-help book on writing?  Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him.  Well yes. And you could conclude – OK –it’s just the first line.  We have a situation.  [...]

First things first.  Alan Bissett did OK in the Parkinson seat.  He didn’t do the ear thing – which was a relief – but he was good in the role, appropriately deferential and not visibly feart.  That said – now to the main event. I can’t get around the A.L. thing.  It’s like she’s saying [...]

Dropped into the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow today.  It was my second visit since the gallery reopened in 2006 after extensive refurbishment.  My purpose was literary – I wanted to take another look at the Wild West/ Grand Ole Opry installation in the Glasgow Stories section since I felt there were ideas [...]

Read last night at the Aye Write Open Mic event.  The event was listed in the Aye Write programme, 3 lines, with no information on how to get onto the reading list.  When I asked various library staff and Aye Write functionaries Saturday and Sunday no-one seemed to have much of an idea what the [...]

I have this difficulty with Don Paterson.  When I hear him read or speak about poetry I really like the man.  I think the stuff about evocation and invocation is really interesting and he states these ‘factoids’ about poetry in 3.2 second bursts (like a submachine gun then!) and ‘ameters and Muldoon sonnets and I [...]

Informative line up of Scottish editors, publishers and agents.  A five step programme was proposed to authors aspiring to publish, vitiated, as Maggie McKernan said, by the recognition that “we all have to make money”(?) Five step programme  Use the available resources Read, read, read Research what the publishers are publishing Build word of mouth [...]