PIG is publishing it's 10th Update today! It's a lovely little milestone, considering that I wasn't sure the idea of a website dedicated purely to poetry in Glasgow was going to fly. It has been great to see the growing interest and engagement over the last few months. So this is a little 'thank you' to anyone who subscribed to the newsletter or follows us on social media. Make sure to tell your friends and keep supporting the many brilliant event organisers and publishers here in Glasgow and beyond. Let's keep building community - a poem at a time.

Today's update includes an 'Edinburgh Book Festival' special as tickets went on sale just yesterday. Have a look at some of the poetry highlights during this year's festival below and make sure you plan ahead - tickets tend to sell out way too quickly.

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Events (23 June to 6 July 2025)

On Monday, 23 June, the weekly open mic at Hillhead Bookclub is celebrating its one-year anniversary! Join the team behind the Poet's Corner from 7pm for a brilliant night of inspiring readings. As you'd expect, this week's theme is 'One Year'.

Wednesday (25 June) you are spoilt for choice. Ross Wilcock's monthly 'Poetry Experiment' is back at the Alchemy Experiment on Byres Road with its usual colourful tableau of performances. Grabbing a ticket beforehand is recommended - performer tickets are already sold out. If you can't make it to the West End, I have got two lovely online alternatives for you: Written Off Poetry are running a Pride-special online open mic via Zoom from 7pm. Tickets are pay as you feel, and yes, performer tickets are still available, if you fancy reading. Your other option is an evening of readings curated by the poet Kim Moore and organised by Wordsworth Grasmere. There will be open mic slots as well as a dedicated reading by Erica Hesketh, all for the price of £7.

A special one-off evening of poetry and music is happening on Saturday, 28 June. Theatre 118 is presenting 'Saturday Night Remedy' with performances by Cat Cochrane, Spencer Mason, Jordan Taylor, Michael Mullen and Hannah Doyle. This is a BYOB event held at the Outer Spaces building on Osborne Street in Merchant City. Tickets are £7.

Apparently, online open mics are trending this month, because I have one more for you: on Sunday (29 June), Allographic are inviting poets and storytellers to their regular virtual open mic via Zoom. The event is free with the option to make a donation. The virtual doors open at 6:30pm.

The new week starts, reliably, with Poet's Corner open mic at Hillhead Bookclub (Monday, 30 June). The night's theme is still tbc, so make sure you check the organiser's Instagram ahead of time.

On Tuesday (1 July), Sleazy SpeakEasy open mic is back at Nice'N'Sleazy. Rosie J. Hunter and their team are returning from their mini summer break with the hot and spicy mix of poetry and music you know and love. Need some inspiration before you take to the stage? How about joining an informal writing session at the CCA the same day? The Scottish Writer's Centre are organising their Coorie Club from 7pm: a relaxed social session offering gentle encouragement, a compassionate environment and peer support. The event is free and open to all.

A focused writing workshop investigating the role of repetition in poetry is available via the Poetry Society on Wednesday, 2 July. The workshop is run by Isabelle Baafi and costs £27 for non-members.

On Thursday (3 July), Wordsworth Grasmere writing centre is organising its monthly informal poetry-writing group again. The hybrid event starts at 2pm with plenty of time for conversation, collaboration, and friendly critique.

Strange Region Press is celebrating the launch of its newest anthology 'Vocal Inhabitants' on Friday, 4 July. The new volume offers a vibrant mix of experimental writing and visual art from writers and artists around the world including Darragh McLoughlin, Ian Macartney, Erin Honeycutt, Galia Admoni, Katherine Stansfield, Maria Sledmere, Julia Biggs, Harper Walton, Eleanor Colligan, James Rodker, Flora Neve, Madalina Boboc, Orla Galbraith, Maisie Wills and Arthur Allen. Come by Mount Florida Books on the Southside at 7pm to find out more!

The week ends, with a special type of reading group combining poetry and spirituality. Join the 'Poet's Way' session at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre on Sunday (6 July) to explore the power of poems to complement and enhance spiritual practice.

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Opportunities

Today's pick from among the long list of opportunities currently on the PIG website:

The small online journal Twisted Ink is open for submissions for work around the topic of 'land and landscapes'. The journal specialises in poetry, fiction and hybrid forms with a flair for the grotesque, the political, and the intersection of public and private. The deadline for the next issue is 30 June.

You have another week to submit to Channel Magazine, an Irish journal dedicated to poetry and prose that fosters and explores the connection between people and the natural world. Irish and international writers are invited to submit for Channel issue 13 by 30 June.

Another opportunity that celebrates the natural environment is available via the Scottish Wildlife Trust. The charity runs an annual writing competition called 'Words of the Wild'. This year, it is dedicated to the theme 'From source to sea'. Submissions in any form, written in English, Scots and Gaelic are accepted. The deadline is 12 July.

The British independent publisher Renard Press are inviting submissions for their 'Interwoven' poetry competition. The project is designed to celebrate identity and community through poetry and will result in an anthology which is schedule to be published in November. Entries are free and the first prize winner will receive £200. Sounds good? Check the full T&Cs and get your submission in by 13 July.

Submissions for the newest edition of the Pencil Magazine are still open until 7 July. The Pencil Magazine is a slightly different type of publication. It features work created entirely with graphite pencil and paper - be it visual art, writing, or a combination of the two. The current submission window is for 'The Eraser Issue'. Artists and writers are asked to respond to themes around erasers/erasing/erasure in the context of pencil writing/drawing and attention.

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PIG Spotlight

This section is designed to shine a spotlight on a particular website, organisation or feature. For each Update, I'll pick something new - either because it is plain awesome or because it's new or really topical.

Today's spotlight is on the Edinburgh Book Festival. The international extravaganza of literary delights is back in the capital from 9 to 24 August and tickets went on sale just yesterday. Considering how quickly they tend to sell out, PIG decided to flag some of the most exciting poetry-related events on the calendar.

• Our Mother Tongues (Monday, 11 August at 6pm): curated by Peter Mackay, this special event promises to weave together a tapestry of multi-language poetry from across Scotland, featuring performances from: Colin Bramwell, Roshni Gallagher, Niall O'Gallagher, Andres N Ordorica, Anne Pia, and Gabriela Milkova Robins.

• Nature Matters (Wednesday, 13 August at 10:45am): this event celebrates Faber's 'Nature Matters' anthology which draws together work by nearly 80 different poets from the African, Asian, and Caribbean diaspora, on themes encompassing climate crisis, protest, Indigenous wisdom and alternative history. The event will feature the book's co-editors, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Mona Arshi, together with contributor Jackie Kay.

• Undo Me or Eat Me (Saturday, 16 August at 1pm): an exciting workshop for intermediate and experienced poets run by poet and performer Oluwaseun Olayiwola, it's all about new methods of line generation and revision and explores different methods of undoing - rhythmically, syntactically, tonally and visually.

• The Hearts of a Catastrophe (Sunday, 17 August at 7:30pm): Palestinian-American poet, translator, physician, and winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, Fady Joudah, reads from his latest poetry collection which responds to the war in Gaza and negotiates the role of poets and poetry in making the impact of inhumane actions understood.

• Beautiful Experiments (Saturday, 23 August at 4:45pm): Pratyusha, Alycia Pirmohamed, Jessica J. Lee, and Nina Mingya Powles – otherwise known as ‘fieldnotes collective’ - share their joint project 'this too is a glistening': a special kind of joint pamphlet which reflects on nature, poetry, and collaboration.

You can browse the full programme via the Edinburgh International Book Festival website.

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PIG's Poetry Pick

Refugee Festival Scotland came to an end today. Maybe you managed to attend some of the brilliant events taking place all across Scotland over the last 10 days. As my own little contribution to the festival, I thought I'd include Jackie Kay's 'Threshold' today: the first poem written by her as Scotland’s Makar and read at the opening of the Fifth Session of the Scottish Parliament in 2016.

Threshold

by Jackie Kay

Let’s blether about doors.
Revolving doors and sliding doors;

Half-opened, half-closed:
The door with your name on it,

The heavy one – hard to open.
The one you walked out when your heart was broken,

The one you walked in as you came to your profession
(And the tiny door when you made your confession)

The school door at the end of a lesson,
(Yes, Shut the door in Gaelic is duin an doras!)

The wee door on your doll’s House, or
Ibsen’s Nora’s door, or Chekhov’s Three Sisters’

Doors imagined by writers the world over – Proust.
And the chickens coming home to roost!

Or Chris Guthrie’s open heart at the end of Sunset Song
Or the step left when the house is gone, the haw.

The door to the stable, bolted after the horse left,
Not Tam O’Shanter’s tail-less horse!

The one that shut suddenly behind you
Banged by a violent wind,

The painted red door code for asylum seeker,
The X that says Plague or Passover

The one turned into a boat to cross the ever-widening waters.
The North seas and the Aegean, reminders

Of the people cleared off their land, out their crofts
To whom the sea was their threshold – on, off.

Take the big key and open the door to the living, breathing past
The one you enliven over and over,

To the ship’s port, or the house of the welder;
To the library door of Donald Dewar.

Then picture yourself on the threshold,
The exact moment when you might begin again,

A new sitting, new keys jingle possibilities.
Hope comes with a tiny Greyfriar’s Bobby key ring.

Then come through the door to this Parliament, new session!
Pass round the revolving door (change in the revolutions,

In 360 degrees) – Take in the mirrored opposites:
The Dutch Gables, the cross step Gables…

Here – rising out of the sloping base of Arthur’s Seat
Straight into this City, a city that must also speak

For the banks and the braes, munros, cairns, bothies
Songs, art, poems, art, stories,

(And don’t forget the ceilidhs – who doesnie love a ceilidh? Heuch!)
A city that remembers the fiddlers of Shetland and Orkney

The folk of Colonsay, Bute, and Tiree
The Inner and Outer Hebrides, the glens and the Bens

The trees and the rivers and the burns and the lochs and the sea lochs
(And Nessie!)

The Granite City and Dumfries and Galloway
The Dear green place and Dundee…

Across the stars and the galaxy,
The night sky’s tiny keys, the hail clanjamfarie!

Find here what you are looking for:
Democracy in its infancy: guard her

Like you would a small daughter
And keep the door wide open, not just ajar,

And say, in any language you please, welcome, welcome
To the world’s refugees.

Scotland’s changing faces – look at me!!
Whose birth mother walked through the door

Of a mother and baby home here
And walked out of Elsie Inglis hospital without me.

My Makar, her daughter, Makar
Of Ferlie Leed and gallus tongues.

And this is my country says the fisherwoman from Jura.
Mine too says the child from Canna and Iona.

Mine too say the Brain family.
And mine! says the man from the Polish deli

And mine said the brave and beautiful Asid Shah.
Me too said the Black Scots and the red Scots

Said William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots.
Said both the Roberts and Muriel Spark.

Said Emile Sande and Arthur Wharton.
Said Ali Smith and Edwin Morgan.

Said Liz Lochhead, Norman and Sorley
And mine said the Syrian refugee.

Here we are in this building of pure poetry
On this July morning in front of her Majesty.

Good Day Ma’am, Ma’am Good Day.
Good morning John and Helen Kay –

Great believers in democracy.
And in gieing it laldy.

Our strength is our difference.
Dinny fear it. Dinny caw canny.

歡迎 (Cantonese)

One language is never enough
Gbegbɔgblɔ ɖeka sese menyo tututu o (Ewe)

Welcome
Witamy (Polish)

It takes more than one language to tell a story
एक कहानी सुनाने के लिए, एक से अधिक भाषाएं लगती हैं (Hindi)

Welcome
ਜੀ ਆਇਆ ਨੂੰ (Punjabi)

One language is never enough
Une seule langue n’est jamais suffisante (French)

Welcome
Fàilte (Gaelic)

It takes more than one tongue to tell a story
It taks mair nor ae tongue tae crack (Doric)

Welcome
مرحبا (Syrian)

Welcome
Nnọọ! (Igbo)

Welcome
Wilkommen (German)

Welcome
Benvenuti (Italian)

It takes more than one language to tell a story
ہانی بتانے کے لئے ایک سے زیادہ زبان لیتا ہے (Urdu)

Lleva màs de un idioma contar una historia,
Bienvenidos
Un idioma nunca es suficiente
Bienvenidos (Spanish)

Eine Geschichte braucht mehr als eine Sprache.
Willkommen
Eine Sprache reicht nicht
Willkommen. (German)

خوش آمدید۔
ایک زبان کبھی کافی نہیں ہوتی۔
کہانی سنانے کے لیے ایک سے ذیادہ زبان چاہیے ہوتی ہے۔ (Urdu)

Ci vuole più di una lingua per raccontare una storia.
Benvenuto.
Una sola lingua non è mai abbastanza.
Benvenuto. (Italian)

Cal més d’un idioma per explicar una història.
Benvingudes.
Un idioma mai no és prou.
Benvingudes. (Catalan)

Ne samo jedan jezik je dovoljno je ispricati pricu.
Dobrodošli.
Jedan jezik nikad nije dovoljno.
Dobrodošli. (Serbian)

Щоб розповісти історію потрібно більше, ніж одна мова
Ласкаво просимо
Однієї мови ніколи не достатньо
Ласкаво просимо (Ukranian)

Több nyelven mondd el a mesét.
Üdvözlégy.
Egy nyelv sosem elég.
Üdvözlégy. (Hungarian)

Ai nevoie de mai mult de o limbă pentru a spune o poveste.
Bun venit.
O singură limbă nu este niciodată de ajuns.
Bun venit. (Romanian)

Nutamk atelk aq newte situm wjit a’tukwaqan.
Pjila’si.
Newte situn mu tepianuk.
Pjila’si.

Det behövs mer än ett språk för att berätta en historia.
Välkomna.
Ett språk räcker aldrig.
Välkomna. (Swedish)

Příběh potřebuje více než jeden jazyk
Vitejte
Nestačí mít jediný jazyk
Vitejte (Czech)

Потребни се повеќе јазици за да се раскаже приказна,
Добредојдовте
Еден јазик никогаш не е доволен
Добредојдовте (Macedonian)

Potrebno je više jezika da bi se ispričala priča
Dobrodošli
Jedan jezik nikad nije dovoljan
Dobrodošli (Montenegrin)

ஒரு கதை சொல்ல மேற்பட்ட தாய்மொழி எடுக்கும்
நல்வரவு
ஒரு மொழி போதுமானதாக இருக்காது
நல்வரவு (Tamil)

Več jezikov je potrebnih, da poveš zgodbo
Dobrodošli
En sam jezik ni nikoli dovolj
Dobrodošli (Slovene)

Ганц хэлээр тавтай морил
гэх нь хэзээ ч хангалтгүй
бөгөөд олон хэлээр өгүүлэн
ярилцах нь илүү нээлттэй (Mongolian)

Mae angen mwy nag un tafod i gyfleu stori
Croeso
Mae un iaith byth yn ddigon
Croeso (Welsh)

Een taal is nooit genoeg
Welkom
Er is meer dan een taal nodig om een verhaal te vertellen
Welkom (Dutch)

É preciso mais de uma língua para se contar uma história
Bem vindo
Uma língua nunca é o suficiente
Bem vindo (Brazilian Portuguese)

Inachukua zaidi kuliko lugha moja tu kutoa.
Karibu.
Hadithimoja ni kamwe ya kutosha.
Karibu. (Swahili)

Precísase mais dunha lingua para contar unha historia
Benvido
Unha lingua nunca é abondo
Benvido (Galician)

Go tsaá dipuô tse dintsi go bolela polelô,
O amogetswe
Puô ê nnwe ga e nke e lekana,
O amogetswe. (Tswana)

Potrebno je više od jednog jezika kako bi se ispričala priča.
Dobrodošao
Jedan jezik nikada nije dovoljan
Dobrodošao (Croatian)

Dit vat meer as een taal om ‘n verhaal te vertel
Welkom
Een taal is nooit genoeg nie
Welkom (Africaans)

Tarinan kertomiseen tarvitaan enemmän kuin yksi kieli,
Tervetuloa
Yksi kieli ei ikinä riitä
Tervetuloa (Finnish)

Potrzeba więcej niż jednego języka by opowiedzieć historię
Witaj
Jeden język nigdy nie wystarczy
Witaj (Polish)

Der skal mere end et sprog til at fortælle en historie
Velkommen
Et sprog er aldrig nok
Velkommen (Danish)

Нужен е повече от един език, за да се разкаже една история
Добре дошли
Никога не е достатъчен само един език.
Добре дошли (Bulgarian)

يحتاج الأمر أكثر من لغة واحدة لتحكي قصة
مرحباً
لا تكفي لغة واحدة ابداً
مرحباً (Arabic)

Nuk mjafton vetëm një gjuhë për të rrëfyer një tregim.
Mirësevjen
Një gjuhë nuk mjafton asnjëherë.
Mirësevjen (Albanian)

Il faut plus qu’une langue pour raconter une histoire
Bienvenue
Une langue n’est jamais assez
Bienvenue (French)

צריך יותר משפה אחת כדי לספר סיפור
ברוך הבא
שפה אחת לעולם אינה די
ברוכה הבאה (Hebrew)

Zimatengera chilankhulo choposa chimodzi kuti ufotokoze nkhani.
Takulandirani.
Chilankhulo chimodzi ndi chosakwanila.
Takulandirani. (Chichewa)

Hizkuntza bakarra baino gehiago behar dira istorio bat kontatzeko,
Ongi etorri
Hizkuntza bat inoiz ez da aski
Ongi etorri. (Basque)

物語を伝えるのは複数の言語がいります。
歓迎。
一つの言語は決して十分ではありません。
ようこそ。(Japanese)

Butuh lebih dari satu bahasa untuk menceritakan sebuah kisah
Memakai
Satu bahasa tidak pernah cukup
Memakai (Indonesian)

Чтобы рассказать историю, надо больше одного языка
Добро пожаловать
Одного языка никогда не достаточно
Добро пожаловать (Russian)

Om in ferhaal te fertellen hast mear as ien taal noadich,
Wolkom
Ien taal is noait genôch
Wolkom (Frisian)

Dobra Dosli
Jedan jezik nikad nosta
Dobra Dosli (Bosnian)

Benvegut
Una lenga basta pas jamai
Cal mai d’una lenga per contar una istòria
Benvegut (Occitan)

Tha ea ‘toirt barrachd air aon chànan a dh’ innseadh sgeulachd
Fàilte
‘S e aon chànan riamh gu leòr
Fàilte (Gaelic)

It’s ever so ard to tell a story wiv one langwidge
cummin and av a cuppa
One langwidge ain’t nuffink like innuf
cummin and av a cuppa (South West London)

It taks mare than wan type o patter tae tell a yarn.
Mak yersel at hame.
Wan patter is naer enough.
Mak yersel at hame. (Glaswegian)

Welcome.
C’mon ben the living room.
Come join our brilliant gathering.

Via the Scottish Poetry Library.

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That's it from me today. See you in two weeks!

Love,
Annie

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