PIG UPDATE #13
3rd of August 2025
It's August and, naturally, that means the madness that is the Edinburgh Fringe is in full swing now. There are loads of exciting poetry and spoken word shows on offer - and that's not even counting all the brilliant readings, workshops and panels that'll kick off with the Edinburgh Book Festival from 9 August and the ScotlandsFest from 4-14 August.
To celebrate the August madness, I am very excited to announce a new PIG Feature. PIG is launching a Specials section which will feature reports and reviews from local events. To kick us off, Ross McFarlane will present a series of reports from the Fringe which will be published on the PIG website in the coming weeks. So, make sure you pop by the PIG website if you are thinking to head over to Edinburgh and don't forget, you can also click through to PIG Update #11 and PIG Update #10 which include some recommendations for the Fringe and the Book Festival respectively.
But that's enough about Edinburgh! Let's focus on our Dear Green Place now.
Events (4 to 17 August 2025)
The new week is starting off strong with three poetry events in one night. Your choices on Monday (4 August) are: the weekly Poet's Corner Open Mic at Hillhead Bookclub in the West End, Words and Music at Milk on the Southside and (most excitingly) Inside Voices at King Tut's. This month's edition of Inside Voices is presented in collaboration with Glasgow Review of Books and will include performances by Jamie Bolland, CD Boyland, Julie Laing, Pepita Mwanga, Giuliano Piacentini, Victoria McNulty and Morag Smith. As always, it's completely free to attend. So, what's your excuse?!
Tuesday (5 August) is offering a similarly delicious triple serving of poetry. From 10:30am, you can join Katherine Sowerby's free Open Book Creative Writing session at Glasgow Women's Library. Tickets are limited though, so you might have to act fast. In the evening, you can join the team behind the Flourish Open Mic at McChuill's Bar for a fabulous night of poetic performances. Alternatively, why not join the Milton Keynes Literary Festival for one night? In collaboration with Poets for the Planet, the festival is presenting a one-off masterclass around the topic of ecopoetry. You'll hear from poets Clare Shaw, Caleb Parkin, Rishi Dastidar and Jessica Mookherjee about their relationship to location and place, and how this is reflected in their poetry and their writing process and practices. Tickets for this Zoom workshop are £12.
More opportunities to get your pens and notebooks out are coming your way on Saturday, 9 August. Shut Up and Write is a free, community-driven non-profit initiative for writers. The Glasgow sub-group is running their weekly sessions online and at the iCafe on Woodlands Road on Saturday mornings. The online event starts at 9:20am and the in-person one at 10am. Make sure you book in advance.
On Sunday, 10 August, you are invited to attend a fundraiser event organised by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. The online event will feature the Palestinian poet Haia Mohammed. Poets are invited to join and read their own poems on the theme of "hope". The virtual doors open at 10am.
The new week starts with another fabulous night at Hillhead Bookclub. You know the drill: check the theme, grab your notebook, make new friends. Don't really have any new material to showcase at an open mic at the moment? I have just the thing for you: Monday, 11 August, also offers two online writing workshops to remedy that. You can join poet Kate Wakeling for a one-off session dedicated to writing poetry for children (via the Poetry Society, tickets are £27 for non-members), or you can join a new workshop series presented by the Scottish Poetry Library. Over six sessions, you'll learn all about the concept of Wild Writing in this relaxed and intimate generative writing course. Tickets for the full series with dates across August and September are £90.
The Open Mic night at Glasgow Zine Library on the Southside returns after a short hiatus on Wednesday, 13 August. Performers can use the online signup sheet to book their slots. On the same night, just a few minutes away at The Glad Cafe, you can join the team behind the new literary magazine Cutwife for their official launch event. For £5, you'll get readings by the journal's contributors plus music performances by Teose and Haris Pilton.
A brand new Spoken Word Poetry open mic event is launching on Friday, 15 August by Queers Make Glasgow. The event will be hosted by Sister Midnight in Merchant City. Performer tickets are already sold out, but you can still book free tickets to join the audience for this night of fun and inspiration. As the title implies, the event is designed as space for LGBTQ+ poets and allies to share their work, connect with community, and celebrate Queer creativity. Both newbies and seasoned pros are welcome.
Another exciting event launch is happening on Sunday (17 August): Creative Corner is a new writing group organised by Ross Wilcock. Spend the afternoon at Curler's Rest on Byres Road with like-minded writers, poets and creatives, work on your latest project, practise or simply socialise. This space is yours. The event is a bit of a trial run, so make sure to attend if this sounds like your vibe and keep your eyes peeled for future updates from Ross.
Opportunities
Today's pick from among the long list of opportunities currently on the PIG website:
You still have a few more days to submit to the San Francisco-based magazine Vellichor Literary. The upcoming issue will be dedicated to the topic Kaimana, a Hawaiian word meaning "the power of the sea". Submissions are still open until 9 August.
Durham-based international, non-profit magazine Spellbinder Magazine is currently open for submissions for their autumn issue. The editors are particularly keen on experimental work or unusual themes. Accepted contributors even get an honorarium. It might only be £3, but hey! The deadline for submissions was recently extended due to technical issues. You now have until 14 August to get your poems in.
A slightly different publication opportunity is offered by Doubleback Review. The online publisher is dedicated exclusively to work that was previously published by journals that no longer exist. So if you have a poem lying around that was published before but is no longer available in print or online, this could be your chance to give it a second life! Or, like the Doubleback Review team puts it: "Let us resurrect your dead art; let us love your beautiful zombies." Submissions are currently open until 15 August.
Carmen et Error is a quarterly micro-journal/newsletter with a focus on short(ish) poems and microfiction. Poems must be below 40 lines long to qualify. The current submission window closes on 31 August.
A special opportunity also recently opened up for UK-based poets who identify as a woman. Rebecca Swift Foundation is collaborating with Fly on the Wall Press to create a new anthology dedicated to celebrating the complexity, resilience, and creativity of women’s lives today. Contributors are paid a fee of £300 and will also be featured on the Mslexia blog. You can submit up to 3 poems until the deadline of 12 October.
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.
I attended Scowth in Anniesland last weekend and was delighted to hear a little bit more about City of Poets at the event. I had come across the organisation on my travels through social media but wasn't quite sure about its purpose or missions. So hearing about it first-hand proved rather inspiring. So, for my spotlight today, I decided to showcase City of Poets.
City of Poets is a non-profit society which is open to any poet with a connection to Glasgow. The society is free to join and offers support and opportunities for its members to grow and define their work. City of Poets runs a number of opportunities for its members to publish, attend workshops and tutorials or take on additional roles within the organisation. The membership also comes with discounts for membership to the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for all types of writers and exclusive deals for places like Waterstones. At the moment, the society is also accepting submissions for members who would like their work featured in their annual review publication. So, plenty of reasons to join! Find out more about City of Poets here: https://www.cityofpoets.com/
PIG's Poetry Pick
As a little taster for tomorrow's Inside Voices, I decided to include a poem by CD Boyland today.
The Interview
by CD Boyland
Can
you tell
me
about
a time
when you
consumed fuel -
refined petroleum
wood
the bones
of that Midlands
cathedral
can you tell me
about your
exothermic marriage
the begetting
of your children - heat &
light
the ecstasy of
transformation from fossil to
combustion
can you tell me about a time
you hid beneath
banked peats, a red-eyed
red-toothed creature
awaiting bellowed breath
the kiss of oxygen
an instant of
Pentecostal transformation
hymned by tongues
of orange flame – dance,
then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the
dance, said he
can you tell me about
the taste of forests
the indigestibility of stone
how it feels to be born from coal
to rage for one blind moment
on the earth & scorch
the ground beneath you?
That's it from me today. See you in two weeks!
Love,
Annie