PIG UPDATE #28
15th of March 2026
I put this PIG Update together in between StAnza events. I may not have been able to attend in person this year, but getting digital access to so many brilliant readings and performances with the Digital Festival Pass has been absolutely fantastic. I am still buzzing with impressions, inspirations and a veeeeery long new reading list. The absolute highlight for me was the poetic theatre performance 'The Stepmothers' by Amélie Prévost and Rachel McCrum. If you ever get a chance to see it, do check it out. It's absolutely fantastic, emotional, thoughtful, clever and heartfelt. Close second was the conversation between Anthony Joseph and Nick Makoha on Saturday afternoon and the readings by Carl Phillips and Pascale Petit on Saturday night. I could go on... But enough about last week. Let's get into future poetry delights!
Events (16 to 29 March 2026)
Ease yourself into the new week on Monday, 16 March, with the Scottish Gaelic writer Anna Frater at Glasgow Uni Bookshop. The team behind Creative Conversations has invited the Stornoway-born poet for conversations and readings. As usual the event will also be streamed via Zoom. In the evening, why not join Ross Wilcock's monthly Open Mic night at Curler's Rest on Byres Road? As always, slots are 5min and get allocated on the night, so get there early if you want to read!
As part of the National Centre for Writing's 'Global Page' series, you can attend a free online reading with Sri Lankan poet Niroshini Samosundaram and Singaporean writer Inbha on Tuesday, 17 March, who will discuss the Asian language of Tamil and how it shaped their writing. Chaired by poet, editor and translator Shash Trevett, the conversation will explore memory, belonging, and what it means to write as Tamil women today. If you would rather get creative yourself, you can also consider the online writing workshop with Anna Saunders that same evening. It is part of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and focuses on lyric poetry.
A special treat is on offer on Wednesday, 18 March: Alliance Française de Glasgow (AFG) is presenting a special Open Mic Night with live oud music! On the occasion of Printemps des Poètes and the celebration of la Francophonie, the French cultural centre will hold its first ever Poetry Open Mic night. Readers are free to perform in English, French or any other language and will be accompanied by Ehab Abdin, an internationally performing singer and oud player, based in Saudi Arabia. Make sure to book your slot in advance if you'd like to read. But that's not all for Wednesday: naturally, Hillhead Bookclub is hosting its weekly Open Mic night and Poetry at Sweeney's is taking over everyone's favourite cosy Southside pub with the monthly open mic night. This one is actually the last one hosted by Meron McCardle, so it's bound to be a special one. The Poetry Society is also running an online writing workshop with Liz Berry all about love poetry, if you fancy it.
Thursday, 19 March is a big night for the Poetry Experiment. Ross Wilcock's monthly Open Mic night at the Alchemy Experiment is celebrating its 3rd anniversary and Ross has put together an amazing line-up of local poets including Fiona Jane, James Williams, Bliss Wilde, Hannah Doyle, Dev McMath, TJ and Kaci O’Meara. Make sure to book your £5 ticket asap! Meanwhile at Mount Florida Books on the Southside, the 87Press is presenting an evening of poetry readings featuring three brilliant American poets, Emily Lee Luan, Megan Pinto and Annie Wenstrup, alongside Glasgow's own Jessica Widner. Not willing to leave the house? You might want to consider the poetry workshop organised by Anamot Press and led by Jenny Xie, 'Language Against Assimilation'. The workshop promises to offer "exercises meant to de-domesticate and de-discipline our language and upend the usual assumptions about what it can, and should, do" in our writing. Sounds intriguing. Tickets are £22 for the 2h workshop.
Looking to add some poetry to your lazy Sunday afternoon? I have just the thing for you. Broadside off Victoria Road on the Southside is opening its doors on Sunday, 22 March for the first of a new workshop series organised by Wet Grain Poetry. The event will include the Catalan poet Helena Fornells Nadal and explore issues of ownership, land-use and provenance.
Something brand new and exciting is coming your way on Monday, 23 March. The team behind Crisp Packet Poetry is hosting the first of their new event series called 'Peelers'. The quarterly events will be held at McNeill's Bar on the Southside and are dedicated specifically to long-form and experimental poetic work. Think of it as a poetic performance scratch night: low-stakes and supportive with amble room to try out new ideas. Performers have to sign up ahead of time by filling in a quick Google form. Potentially just as experimental is the new collaboration between the Poetry at Inn Deep team and Skedaddle, an improvised jam session event in Glasgow. For this special edition of the regular open mic night, readers will get an improvised musical soundtrack for their poetry. Sounds delightfully unpredictable!
The long-awaited StoryTree Poetry Slam is coming to The Bungalow in Paisley on Wednesday, 25 March. The slam will feature ten poets performing in three rounds and the line-up is looking to be including a virtual who-is-who of Glasgow's poetry scene. You don't want to miss this one! Holding the fort at Hillhead Bookclub are Izzie and Silouan from the Poet's Corner Open Mic team.
Not A Salon, the new monthly reading series at Rufus T Firefly is back in session on Thursday, 26 March. As always, the stage is open to writers of all genres, styles and experience levels, so brace yourself for an enchantingly eclectic mix.
Broadside on the Southside is offering an afternoon dedicated to writing and its intersections with politics and publicness on Saturday, 28 March. From 2pm, there will be readings to celebrate work by Henry Bell and Marc Garrett as well as a new Leven Street Press series of poems by Deviji RM Jaan, Ross McDiarmid, Joey Simons and Leilani Taneus-Miller. Aye-Aye Books, Glasgow’s long-running art and politics bookshop will also be trading throughout the day, offering 10% off all purchases. Sounds like the perfect Saturday to me.
Opportunities
Today's pick from among the long list of opportunities currently on the PIG website:
You have two more days to get your submissions in for issue three of Sextet: 'Offerings'. The issue will explore the ways hope and creativity take root in hostile environments and the editors are looking particularly for work that carries warmth and a sense of renewal and considers how ritual sustains us in times of crisis. The deadline is 17 March.
The Irish literary magazine Swerve is still open for submissions until 21 March. The magazine sees its mission as countering destruction and nationalistic inward-looking while building bridges and fostering understanding. As part of this, the magazine also publishes works in translation. Contributors can expect €50 for each of their published poems.
The call for proposals for Spoken Word performances at this year's Hidden Doors Festival in Edinburgh is open until 25 March. This is a chance to be part of an annual immersive, multi-art-form festival and present a performance of 20-30 minutes. Selected artists are paid £200 per performer.
Gutter is open for submissions! Everyone's favourite Scottish literary magazine is accepting submissions until 29 March. You know what to do.
The brand new independent Scottish publisher Art Riot Press is launching in summer 2026. Right now, they are looking for contributions for their first issue under the theme 'beginnings'. The editors are looking for work that challenges, questions, disrupts, and repairs. Are you intrigued? The submission window is still open until 31 March.
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 Bad Betty Press, a poetry publisher from the Midlands. I had the pleasure of attending their showcase at StAnza which featured fantastic work by Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Ciara Maguire and Keith Jarrett. Sadly, Bad Betty won't be a viable publication option for most of us here in Glasgow - the press focuses exclusively on poets living, working, studying or born in the East Midlands - but I wanted to flag it nonetheless simply because of the brilliant quality of work that has been coming out of this publisher in recent years. Have a browse around their website, when you get a chance and check out their Reading Lists on topics such as Pride, Ecopoetry, Global Majority authors and Experimentalism. I bet you will get inspired to check out a few of their books or follow some of their poets.
PS: I know, the love of poetry can become rather expensive, so I just wanted to add a quick reminder about considering buying second hand or make use of the SPL which offers free postal lending and the NPL which offers free borrowing of ebooks for anyone in the UK.
PIG's Poetry Pick
My pick today is a poem by Carl Phillips - inspired by his reading at StAnza on the weekend.
To Be Worn Openly at the Wrist, or at the Chest and Hidden
By Carl Phillips
If I believed in a god, he would be a sea god, like the sea
in its predictability—now approach, now recede—beneath
such a god I would not mind, I think, being the shore, say of the sea
what you will, it’s the shore that endures the routine loss
without which what strategies would there be for softening
the hollowness that any victory, give it time, comes with,
how curb the risk of arrogance, with its doomed but
not undangerous hound, complacency?
... I made this for you—
put it on. I know it’s not going to matter whether the decisions
I made were the ones eventually I even meant to make, or
should have, or should have thought maybe more than
twice about. What’s history anyway, except—according to
the latest mouth saying so—just what happened: I flourished
undramatically, to no apparent purpose, like pretty much
everyone. The sea dragged the shore; the shore suffered the sea.
That's it from me today. See you in two weeks!
Love,
Annie