PIG UPDATE #34
7th of June 2026
Glasgow's cultural summer season has officially kicked off with Glasgow International taking over countless art spaces throughout the city; Kelvingrove and Glasgow Green hosting the Big Nights Out and TRSMT respectively; and Glasgow Jazz Festival celebrating its 40th anniversary; it's hard to keep on top of it all. While PIG can't help with the rest of your cultural itinerary, it can certainly make your poetry-related life easier. Here's everything you need to know about the poetic goings-on over the next fortnight!
Events (8 to 21 June 2026)
The new week opens on Monday (8 June) with a lunchtime treat at the University of Glasgow. UofG Creative Writing is hosting Marco Fazzini & Alan Riach: For the Poetry of Norman MacCaig at 5 University Gardens, from 1pm. The event celebrates a new bilingual volume of selected poems by MacCaig. Professor Alan Riach will be chatting to the Italian translator and critic Marco Fazzini who has translated MacCaig into Italian.
Wednesday (10 June) is a busy one. The Marine Creative Writing Workshop, organised by the Marine Conservation Society, is a free online event running from 7pm. Christina Riley will lead participants through a series of prompted writing activities inspired by coastal and underwater environments. The workshop is part of the Marine Conservation Society's World Ocean Week celebrations. Also on Wednesday evening, Kelvingrove Writers are taking over Wee Dram on Woodlands Road for their Summer Social from 6pm. There's no writing on the agenda - just drinks, chat, and good company. Some of the group's members will also be sharing work they've been developing at recent sessions. The event is free and open to everyone, whether you've been coming to sessions for years or have never set foot through the door before. If you'd rather get behind a microphone yourself, the weekly Poet's Corner open mic is on at Hillhead Bookclub from 7:30pm. Slots are 5-10 minutes and you just show up to sign up - but check the organiser's Instagram ahead of time to confirm this week's theme. The online open mic/reading series 'Go to the poets, they will speak to thee' by Wordsworth Grasmere is also back on Wednesday night. This time, it will include Jean Sprackland as special guest alongside the usual open mic section. Tickets are £7. Make sure to contact the organisers ahead of time if you want to read.
Thursday (11 June) is one of the highlights of the fortnight, with no fewer than four events to choose from! Good Press is hosting an evening of poetry with Fargo Nissim Tbakhi and Mantra Mukim from 6:30pm. The two poets will read from their new collections: TERRORCOUNTER and Glitchwork. Meanwhile, also from 6pm, The Raven Writing Group is back at 226 Gallowgate in the East End with their monthly inclusive, no-pressure writing session. Over at The Vic Cafe & Bar on Scott Street, Art Riot Press is throwing a Launch Party and Book Launch from 7pm. Scotland's newest indie press invites you to help them celebrate their first publication: Julie Laing's debut collection some possible endings + beginnings. There will be a stellar line-up of additional performances from EmmaClaire Brightlyn, The Caretakers, Cat Cochrane, Victoria McNulty, Aditya Narayan, Rhythm Partisan, Tawona Sithole, Morag Smith, and Texture. And what's more: it's free! If you're in the mood for something a bit more experimental, head to the Andrew Stewart Cinema at UofG's Gilmore Halls, where Radiophrenia and Thinking Culture present Lost in Transmission #5 from 7pm. The fifth instalment in this series presents a programme of subtitled radio works, including two specially commissioned pieces: Attis in Caledon, an experimental Scots translation of the ancient poem Catullus 63 with words and performance by Harry Josephine Giles and music and sound design by Callie Rose Petal (ⁿᵒᵗBorges), and Sucker Vent, a live performance by vocalist and researcher Cara Tolmie. The event is free but ticketed.
Saturday (13 June) brings a very special evening of music, poetry and solidarity. Friends of the Earth Scotland are hosting the Defend the Defenders Fundraiser at Adelaide Place on Bath Street from 7pm. The event raises money for Friends of the Earth International's Internationalist Solidarity System, a fund supporting environmental defenders facing threats and criminalisation around the world. Performing on the night are singer-songwriter Pippa Blundell, Brazilian music ensemble Sandino e seu Bando, poet Alycia Pirmohamed (who won the Nan Shepherd Prize for her debut nonfiction work Shorelines), and poet and writer Henry Bell. Tickets are pay what you can. Also on Saturday evening, Anamot Press brings their excellent online workshop series back with Jane Wong: Constellations of Memory on Zoom from 6pm. Jane Wong leads a generative session exploring how we can work through familial and historical archives to constellate memories across time. Participants are encouraged to bring archival materials such as photographs, clothing or documents. Tickets are on a sliding scale from £10-£25.
The new week starts on Monday (15 June) with a classic West End double bill: Ross Wilcock's monthly Curler's Cosy Corner is back at Curler's Rest from 7pm and Poetry @ Inn Deep returns to its usual underground lair from 7:30pm. The choice is yours.
Tuesday (16 June) sees Ellen Renton launch her new pamphlet with the event You and Yours at The Alchemy Experiment on Byres Road. Ellen will be joined by guest readers Ross McFarlane, Jeehan Ashercook and Lucy Lauder - a first-class supporting cast by any measure. Doors are at 7pm and tickets are £6.13.
Wednesday (17 June) is another packed day for poetry. The weekly Poet's Corner open mic is on at Hillhead Bookclub from 7:30pm - you know the drill. Over in Paisley, StoryTree's second Poetry Slam is taking place at The Bungalow from 7pm (doors 6:30pm). Ten poets will perform across two rounds, with the top three going head-to-head in the final. To top things off, Spencer Mason (and his guitar) will take to the stage as well. Also on Wednesday evening, Cheltenham Poetry Festival's online workshop series continues with The brilliance of your borrowing light: Persona in Poetry, led by Anna Saunders from 7pm. The two-hour session explores how to write beyond the autobiographical self through the voices of personas and dramatic monologues, drawing on poets like Margaret Atwood and Hadara Bar-Nadav. Tickets are £25. But that's not the only opportunity to get creative on Wednesday night: Push the Boat Out is offering an online writing session with poet and novelist Meena Kandasamy on Reclaiming Myths and Stories. Kandasamy - whose novel When I Hit You was shortlisted for the Women's Prize - explores how to rework myths from a feminist or postcolonial perspective. Tickets for this one are £21.62.
On Thursday (18 June), Moniack Mhor is running an online masterclass on Writing for Paperboats from 6pm to 8pm on Zoom. The session will be led by Laura Fyfe and Karen Lloyd who are both published writers with a focus on nature writing, ecology and the more-than-human world. The masterclass invites participants to find new ways to engage meaningfully with our environment. The event is "pay as you can" with tickets ranging from £0 to £30.
On Friday (19 June), Category Is Books on the Southside is hosting a free reading and Q&A with Nathan Evans to celebrate the release of his third collection, Homography. The book explores queer heritage through queer relationships, drawing on imagery from the natural world and the underworld of fetish. Nathan will be joined by readings from local queer poets including Ciara MacGuire (whose collection Impossible Heat, I absolutely adore). The event is free to attend, but make sure to get there in time, the shop is very small!
Opportunities
Today's pick from among the long list of opportunities currently on the PIG website:
The Edinburgh-based quarterly riso zine Hot Butter Press is currently seeking submissions for its second issue. It's a mixed publication that features poetry alongside visual art and short form prose and the prompt for this upcoming issue is "Bric-à-brac". Feeling inspired? Get your work in by 13 June.
Crisp Packet Poetry's next Peelers events are coming up in June, September and December. The events are designed as poetic performance scratch nights: think long-form interactive readings, multi-media performances, video screenings... you name it. Performers get 20-30 minutes to make their ideas reality. Right now, you can pitch your own idea for the upcoming Summer Peelers session on 22 June. Submissions are open until 14 June, with further deadlines in mid-September and mid-December for the autumn and winter sessions.
The New Glasgow Society is still accepting submissions for its open call until 23 June. The organisation is putting together an exhibition under the headline "I wish I was in Glasgow". Poetry and prose, as well as audio, film, sculpture and visual art are all accepted as long as they express affection for Glasgow’s heritage, architecture, communities and everyday life.
One of the most exciting opportunities of the year for emerging poets is the Clydebuilt Mentoring Programme. The annual programme is run by St Mungo's Mirrorball and the Edwin Morgan Trust and offers Scotland-based poets who have not yet published their first full-length collection a year-long programme of tutorials, mentoring and peer support. The deadline for applications is 25 June.
A really unique opportunity for more established poets is currently on offer by Edinburgh's poetry festival Push the Boat Out (PTBO). The festival offers Residencies at Little Sparta - the poetic sculpture garden designed by Iain Hamilton Finlay. Applicants must come from pairs of artists living and working in Scotland - one of which must be a poet. The residencies are intended to support new poetry-led work that responds to Little Sparta as well as PTBO's 2026 theme "The Space Between". Applications are accepted until 29 June.
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.
It's Pride Month, so for today's Spotlight, I thought I'd do a little queer poetry special.
It's a lot easier to find LGBTQ+ poets these days and it can sometimes feel like making a fuss about Pride Month shouldn't really be necessary in 2026. But the sad truth is, it still is.
I can recommend this brilliant short essay On Reading Queer Poets by Russ Russell, that touches on some of the reasons, why representation matters and how poetry can open the door for more understanding. I also really enjoyed this collection on Poets.org where queer poets talk about the poems that changed their lives. The Poetry Foundation also created a lovely collection of poems to mark Pride Month. Worth flagging are also these two brilliant LGBTQ+ publishers who are both working tirelessly to showcase queer voices in UK poetry: Fourteen Poems and Anamot Press. My final shout-out is to Gertrude Press - a US-based non-profit journal that was dedicated to LGBTQ+ poets and writers for more than 20 years. Sadly, the journal is no longer active, but its back catalogue remains online for your reading pleasure.
PIG's Poetry Pick
There are so many brilliant LGBTQ+ poets whose work I adore, but for this Pride special, I decided to go with In the Woods by Andrés N. Ordorica which is included in his (highly recommended) collection Holy Boys. It catches the joy and anxiety of taking up space as a queer person in society today so well. In short, it's a great Pride poem. Have a read (or if you prefer: a listen).
In the Woods
by Andrés N. Ordorica
After Tishani Doshi
They are coming out of the woods like leaves blowing in howling wind. Only to be pushed further out across the land. In droves, they are singing loudly, exuberant, fearsome even. These former quiet sprites, invisible not from want but because it meant surviving. If only to see another day. But now, they cloak themselves in every colour of a rainbow, dressed in every type of cloth. Some are proud in the single space they occupy. Others still are everchanging, and still others, are ciphers, coded solely to make sense to kindred spirits in the know. In the woods, they have thrived. There in the forest live all the clues to their existence. How for millennia, they have always walked the earth, for this we know. You see, we have always been sending smoke signals from one generation to the next. Until eventually forced into action, saying finally, no more. In the face of great fear, in the face of great violence, it is braver to leave the safety of the trees, if only to see the light, to feel the sun. If only to fight back. Yes, they are coming out of the woods. They are running out of the woods. They are dancing out of the woods. We are howling in the wind. Like trees, we shake. Like trees, we stand. In the woods, where we have always been.
Via Bath Magg.
That's it from me today. See you in two weeks!
Love,
Annie