It might be time for a summer break for many, but don't worry: PIG continues to deliver your essential poetic services! Here's all you need to know for the next fortnight of poetry.

Events (6 to 19 July 2026)

Your poetic week kicks off on Monday (6 July) with a double bill. Ross McFarlane's monthly Candlelight Poetry Open Mic is back at The Old Toll Bar from 7:30pm. This month's edition has a special treat in store: Palestinian spoken word artist Farah Chamma is joining as a featured performer. Farah's performances are known for combining orality, acting and live music in a fiercely political but deeply human way. The open mic slots are still running as normal, so message Ross via Instagram to get your name down. Entry is free. Also on Sunday evening, Cheltenham Poetry Festival's online lounge is back with Helen Ivory & Doryn Herbst from 7pm. Veteran poet and visual artist Helen Ivory is joined by Doryn Herbst, whose debut collection A Barbed and Twisted Place deals with the effects of serious mental health issues on the children of those who experience them. Tickets are a minimum of £3, with a separate open mic ticket available for those wanting to read a poem of up to two minutes.

Tuesday (7 July) is Poet's Corner day. As usual, the weekly open mic is on at Hillhead Bookclub from 7:45pm. This week's theme is 'Hard' - so bring your high-tensile poems, your steely odes and your most unyielding words. Slots are 5-10 minutes and you just show up to sign up.

After a quick sojourn into punk last month, Speakeasy is back at Adrian's Bar on Victoria Road on Wednesday (8 July). RJ Hunter's monthly open mic night welcomes Dean Tsang as its July headliner. The 2026 Candlelight Slam champion will be previewing his upcoming Fringe show Reservations - a piece exploring systems of coping through a restaurant of the mind. Sign-ups are open online for guaranteed slots, with a handful available on the door. As always, entry is free. Also on Wednesday evening is the Poetry Open Mic at Glasgow Zine Library. The team also had a little break but is now back with a very special edition this month. In collaboration with Coastal Lines Press, the event will bring together poets in Glasgow and poets in Gaza, with Gazan poets joining online. Due to the collaboration, performing spaces are limited - so make sure to sign up via the usual Google form in advance.

There's something for everyone on Thursday (9 July). Of Source! Press is hosting the launch of We Hold Our Broken Hearts In Common, a new collection by Fiona Brittle, at Strange Studio in the East End from 6:30pm. The evening will include readings from Fiona and a publisher's talk by Of Source! Press's Morvern Odling. Just around the corner at 226 Gallowgate, the Raven Writing Group is back in session from 6pm. It's a monthly no-pressure writing space open to writers of all kinds and it's free - just make sure to RSVP ahead of time. If you have some time to spare during the day, I also highly recommend the second session of the Obsidian Black Poetry Lectures from 1pm. This online series takes a deep dive into the Black poetry canon with this session exploring Black poetry in the UK and Europe. Tickets are £10.

From Glasgow to Saturn is launching Issue #54: Somatic Simulacra on Saturday, 11 July at the Glasgow University Union. You are cordially invited to help celebrate with an evening of readings, music, and collaboration exploring bodily portrayals across poetry, prose and visual art. Tickets are free and you can buy a copy of the magazine on the night.

On Monday (13 July), you can join the Sexy Summertime Sleepover with Hollie McNish & Laurie Bolger via Zoom. It is a special edition of Poetry in Pyjamas with poems all about sex, bodies and love in all its joyous, awkward and soppy glory. Participants are also welcome to share their own poems. Tickets are £13.70.

Anamot Press's online workshop series continues on Tuesday, 14 July with Patrycja Humienik: Water as Method. Patrycja Humienik - whose debut collection We Contain Landscapes was a New York Public Library Best Book of 2025 - leads a generative workshop exploring what different bodies of water can teach us about image and syntax in our writing. Tickets are on a sliding scale between £10 and £25. Naturally, the weekly Poet's Corner is also back at Hillhead Bookclub from 7:45pm. Don't forget to check the organisers' Instagram ahead of time to find out this week's theme.

On Thursday (16 July), Glasgow's small press Sincere Corkscrew is celebrating five years with the launch of World-dreem 2 - their new anthology of new(er) writing. Mount Florida Books is hosting the party and there will be readings from Aske Hyldborg Jensen, Ricky Monahan Brown, Isaac Harris, Tom Byam Shaw, Sean Mcleod and many more. Entry is free. Meanwhile on Zoom, the Poetry Society is hosting the free online launch of The Poetry Review Summer 2026 issue from 7pm. Guest readers include Jemma Borg, John Clegg and Chloe Stopa-Hunt.

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Opportunities

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

You have a few more days to submit to the Scottish Wildlife Trust's Words of the Wild Competition 2026. Now in its third year, the nature writing competition invites you to write about Scotland's wildlife and wild places. This year's theme is 'Changing seasons'. Submissions can be in English, Scots or Gaelic. The deadline is 12 July.

Sincere Corkscrew's wonderfully strange magazine Orb Speaks is currently open for submissions for Issue 0.5. The Orb seeks writing about the frustration of writing and language: work "against writing and language written at the edge of language." Are you as intrigued as me? The submission window closes on 15 July.

If you're an established writer looking for something more substantial, Paisley Book Festival is seeking applications for its Writer in Residence for 2027. The part-time, ten-month residency runs from August/September 2026 to May 2027 and is open to writers of all forms including poetry, prose, playwriting, spoken word and more. The fee is £14,520. The deadline for applications is Monday 20 July at noon.

The Oxford Review of Books has issued the call for its print winter issue. You can still submit until 22 July and don't worry, the magazine accepts submissions from writers across the globe.

Worth a reminder: the Scottish Book Trust's New Writers Award 2027 is still open for applications until 29 July. The annual programme supports emerging writers in Scotland with a tailored programme of mentoring, training and performance opportunities in addition to ah £2,500 cash award. Entries can be in English, Scots or a combination of both. There are also two awards for Gaelic writers, plus a special prize for emerging writers of colour.

Finally, I wanted to highlight the fact that two brilliant UK indie publishers are open for submissions for larger work in July. The Braag is accepting submissions for pamphlets and micro-chapbooks while Bad Betty Press is seeking manuscripts for full collections. So, if you are currently working on a longer publication, make sure to check out these calls!

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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 Friday Poem, a brilliant UK poetry newsletter that (as the name suggests) publishes every Friday via Substack. Each week, you get to either enjoy a review of a recent collection of poetry or a feature of interest to poets and readers of poetry, plus a related poem. Most recently, Bruno Cook, for example, explored the challenge AI poses to poetry. I also recommend past posts about putting a pamphlet together and where to send it. But there is plenty more to explore and enjoy. Have a look and subscribe (for free)!

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PIG's Poetry Pick

I really enjoyed the recent Disability Poetics collection on the Poetry Foundation's website and thought I'd include a poem from it. The collection is a beautiful mix of different poetic voices that we really don't get to hear often enough.

Echo

by Raymond Antrobus

                                      1

My ear amps whistle like they are singing

to Echo, goddess of noise,

the raveled knot of tongues,

of blaring birds, consonant crumbs

of dull doorbells, sounds swamped

in my misty hearing aid tubes.

Gaudí believed in holy sound

and built a cathedral to contain it,

pulling hearing men from their knees

as though atheism is a kind of deafness.

Who would turn down God?

Even though I have not heard

the golden decibels of angels,

I have been living in a noiseless

palace where the doorbell is pulsating

light and I am able to answer.

                                      2

What?

a word that keeps looking

in mirrors like it is in love

with its own volume.

What?

I am a one-word question,

a one-man

patience test.

What?

What language

would we speak

without ears?

What?

Is paradise

a world where

I hear everything?

What?

How will my brain

know what to hold

if it has too many arms?

                                      3

The day I clear out my dead father’s flat,

I throw away boxes of molding LPs, Garvey,

Malcolm X, Mandela, speeches on vinyl.

I find a TDK cassette tape on the shelf,

smudged green label Raymond Speaking.

I play the tape in his vintage cassette player

and hear my two-year-old voice chanting my name Antrob

and dad’s laughter crackling in the background

not knowing I couldn’t hear the word “bus”

and wouldn’t until I got my hearing aids.

Now I sit here listening to the space of deafness — 

Antrob Antrob Antrob

                                      4

And no one knew what I was missing

until a doctor gave me a handful of Legos

and said to put a brick on the table

every time I heard a sound.

After the test I still held enough bricks

in my hand to build a house

and call it my sanctuary,

call it the reason I sat in saintly silence

during my grandfather’s sermons when he preached

the good news, I only heard

as Babylon’s babbling echoes.

                                      5

          And if you don’t catch nothing

          then something wrong with your ears —

          they been tuned to de wrong frequency

                                   — Kei Miller

So maybe I belong to the universe

underwater, where all songs

are smeared wailings for Salacia,

goddess of saltwater, healer

of infected ears, which is what the doctor

thought I had, since deafness

did not run in the family

but came from nowhere,

so they syringed in olive oil

and saltwater, and we all waited

to see what would come out.

via the Poetry Foundation (also includes an audio recording of the poem).

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

Love,
Annie

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