One Night Stanzas

At the end of 2012, I wrote, “it’s been a great year. I feel I am a million miles away from the place I was in this time last year — phew! I am also extremely excited about 2013 and all that it holds for me. I plan to finish my PhD, put together my first full-length poetry collection (at last!), get more tattoos (yeah!), and start work on a ton of exciting new projects. Wish me luck!” Did I manage all those things? I freaking well did! Check it out!

In 2013, I…

* saw in the New Year with loads of lovely friends around me, shimmying on down at the Summerhall New Year bash. Amazing night! (If you can go to this year’s one, I highly recommend it!)

* re-joined the Making It Home Project for our ambitious film-making phase, thanks to funding from the wondrous Creative Scotland! Keep reading to find out how it went…

* began a year of mentoring sessions with Sarah Ream, poetry ed at Polygon and total and utter superhero, funded by the Scottish Book Trust. With help from Sarah, I began taking nervous little baby steps towards creating a first collection MS.

* spent a very cold few days in and around gorgeous Oslo in the new year: negotiating several feet of snow, discovering the incredible TV show Borgen (and becoming totally hooked!), and writing plenty of poems.

* baked a lot of stuff.

* celebrated my 27th birthday: there was snow! In March!

* celebrated my first veganniversary by pledging to continue to eat as much delicious cruelty-free dessert as I can find. Win!

* repeatedly apologised to everyone for not doing more poetry gigs… when actually, when I look back, I did quite a lot.

* spent Easter in beautiful, deliciously warm Barcelona: revisiting all my favourite vegan restaurants, sunbathing in parks and on rooftops, and again, writing lots of poems. Hooray!

* became suddenly able to afford to buy a house with Lovely Boyfriend. Began immediately and excitedly house-hunting!

* successfully co-edited (alongside the gorgeous Jane McKie) the Making It Home Book, with thanks to all of YOU for your generous crowdfunding!

* spent over nine hours under the needle to have my Oliver No. 9 typewriter half-sleeve tattooed. It is so lush! (Scroll down!)

* escaped one heck of an evil manager, and immediately boosted my self-esteem, by negotiating a transfer to teach at a different campus. (He’s since been demoted and is no longer anyone’s manager. Thanks, karma!)

* went out filming with the brilliant media co-op and our gorgeous groups of Making It Home women. I learned all about how hard film-making is (needless to say, the women were all flippin’ geniuses at it), held lots of things, and ran around with coats keeping our actresses warm!

* I went to lovely London for a few days and discovered Foyles. HOW HAD I NEVER BEEN TO THIS MAGICAL PLACE BEFORE?! (I bought so many books. So many.)

* successfully negotiated the purchase of our new house, a sweet two-bed semi off Inverleith Row (no less)…

* …and immediately began the process of completely re-vamping this never-modernised house. The phrase “no idea what we were getting into” doesn’t even start to cover it!

* learned how to work a belt-sander, learned how to plaster, and wielded a sledgehammer (oh hell yeah!) for the first time ever, thanks to the above!

* went on tour around Edinburgh and Glasgow, showcasing Making It Home. Thank you so much to the many magical people who supported us on our whistle-stop tour!

* finally drew a line under three-and-a-half years of study, and submitted my PhD.

* started the serious work of putting together my manuscript.

* was selected for the Contemporary Women’s Writing Skills Development programme, and attended the amazing first session at the University of Southampton.

* re-launched Edinburgh Vintage as a jewellery store and saw a fourfold increase in sales!

* successfully interviewed for, and accepted, a brilliant amazing fantastic wonderful new job (basically, my dream job, I’m serious) at Scottish Book Trust. I am now their Young Adult Project Co-Ordinator!

* spent four great days in beautiful Munich: eating vegan food, petting lots of kitties, and being constantly surrounded by pretty autumnal foliage. (We also visited the memorial camp at Dachau, which was exhausting, but I now believe that visiting a concentration camp is something every privileged human ought to do at some point.)

* completed a first draft of my first collection manuscript, and began test-driving poems from it at various events… including at Book Week Scotland!

* organised and judged the inaugural One Night Stanzas Poetry Contest! Have you read the winning poems yet?

* had a wood-burning stove put in as part of our new house renovations. Imagine how good that might be, then double it.

* successfully defended my PhD thesis to examiners Miriam Gamble and Dr Leontia Flynn at my viva. I passed! You may now call me Dr Askew!

* finished building and renovation work on our living room only just in time for Christmas, and spent my first Christmas morning with Lovely Boyfriend — after four years of being together! Blissful.

The year in photos…

Chilling in Oslo…

…but warming up again in Barcelona!

27th birthday cupcakes!

A storyboard from one of the amazing Making It Home films.

The half-sleeve! Six months on and I still swoon when I look at it.

Out filming with the gorgeous Sheena, Elaine and Stacey of Making It Home. Such pros.

Celebrating a successful Making It Home tour, with a triumphant boogie at North Edinburgh Arts!

House flippin’! Sanding, sanding, so much sanding…

Hanging out in autumnal Munich.

My new neighbourhood!

Sparkly stuff goes live at Edinburgh Vintage!

Book Week Scotland 2013!

The thesis-beast: SLAYED!

FINISHED IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!!! …just.

Wishes for 2014?
You know what? I am so freaking happy right now. In the past year, so many amazing things have happened — passing my PhD, buying my first house with my gorgeous man, landing my dream job. I feel greedy wishing for anything else, really. However, I do like to have goals, so here are one or two hopes for the year ahead…

*Shop my poetry MS around some cool publishers, and hopefully place it somewhere fantastic (I know, I know. Poetry is dismal right now, especially for first collections. But we can but try).
* Gather my strength to continue the great renovation and finish off the kitchen, tackle the bathroom and create a veggie garden!
* Adopt a dog… or two! Probably greyhounds!
That’s basically it. Oh, and write some good poems. That’d be nice, too.

If you want to see what I got up to in 2008, 2009, 2010 2011, or 2012, just click on each year!

I hope 2014 brings you everything you could possibly wish for, and more besides. Happy New Year!

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Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Happy holidays, all!

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Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Dear everyone, but especially those of you I promised a BWS 2013 blogpost to,

I am sorry this post comes nearly a full month after Book Week Scotland actually happened. The fact I did not blog about it immediately after has nothing to do with the quality of BWS 2013 (it was utterly awesome, in fact). It does, however, have a great deal to do with the fact that my PhD viva (yep) came very swiftly after BWS 2013, and went from “that thing I am working hard at not thinking about” to “that thing that is consuming my whole life right now.” Terribly sorry about that. Hopefully, late is better than never. Here’s how I spent my Book Week Scotland 2013. How about you?

xo, Claire

Sunday night: Shore Poets November
OK, so at this point BWS 2013 was still about four hours away from its official kick-off, and I should probably note that SP November wasn’t an official Book Week Scotland event. It did make a nice literary appetiser for the delicious wordy smorgasbord that was about to follow, however.

The event featured the ever-witty Tracey S Rosenberg in the New Poet slot — among other cool stuff that happened during her set, she wore a great skirt with kitties on it, and read a really excellent poem about and dedicated to the infamous Shore Poets lemon cake. Nice work.

Christine de Luca was the Shore Poet, and her reading was incredible as ever. She mostly read poems in Shetland dialect, which was a delight to hear. My favourite was her poem about the Canadian First Nations woman who made a purse out of swan’s feet. And me a vegan!

The headline poet was Gerrie Fellows, who I’ll admit, I’ve never seen read before — nor have I read any of her work in print. But she was on fine form and read on a variety of subjects. Her poem about coming across the ruins of a crashed aircraft was especially great, as was her sound poem about pointing out deer to a small child.

I should perhaps mention that I once again reprised my role as Scotland’s most awkward literary MC at this particular event!

Monday: Making It Home for Book Week Scotland, “Words Against Violence.”
Book Week Scotland officially began on 25th November 2013! And I was READY FOR IT.

If you’ve even glanced in passing at this blog in the past year, you’ll know all about the Making It Home Project, aka Possibly The Best Thing I Have Ever Been A Part Of In My Life Ever. Well, because the Book Week Scotland team are excellent, they decided Making It Home needed its own space at BWS 2013, so we teamed up with Glasgow Women’s Library to create the “Words Against Violence” event. I read the project poems — including some of the poems written by our gorgeous participants — and we watched the project films, then had a brilliant, thought provoking discussion that was supposed to be panel-format, but ended up just being everyone sitting in a circle with a cuppa and having a really, really good chat. So my kind of event! Here are some pics:

This is the GWL volunteer tree. I utterly love the concept, and the execution! So lovely.

It’s a great way to mark the vital contribution of each volunteer.

GWL’s Gabrielle kicking off the event. (Thank you so much Gabrielle, for your warm welcome and all your capable assistance!)

Making It Home’s project manager Esa, aka Wonderwoman.

Thoughtful faces as the films play…

Oh, Glasgow. Never change.

Tuesday night: Talking Heids (for Book Week Scotland)
Talking Heids is Edinburgh’s magical new(ish) spoken word night on the block, hosted by one of my all-time favs Colin McGuire (pictured here):

It happens on the third Tuesday of every month (I think? It’s once a month and it’s on a Tuesday night, anyway) at Sofi’s in Leith, and each month two poets are featured. For the BWS event, the two poets were Rob A Mackenzie and Rachel Amey. Rob took us on a brilliant chronological tour through his works, starting with the first poem he ever had published, and ending with brand spanking new hot-off-the-printer work. Rachel, meanwhile, read 100% from memory as always, and as always, blew my mind. Her NHS poem never stops giving me chills.

There is also an open mic at the end, and among the acts at the BWS one were yours truly, and the really great Mr Roddy Shippin, lurking rather suspiciously by the door in the photo above. Also up at the mic was the barman, who read a Philip Larkin poem rather excellently, and then, emboldened, took out one of his own poems and read his work in public for the first time ever. The poem (he insisted it was not a poem, “just some lines I wrote on a train,” but if that’s not a poem then my whole writing career has been a huge lie) was great, and I always love it when such things happen. Things like that happening are why tiny open mics in pubs are awesome, and why people who pay to listen to poetry are awesome, and why Book Week Scotland is awesome. Yay!

Wednesday night: The 2013 Margaret Harris lecture.
OK, this was not a Book Week Scotland event. In fact, I had to not go to a Book Week Scotland event in order to go to this! But it was for work, and it was fascinating, although I disagreed with a whole lot of it and found the speaker, Tom Devine, somewhat maddening. Fun fact: ten minutes into the lecture (at a kind of pivotal moment, too) we were all evacuated and lots of firemen called because some mime artists set off a smoke machine in the next room. Dramz! Also, my first ever trip to Dundee!

Thursday night: night off.
(I needed to regroup. Also I’d temporarily run out of BWS pin badges to give out.)

Friday night: Communal Dolphin Snouting
Probably the less said about the title of this event, the better (there were lots of squeaky inflatable dolphin-shaped fairground hammer things hanging from the ceiling when I arrived, and as one of the performers I felt somewhat nervous. Fortunately, said dolphin-hammers were not used to attack me, so I must have done OK). Mainly because it means I can say more about PhiFA — full name, the Berlin Philosophical Football Association.

(Photo credit Andrew McCue)

Wait, what? I hear you cry… yep, philosophical football. It’s basically a live philosophical debate, wherein pro philosophers team up with citizen thought-mongers picked from the crowd, and are timed, refereed and commentated upon as in football. A Muse provides topics to be debated, and ninety minutes of debate follows. Free kicks can be given for cliches and sentimentality, while yellow and red cards can be handed out for things like cheesiness or plagiarism. All the while, a match photographer rapidly makes colourful drawings of the participants, or renders their ideas and arguments into visual form. And scribbling away simultaneously is the match poet… on this occasion, you guessed it, me.

The match poet writes up the match report in the form of a poem — in real time, as the debate is going on. The poem must be finished by the final whistle, and performed live in front of the spectators. As you can imagine, the pressure was pretty intense… but actually, the lovely philosophers provided me with plenty of material, and I managed to come up with a two-part poem (for a two-part match, natch) that I was actually pretty pleased with. The audience seemed to like it, too! So thanks, Book Week Scotland, for putting me way out of my comfort zone, but in what proved to be a good way!

Saturday night: The Inky Fingers / Book Week Scotland Dead Poet Slam
One night.
A dozen dead poets.
A time machine.
A stage.
An audience.
One amazing gig…

(In all seriousness: this great event, fronted by the aforementioned and excellent Tracey S Rosenberg, was a slam with a difference. Each competitor had to perform not their own work, but the work of their favourite dead poet, preferably in costume and ideally with props and a funny voice, where applicable. I was one of the judges — dressed as Dame Edith Sitwell in the spirit, if you’ll pardon the pun, of the evening — and let me tell you, this was a TOUGH contest. Finally won by the utterly brilliant Anne Connolly, who, as my fabulous fellow judge Alice Tarbuck pointed out, could become a professional WB Yeats impersonator.)

Here are some pics:

Alice Tarbuck and I as Aphra Behn and Edith Sitwell respectively, sitting at the judging table of doom.

MC Kurt Schwitters, aka Ali Maloney, aka Harlequinade.

Defending champ Charles Bukowski, aka Colin McGuire.

Hostess with the mostess Dorothy Parker, aka Tracey S Rosenberg.

The new champ WB Yeats, aka Anne Connolly!

Top secret judging paperwork.

Scary judges Edith Sitwell (aka me), Aphra Behn (aka Alice Tarbuck) and Vita Sackville-West (aka Jane McKie).

Thanks Book Week Scotland, for the words, the books, the banter, and OVER 600 EVENTS SCOTLAND-WIDE! Already looking forward to 2014!

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Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Procrastination Station’s been taking a break these past couple of weeks, so here’s a bumper edition of what I’ve been loving online lately!

Embarrassing admission: I never knew E Nesbit was a woman. I also love this poem of hers.

Speaking of poems by women, there’ve been some fantastic ones at the Poetry Foundation recently! Thanks Chris for alerting me to this one by Leigh Stein, and to Freesia for sending me in the direction of Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles. This one by Bernadette Mayer is pretty cool, too!

Are you a Flannery O’Connor fan? If you’re also patient enough to let this F O’C soundboard load, it will MAKE YOUR DAY.

The idea that there is only one right way of doing English – and everyone else is doing it wrong – is inherently flawed. And by “flawed” I mean illogical, elitist and even oppressive. Judgements about what counts as “right”, “good” and “correct” in writing and grammar always – ALWAYS – align with characteristics of the dialects spoken by privileged, mostly wealthy, mostly white people. We make these judgements based on learned biases, as well as a certain emotional attachment to our own way of doing things. But when people study dialects in an objective, scientific way (which is what cunning linguists actually do), they find that low-prestige dialects, such as African-American Vernacular English or Cockney English, have fully-formed grammar rules of their own that make just as much sense as any others. They are perfectly valid and functional forms of communication used by millions of people. The only difference is that they don’t have people running around telling everyone else to do it their way.

This piece on literary privilege is great (and I’m totally a still-recovering grammar Nazi).

This ‘how good is your pronounciation?’ test has been doing the rounds of the internetz forever, but the other day I tried actually reading the whole poem aloud. “Loth” caught me out!

One of my poems from The Mermaid and the Sailors was graciously published by Writers for Libraries. It’s a great project and you should definitely check it out.

The lovely Mandy is featuring my weird and wonderful sister and her wacky advent creations at her blog right now!

If you live in Scotland you should absolutely take this survey, and be part of the Equality Network’s consultation on how to make our fine country better for LGBT*QI folks.

Melissa McEwan is one of my all-time favourite bloggers, and this is a great interview with her.

Oh, I’m sorry, thin people, for exercising in your gleaming anti-fatness temple, but I’ll wear these baggy clothes and stay away from the popular machines so I don’t inconvenience the real exercisers.

Lindy West is awesome. I loved this article of hers on fat people going to the gym. And in related news, the equally awesome Lesley Kinzel writes about how truly terrible shapewear is.

I now want to write EVERYTHING in this font! (Thanks Mandy!)

20 Things Overachievers Like struck a bit too much of a chord with me… (except for the unpaid internship part, because I can’t afford that. Oh, and the working out.)

…and speaking of lists, The 21 Most Awkward Situations In History is really rather amusing.

Things I love: tea, typewriters, and cardigans.

Have you guys seen Barack Obama Being Adorable With Adorable Children? Prepare to smile.

& speaking of which… TERRAPIN RESCUE!

OK, I’ll be honest: I’ve watched this video about ten times. This woman FASCINATES me. Not just because she’s super super hot, has amazing tattoos and basically the cutest laugh-face ever, but also because of what she’s doing with her modelling and her philosophies thereof. I DEFY YOU NOT TO FALL IN LOVE WITH HER JUST A LITTLE BIT.

A little bit of idealism to brighten your day — and I love the narrator’s voice!

This week I went to see the GiftED sculptures on the last leg of their Scotland tour. Find out more in this lovely short film about ‘em!

Paper Sculptures GIFTED Tour 2012 from Blue Iris Films on Vimeo.

When the wonderful Watsky came to Edinburgh for the Watskyx2 gig I hosted, the Scottish Book Trust asked him to read a poem for them. It’s finally online!

I love the Big Bang Theory and want to be Amy Farrah-Fowler’s best friend. Therefore it stands to reason that I love this flashmob the cast and crew did recently!

& finally — have you watched Kilroy Loops yet? TRIPPY AND HILARIOUS.

Have a great weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for poetry and typewriter paraphernalia! Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

So yeah, TiLT took a break… I was that lethal combination of sick and busy. Sad trombones. BUT! A ton of lovely stuff happened in the intervening period, so yay! Here is some of it.

Working with wonderful women
I just finished work on part of a creative project with a local women’s community support group. In the interests of confidentiality, can’t get any more specific about it than that, but I can say that I had an incredible, emotional and hugely rewarding time working with these amazing women. When I was initially approached about facilitating this part of the project, I have to admit — I was kind of scared. I’d never worked with participants like these before, and I felt wholly unprepared for what might happen. I also felt extremely excited about the aims of the project, though, and knew that my involvement could potentially be something to be proud of. So I gathered all my courage about me and said yes.
Fast-forward a few months and I am gutted that this part of things is all wrapping up. I’ve had some of the best, most revealing discussions of my adult life over these past few weeks, and learned so much from the incredible women I was teaching! What’s more, I’ve had a whole ton of fun and laughs in the process. In a lovely but rather emotional final session, my wonderful group presented me with the bouquet of flowers above, along with some tasty chocs and a card. The card was filled with sweet messages thanking me for my presence and hard work — although in fact, all the hard work was done by the ladies themselves! Thank you, wonderful women of the world… you know who you are!

Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poems From The UK
HOW FREAKING GORGEOUS IS THIS BOOK? Seriously! It’s been months now since I got the exciting news that I’d be having three (or five? One’s a series of three) poems published within its pages, so I’ve been extremely impatient to get my hands on it for a good while now! Last Thursday night it was finally launched, at a brilliant event at Blackwells, one of my favourite places. Yours truly got up and read some poems (thanks a million billion zillion to the uber-talented Chris Scott for managing to photograph me not wearing my usual pug-chewing-toffee reading face!), alongside a glittering array of great poets — I particularly enjoyed hearing from Pippa Goldschmidt and Andrew J Wilson, Andrew C Ferguson’s poem about John Knox and the fishwife, and Jane McKie’s spellbinding moon poem. They all have several works in this lovely book, which would make a fantastic Christmas present for the geek in your life. I mean it!

Want to read more? Buy the book!

Major props to Russell, the editor, Tom, who runs Penned in the Margins, and the fabby people from Blackwells and beyond who organised the launch. There were sci-fi fairy cakes — here’s young Leon getting extremely interested in one! — and space travel survival kits on every seat! It was a great night, and as you may have gathered by now, it’s a great book! Buy one, buy one — support a great press, a ton of fabulous poets, and this exciting poetic genre!
(PS: I’m extra excited about this book because it’s the first major anthology I’ve ever seen published by an English publisher where Scottish poets make up the majority of contributors. More like this, please!)

Advent!
For some reason, I am extra-super-excited about Christmas this year. I feel like a little kid, counting down the days! I’m hyper-prepared… almost all my Christmas presents are bought, I know exactly what I’m going to bake for the big day (very important), and I’ve even bought myself a festive starry onesie (YES) to wear on Christmas morning for maximum present-opening cosiness. But the cherry on top of the festive prep cake was definitely my fabulous sister rocking up to my house on December 1st, bearing this amazing gift — a hand-made advent calendar! She knows it’s kind of tricky for us vegans to find a chocolate-y advent calendar that’s cruelty-free, so she took the stress out of it by just making one for Lovely Boyfriend and I. Each hand-sewn pouch is stuffed with dairy- and egg-free treats, and as the month goes on, the goodies get increasingly exciting! She is truly the best sister in the whole wide world.

Honourable mentions:
Vegan cooked breakfast a la Lovely Boyfriend // Getting my Christmas shopping SORTED without any stress, largely thanks to Etsy // MY NEW ONESIE. Seriously you guys. So cosy. // Book Week Scotland. I loved their events at the Mitchell Library last weekend. // Cute stuff on Tumblr (you’re welcome). // Balsam tissues. They are a life-saver… or at least, a nose-saver! // Lovely folks on Twitter // People who exclaim to me that my shop contains “the perfect gift!” for someone they know.

What are YOU loving this week?

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You can also visit Read This Press for poetry and typewriter paraphernalia! Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!