One Night Stanzas

Hello everyone! Exciting news: I am headed to the Isle of Lewis next week!

Lovely Boyfriend are going to go and stay in a wooden hut next to the sea, with no internet connection or phone signal — and we’re hoping this will translate into writing, writing and more writing!

We’ll be very close to the Callanish standing stones (That’s them up there, in a stunning photo by the lovely and excellent Ms Julie Howden), on the other side of the island to Stornoway.

(Photo credit)

Basically, I would like to know from you: what should I do with my holiday?

We’ll be spending two or three days driving from Edinburgh up to the crossing to Lewis, so first of all — what should we stop and see on the way? Is there anywhere amazing we can stay over to break our journey? We’ll have a car and all our camping gear, but we’d also be open to hotels, B&Bs, hostels, tree houses, hobbit holes — whatever!

(Photo credit)

Secondly — what should we do while we’re on Lewis? What should we see? What time of day should we see it?

And thirdly — with Lewis as our basecamp, where else can we go? Which islands should we explore? Where can we see seabirds and ocean-dwelling critters?

Importantly: what can we do when it’s raining? What should we do if, by some miracle, it is fine? What will we need our wee car for, and what can we go and do on foot?

(Photo credit)

Please do share your thoughts, ideas, recommendations, fangirlings, warnings and personal stories here in the comments box (NB: there is a mod queue), on Twitter, or by emailing claire[at]onenightstanzas.com

Thank you a million!

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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!

Hey ONS-ers. I have a big, big favour to ask.

I don’t often ask you guys for stuff. I’ve never run ads here, and I even took down my tip-jar ’cause I felt bad about it. But now I’m asking for your help, because I know you’re all super-cool individuals who know a damn good cause when you see one.

I’ve spoken a bit before, here (scroll past the inevitable cake pictures!) about the totally life-changing (really!) work I’ve been doing over the past year with a thing called The Making It Home Project. I won’t say too much about it here, because I want you to go and read all the details at this link instead, but I will say: this is the sort of creative work that I deeply, passionately believe in. Forget fancy book launches, forget big anthologies, forget even the humble poetry slam. This is what poetry ought to be doing with itself: opening up amazing new creative possibilities to people who might otherwise never have read a poem in their lives.

I’m being mysterious, so go see what I’m talking about! But first, listen to the following, heartfelt plea…

You guys all know the power of books — you wouldn’t read this bookgeek blog otherwise. You know there’s something about a book: they’ve got a special sort of magic that no other object has. And a lot of you know how much more magical a book becomes if it contains something that you yourself wrote… right? Well, we want to make a really, really magical book. It’ll be a book we can give to the incredible women we’ve been working with, so they can also experience how awesome (literally) it feels to hold and read and share a book that has your words in it. It’ll also be a book we can give to all of you — for free! — to show you the amazing work these groups of women have been doing.

I’d like to ask you to do three small things.

One: watch our video.

RST Poetry Film taster from media co-op on Vimeo.

Two: click on the link in the image below, go and read more about what we’re doing, and how we plan to make our book.

Three: if you can (and only if you can), donate a pound or two to our cause. Any donation over £5 gets a reward… the more you give, the bigger and cooler your reward will be. If you can’t afford to donate, that is totally OK. But I’d be super grateful if you could spread the word around to anyone you think can help us.

These three things will take you what? Five minutes? If that. But your five minutes will make a massive difference and I promise, I will be very, very grateful to you!

Thanks guys. You rock.

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You can also visit Read This Press for more 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!