Scottish Writers' Centre Ryan Van Winkle: Intimacy, Reading, Hearing, and Feeling Poems

The award winning Ryan Van Winkle is a poet and live artist. His one to one intimate poetry performance Red Like Our Room Used to Feel was hailed as a ‘landmark of poetry performance.’ Van Winkle says he considers himself a “poet primarily of the page but I like to find new ways to present my work to a live audience – especially ones who shy away from poetry.” Through collaboration, small bespoke performances, immersive sets and analogue technology, Van Winkle creates performances which can surprise, delight and resonate. Ryan will be talking about what poetry is, how he came to poetry, how he has come to understand what a good poem is, and how collaboration and creating theatre work has helped his writing.

Ryan Van Winkle is a poet, live artist, podcaster and critic living in Edinburgh. His second collection, The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year Award. His poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland, The Prairie Schooner and The American Poetry review. His debut collection was published by Salt in 2010. His poetry/theatre experiment Red Like Our Room Used to Feel was one of the top ten best-rated shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2012. As a member of Highlight Arts he has organised festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2012, was listed as one of Canongate’s Future Forty in 2013 and was awarded a residency at The Studios of Key West in 2015/2016.