St Mungo's Mirrorball Poetry Showcase

A wonderful evening of poetry showcasing new books from Polly Atkin, Alan Riach and Magi Gibson and a posthumous collection from Elizabeth Burns.

Polly Atkin will be reading from her new collection Basic Nest Architecture. This is a follow up to her previous collections Bone Song which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, 2009 and Shadow Dispatches which won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize, 2012.

Elizabeth Burns, a gifted and visionary poet, published four collections of poems, most recently Held (Polygon 2010) before her death in 2015. Her many pamphlets include The Shortest Days which won the inaugural Michael Marks Award and Clay, shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes and Callum Macdonald Awards. Lightkeepers is a new collection and poems will read by Gerrie Fellows.

Alan Riach is the Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, His previous five poetry collections include Homecoming (2009), follows Clearances (2001), First & Last Songs (1995), An Open Return (1991) and This Folding Map (1990). He will be reading from his new collection The Winter Book.

Magi Gibson’s newest collection, Washing Hugh MacDiarmid’s Socks comes out this month. Previous collections include Chapman’s best-selling Wild Women of a Certain Age. Her poems have appeared in Modern Scottish Women Poets (Canongate), Scottish Love Poems (Canongate), The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, (EUP).