St Mungo's Mirrorball: Poetry Showcase with Tom Leonard

Tom Leonard (born 1944) is a Scottish poet, writer and critic. He is best known for his poems written in the Glaswegian dialect of Scots, particularly his Six Glasgow Poems and The Six O'Clock News. His work frequently deals with the relationship between language, class and culture.

In 1984, he released Intimate Voices, a selection of his work from 1965 onwards including poems and essays on William Carlos Williams and “the nature of hierarchical diction in Britain.” It shared the award for Scottish Book of the Year and was banned from Central Region school libraries. In 2009, Leonard released Outside the Narrative, a collection of his poetry from 1965 to 2009.

Tariq Latif was born in Lahore and raised on farm till the age of eight when his family moved to Manchester. He graduated from Sheffield University in 1984 and moved to Dunoon 12 years ago for the love of the Highlands. He has had 3 collections published by Arc: Skimming the Soul (1991), The Minister's Garden (1996) and The Punjabi Weddings (2007). His pamphlet entitled Smithereens was published this year also by Arc.

Nuala Watt was born and lives in Glasgow. She has an M.Litt in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews and a PhD on the role of partial sight in poetic composition at the University of Glasgow. In 2009-10 she was a member of the Clydebuilt mentoring scheme run by St Mungo’s Mirrorball. She is a member of several Glasgow poetry groups and is active in the local poetry scene. Her poems have appeared in Magma and Gutter, as well as on BBC Radio.

A C Clarke lives in Glasgow. Fr Meslier’s Confession (Oversteps Books 2012) was listed with a brief review in the Poetry Book Society magazine. Her pamphlet A Natural Curiosity (New Voices Press 2011) was shortlisted for the 2012 Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. She was one of 17 poets commissioned to write a poem for the Mirrorball Commonwealth Poetry Anthology, The Laws of the Game, and was longlisted for this year’s National Poetry Competition. In The Margin (Cinnamon Press 2015) is her fourth full collection.