Makar May

The month of May tends to be a busy month for the Makar Press Poets and this month is no exception. Things have been a little bit quiet over the last few months and I guess we can put that down to the death of Jim Hughes, just over a year ago, which really knocked us off our collective stride. Jim was a powerhouse of ideas always looking for new places in which we could perform our work and even thinking up new ways how we could perform our work. More importantly, he was one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met.
However, he would be well and truly pissed off if we allowed his death to stop the good work and name we had established through the years we have been working together. So Rowena, Sheila and I carry on the good fight...

A month of poetry begins for me on Friday when I will be down in London for the Petra Kenney Poetry Competition in Canada House. This is the last year for the competition which has been running for over 12 years now. The founder Morgan Kenney set the prize up in memory of his wife Petra and he feels he had now achieved more than he could have hoped for and that it’s time to stop while on a high. Morgan is another of life’s good guys (one of my very favourites)and a wonderful ambassador for the world of poetry. He is also one of the most enthusiastic and energetic people I’ve ever met. And one of the oldest. (He’ll love that.) Who knew Methusalah had a Canadian accent?

Next is a Poetry Picnic in the walled garden at Culzean Castle on Sunday 24th of May as part of the Burns an a’ that festival. We, the Makar Press Poets have been involved in the festival for 5 (or is it 6, Rowena?)years now and as usual the reading will start at noon and hopefully lots of people will assemble on the grass around us and munch away at their picnic while Sheila, Rowena and I read out our work. It’s a really cool way to spend an afternoon and amazingly one of the few poetry events throughout the whole of the Burns an a’ that Festival. Now I may have an amazing grasp of the obvious, but you think Robert Burns and you think “poetry” don’t you? Well everyone else does apart from the organisers. They think Status Quo and Ruth Lorenzo.

The following Thursday (28th) we’ll be in Aberdeen at the Wordfringe Poetry Festival. Sheila, being a Dyce lass has read in them thar parts on a number of occasions, but it will be a first for Rowena and myself. The reading will be in Books N Beans at 6:30pm and an extra bonus is that we get to spend a few days at Cliff Cottage where our collective muse will be tickled, fed and watered and looked after like royalty. Cannae wait.