Stromness Kirk
17 Graham Place
Stromness
KW16 3BY
Join us for our first event of 2025, an evening of poetry with John Glenday at Stromness Kirk on Tuesday 11th February 2025 from 7.30pm.
John Glenday is the author of four collections. ‘The Apple Ghost’ (Peterloo Poets 1989) won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; ‘Undark’ (Peterloo Poets 1995) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and ‘Grain’ (Picador 2010) was shortlisted for both the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, ‘The Golden Mean’ (Picador 2015) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year and won the 2016 Roehampton Poetry Prize. His Selected Poems was published by Picador in 2020. He is the author of two pamphlets ‘mira’ (coast to coast to coast 2019 with Maria Isakova Bennett) and ‘The Firth’ (Mariscat Press 2020).
John will be celebrating the insignificant, the unnoticed, the disregarded and the overlooked. Human beings with their busy lives are adept at noticing new things, but tend to take the commonplace for granted. All the things we don’t notice from insects, to weeds, to the politely respectful dead. Poetry refuses not to notice. It insists that we are not innocent bystanders in the world, but material witnesses. Though it sounds like a small thing, this is in part how poetry helps change the world. The first step towards improving our environment is to pay attention to it.
Tickets are £4 for OAS members, £6 for non-members and £1 for children, and can be purchased in advance via TicketSource or on the door if still available.