Saturday 27th January 7.00 for 7.30pm

Tom Pow and a’ that...

The Bakehouse is honoured to welcome back award winning poet Tom Pow as our Burns Night guest. Tom, who really needs no introduction, has authored numbers of celebrated poetry collections, most recently Svetlana's Dance(Mariscat) and Naranjas (Galileo Publishing). The Village and The Road, written and performed by him with music by The Galloway Agreement, received great reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022 and subsequently the group was invited to perform it at the Bird Theatre Festival in Japan. Tom is not just a very fine poet but an excellent story teller and an engaging performer. Promises to be a great night out.

‘Tom Pow’s first new collection since 2014 (Narajnas)  is a feast for the senses’Roger Cox. The Scotsman
 

as part of BOOK WEEK SCOTLAND

Thursday NOVEMBER 24th @ 7.30

Tickets £5

We are delighted Emma and Steve are back in Gatehouse to entertain us with one of their unmissable readings and to run one of their popular poetry workshops.

FRIDAY November 25th 10.30 – 1.00

Join Steve and Emma for a unique writing workshop

Writing people and place: making the ordinary, extraordinary.

Followed by a light lunch at The Bakehouse.

A unique opportunity to work with two experienced workshop leaders who love what they do.  Both award winning poets from the English Black Country, whose respective work often focuses on the people, place, language and landscape of their post industrial region.  Join them for a morning of fun and friendly creative writing activities designed to get you thinking about your place and your people.  You will be invited to experiment with a couple of poetry forms, find wonder in the world around you, and make new work based upon close observance of everyday lives.  

BOOKING:
email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
tel or text mob: 07891 803027
£12.00

Saturday April 23rd   7.00 for 7.30

Peter Roberts, winner of the Fresh Voice Award at the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2020 launches his first poetry collection Night Owling.

An insomniac’s exploration of the emotional archaeology of family and early experience, the characters who peopled his childhood, a life shaped in its values and hopes by the hill country of the north. His poems also address ways of seeing, the evoking power of decaying human landscapes, loss and redemption, traits of masculinity… and, weaving in and out of the poems, birds, carrying the spiritual baggage with which we endow them.

Peter Roberts' gift is one we all aspire to, revealing the very ordinary, banal even, as a series of small and developing miracles. Turning mere words into a kind of transformative magic is a masterful accomplishment and there is a wealth of it here  Hugh McMillan

With special guests

Prize winning internationally recognised poet, the ‘extravagantly talented David Mark Williams and Katy Ewing winner of the Fresh Voice Award at Wigtown Poetry Competition 2019  WITH Hugh McMillan winner of more awards and accolades than you can shake a collection at!

Followed by our traditional Bakehouse Floor spots

The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate 

Bring a poem, a song a monologue – anything that fits into 4 minutes.

Tickets £6.00 including celebratory fizz.

Saturday March 26th 2022

Our talented March guest Stewart Sanderson is an impressive fellow - shortlisted three times  for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, he received an Eric Gregory Award (2015), as well as Robert Louis Stevenson (2016) and Jessie Kesson Fellowships (2019). He’s widely published in magazines and anthologies, has performed internationally and participated in translation exchange projects involving writers from Friesland, North Africa and Russia. He’s the author of two pamphlets – Fios (2015) and An Offering (2018) and his first full-length collection, The Sleep Road, was published by Tapsalteerie last year.

These poems are written out of a keen sense of deep time and a fluency in deciphering what the past might tell us about where we are now – they confirm Sanderson to be one of the most remarkable poets of his generation.  Rachael Boast

At times the mythic scope of this collection took my breath away. Daljit Nagra

Saturday February 26th 2022  

Our talented February guest Imogen Stirling is a performance poet, theatre-maker, musician, writer and facilitator. She has performed her work extensively around the UK and Europe, with partners including Sofar Sounds, BBC Scotland, Latitude Festival, Lindisfarne Festival, Neu! Reekie! and Aye! Write. She can currently be seen on Sky Arts' BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes where she performed alongside Benjamin Zephaniah and Hollie McNish. Imogen was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Paisley Book Festival 2021 and is currently leading Wigtown Book Festival's youth programme.

‘This collection demonstrates just how creative a thoughtful and intelligent poet can get with sin. I think this is the work of a lyrical genius. It is crafted by a great poet, and crafted with emotional depth. There’s nothing like this. There’s no one like Imogen.' (Benjamin Zephaniah)

'Her use of descriptive vivid language gels her to the page, while her blazing theatrical style is sure to stage further success for the viewer, offering a deeper layer, a more ferocious aesthetic.' 
(Janette Ayachi)

Saturday January 29th 2022

ALAN McClure and a’ that...

Join songwriter and author Alan McClure for a standalone set which may, for form's sake, make occasional and entirely tangential reference to Robert Burns. Romp in the apolitical wonderland that is the Scots writing community and hear tales from the frontline of lockdown poetry workshops, widely ignored podcasts and pursuing a creative sabbatical in a time of no gigs.

A profoundly interesting writer - Philip Ward, R2 Magazine

Alan McClure writes from the heart. Passionate, lovely poems. He also writes from the head. Political, intelligent observations....an exciting young writer, well worth listening to. Liz Niven 

19th November 2021

Dumfries and Galloway poet Tom Pow reads from  his fine new collection Naranjas, showcasing his customary explorations of landscape, art, memory and relationships and all with language that celebrates the sensual nature of our world. 

SATURDAY DECEMBER 4th  7.30pm

HEAR WINNERS AND RUNNERS UP OF THE AUTUMN VOICES POETRY COMPETITION READ THEIR PRIZE WINNING POEMS
Competition judge Chrys Salt

Followed by a pre-Christmas Fickle Tupperware Bowl of fate!
Bring a poem/a song/pipes (small or large) - performances either suitable or wholly unsuitable for the Festive Season.

Let’s end this challenging year with a firework display of local poetic brilliance.

Tickets £5.00 includes mulled wine and a mince pie
To Book: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 01557 814175