STEVE POTTINGER and EMMA PURSHOUSE

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.

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Steve and Emma’s workshop

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

Peter Roberts

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.

Stewart Sanderson

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

 

The Bakehouse presents: Imogen Stirling

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)

Burns Night at the Bakehouse with Alan McClure

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 

 

Tom Pow

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. 

Autumn Voices in partnership with The Bakehouse

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 

Kathleen Jamie : 10 April 2021

The Bakehouse was delighted to host Kathleen Jamie as our third virtual guest of 2021. Awards include the prestigious Eric Gregory Award, The Forward Prize, and the Scottish Book of the Year Award to name but a few. Reviews for both poetry and prose are laudatory. Kathleen read from her ’Selected Poems’ and her new, hybrid forms.

 

THE BAKEHOUSE GOES DIGITAL : JOHN GLENDAY

March 6th   7.15 for 7.30pm

Who better to follow the stunning success of our Burns Night Event with Gerda Stevenson than John Glenday - shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, The Griffin International Poetry Prize, The Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of Year and winner of The Roehampton Poetry Prize. John will read from his two most recent publications: the Selected Poems, encompassing work published between the late 1980’s and 2020, and ‘The Firth’ his most recent pamphlet. He’ll share stories from his own childhood growing up on the Tay Estuary and explore wider issues of landscape and heritage and belonging. Should be a great night!

‘a poet who constantly blindsides and move us, whose direct and pure lyric brings us, again and again, face-to-face with the mystery of our being here’

A haunting music full of subtlety of thought and religious echoes’ The Guardian


John will be followed by our traditional Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate, a little less fickle than usual featuring the first 10 poets who apply to read.  If you would like to join our audience, or be one our open mic readers let me know soonest on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; We will send you the relevant link nearer the time.

We look forward to seeing you on March 6th for another brilliant night at The Bakehouse. Booking is essential, as places are limited.