Saturday 1st September 2018   7.00 for 7.30

Tickets £5

A great Poetry Double at The Bakehouse 
ANDREW SCLATER with MARK WILLIAMS

Andrew Sclater, shortlisted for the prestigious  Picador Poetry Prize has won awards from The Scottish Book Trust, New Writing North and  been published in many leading magazines. His new collection Dinner at the Blaw Baxters' (Happen Stance 2016) received rave reviews.. 

Andrew is joined by prize winning local poet Mark Williams, winner of  the inaugural Hedgehog Press Slim Volume of One’s Own competition, who will publish Papaya Fantasia in November following his successful first collection, The Odd Sock Exchange (Cinnamon Press 2015)

Saturday October 28th   7.30 – 9.00

Chrys Salt and Bashabi Fraser launch their new pamphlets on India – The Punkawallah’s Rope and The Homing Bird.  Supported by the launch of the Crichton Writers’ anthology of new writing, Alchemy.

To mark the 70th Anniversary of the partition of India and celebrate the Indian-UK Year of Culture 2017, Indian poet Bashabi Fraser and UK poet Chrys Salt offer unique perspectives on the historical legacy and contemporary relationship between their countries in two recently published collections.

Last year I was fortunate to read at The Kolkata Book Fair with Bashabi Fraser under the aegis of The British Council. Bashabi and I would love to share our very different perspectives on this glorious, but challenging continent. AND Bashabi will be facilitating a workshop for writers on the following Sunday morning too. Booking for that essential. Do hope we’ll see you on October 28th and or October 29th .

Tickets: £6.00

www.bashabifraser.co.uk

Sunday October 29th  10.30 – 1.00

‘What is home...?’

A writer’s workshop with Professor Bashabi Fraser a transnational writer currently a professor at Edinburgh Napier University where she co-founded the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs).  Followed by a light lunch at the Bakehouse for participants.

15 places. £15.00

www.bashabifraser.co.uk

November 25th 7.00 for 7.30

We are thrilled to welcome Pauline back to The Bakehouse with her new collection Be an Angel. Her focus on the pre-occupations of women, including MEN will make you laugh and catch your breath in recognition.

Pauline’s one woman shows attract sell out audiences in Festivals all over the country. She has appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Pick of the Week, With Great Pleasure, and Poetry Please; and on Channel 4 Television.

Her readings are a pure, indulgent delight!

‘Everyone needs a Pauline Prior Pitt in their lives’ Maureen Lipman

The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate awaits once more.

Bring a poem, a song, a guitar, a large pipe, a small pipe – anything to entertain or amuse. 

Tickets: £5.00

Booking: 01557 814175 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

BOOK WEEK SCOTLAND AT THE BAKEHOUSE on the theme of NOURISHMENT.

Saturday December 2nd

YUM YUM   2.00 – 4.30

Tom Pow leads a creative writing workshop – poetry and short prose pieces – which explores food and the place of food in our lives.

FREE. 15 places.

Saturday December 2nd  7.30pm – 9.00pm

Poet Tom Pow reads poems concerned with food, cooking and eating. Chrys Salt invites the audience to share poems on a  similar subject that have strong associations for  them.

With wine and tasty tapas titbits provided by super-cook Sue Best in the interval.

Tickets: £10.00. Booking essential.

Saturday January 20th 2018   7.30 – 9.00

Hot foot from his writer in residency in the Aegean, Hugh McMillan reappears in Gatehouse for Burns Night. Help him acclimatise to the chill and share his slant on all things Scottish. He has all kinds of new treats lined up for you - Sioux Indians in Barlinnie, his dead relatives who live in Mather’s Bar, an exclusive on Robert Burns’ murder, the real reason for the Trojan War and many other things....

Tickets £10.00 (includes haggis nibbles and hot toddy)

Saturday March 24th 2018   7.30 - 9.00

The Bakehouse is honoured to host RON BUTLIN, a former Edinburgh Makar /Poet Laureate with an international reputation as a prize-winning novelist. Ron has nearly twenty books to his credit, has won many prizes and been translated into over a dozen languages. His novel, Ghost Moon, was nominated for the international IMPAC Prize 2016. This year sees the publication of his fifth novel, Billionaires’ Banquet; his first novel for early teens, Steve & FranDan Take on the World, a verse-and-picture book for children, Day of the Trolls! www.ronbutlin.co.uk

‘Playful, haunting and moving, this is writing of the highest quality . . . One of the most inventive and daring novels ever to have come out of Scotland.’ Ian Rankin

'Butlin is the best, most productive Scottish poet of his generation.' Douglas Dunn in The Scotsman

Followed by

The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate
Come and strut your stuff, poetic, musical or theatrical 
in our acclaimed open mic spots.

Tickets £5.00

Saturday September 23rd 7.00 for 7.30

Vicki Feaver is the author of three poetry collections; The Book of Blood (Cape) was shortlisted for the 2006 Forward prize for best collection. Her previous collection, The Handless Maiden (Cape, 2004) won a Heinemann Award and was also shortlisted for the Forward prize, while her poem, Judith, was awarded the Forward prize for the best single poem in 1993. She has also received a Cholmondeley award and an Arts Council bursary for her poetry. Previously a professor at the University of Chichester she is now retired and living in Scotland at the foot of the Pentland Hills.

‘Vicki Feaver's reputation far exceeds her output. This collection, sees her shortlisted alongside Seamus Heaney for the 2006 Forward prize....’  The Guardian ( The Book of Blood)

‘....poems negotiate brilliantly between the two realities in a manner Matthew Sweeney has described as "domestic gothic". Feaver includes the stuff of everyday life in her poems - jam-making, gym classes, ironing - but grafts them onto the transgressive power of fairy-tale and myth’. The Poetry Archive 

The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate IS BACK. Bring a poem, a song, an instrument – anything to entertain or amuse.

Tickets £5.00

To book ring 01557 814175 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Saturday February 25th 2017

7.00pm for 7.30pm 

Stuart is not just an award winning poet but is also a terrific performer of his work. He has been  recipient of an Eric Gregory Award & a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, & winner of the first UK Small Presses Poetry Slam. His 2015 collection of poems on Dumfries & Galloway ‘Border Lines’ (Indigo Dreams) won the 2016 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Its follow-up, ‘Looking South’, is published this summer. His first collection in Scots, ‘Aye’, was published in 2016 while he was the Scots Language Centre’s Poet in Residence.

“McGough by way of Morgan.” Alan Bold, The Sunday Times

“Deep in the heart of Scotland something has stirred, and this collection of fine poems is the sound of the rustling undergrowth.” Andy Jackson Dundee University Review of the Arts

Followed by

The Fickle Bakehouse Tupperware Bowl of Fate

Come along and strut your stuff, poetic or musical  in our acclaimed open mic spots.

Tickets £5.00