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Em Strang
Saturday October 29th 7.30 – 9.00
Em Strang teaches Creative Writing and Creative Reading at Dumfries prison, is Poetry Editor for the Dark Mountain Project and completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2013. She was a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award the following year. Work has been published widely in anthologies and journals, been commended and shortlisted in several prestigious competitions and selected for the Forward Anthology in 2016. Her illustrated pamphlet, Stone, was published by Atlantic Press in collaboration with artist, Mat Osmond March 2016 (all proceeds going to Scottish charity, Trees for Life). Bird-Woman (Shearsman, 2016) is her first full collection.
"Em Strang’s poetry reminds us that right dwelling is not just a theoretical or ideological concern; it must also be rooted in the gravity that structures everything, rich in the old pagan knowledge and unafraid to find a home for what we do not fully understand. Bird-Woman is a delicious collection, a book to be savoured in the fullest sense." —John Burnside
"Em Strang's poems are shamanic, in that they restore to us abandoned mythologies. Nothing is stable in this very real world, where houses can become birds, where the animal lies shallowly below the surface of the human, where poems are haunted with what is unsaid. An 'old throat from the other side', full of bewilderment, concern, passion and beauty." —Jen Hadfield
Tim Turnbull - The Wigtown Book Festival @ The Bakehouse
Friday September 30th @ 7.30.
Tickets: £5.00 from The Festival Box Office: Box office: 01988 403222 or tickets on the door
www.wigtownbookfestival.com
Tim Turnbull is a stage-poet, a page-poet and an all-round linguistic marauder. His laconic, caustic, hilarious style has won him a nationwide following, winning him the inaugural Edinburgh Poetry Slam for his poems on stage and in 2008 a shortlisting for The Forward Poetry Prize for his work on the page. 'The future poet laureate' (The Guardian).
‘....the Turnbull cocktail is a slug of artistic and cultural observation, a dash of social and political commentary, laced with a dark, sardonic and moral humour that calls a spade a spade – the kind of drink, to which the only response could be, “What Was That”? Slab Review.
Followed of course by our regular open mike sessions aka The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate. The Bakehouse is an intimate, friendly venue in the heart of Dumfries and Gallowa - the perfect place to share your work. Spoken word or music – come along and be part of the fabulous Wigtown Book Festival at The Bakehouse!
Andy Jackson
Saturday August 27th : 7.30 – 9.00
Andy Jackson is a Salford-born poet who has lived in Scotland for 25 years. He says his work ‘is mainly drawn from the sweepings-up on the poetry floor, focusing as it does on blood transfusions, airports, fingerprinters, dentists and dogging.
Ryan Van Winkle
Saturday July 30th 2016 : 7.30 – 9.00
The ubiquitous RYAN VAN WINKLE has been there, done that and won almost everything!
He’s a feisty, widely published, young American living in Edinburgh who is live artist, podcaster, critic, poet, festival organiser and workshop leader. His second collection The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society's 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award, he has organised and appeared in Festivals in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq, was awarded a coveted Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2012 and a residency at The Studios of Key West in 2016. He gets about! Not only, but also....More about R van W on www.ryanvanwinkle.com
Another opportunity to display your talents and enjoy an evening of warm Bakehouse hospitality. The Bakehouse hosts regular poetry readings featuring internationally acclaimed writers – Australia last month, America this - but it also offers a regular intimate and friendly opportunity for folks to share their work in our popular OPEN MIKE SESSIONS. Aka The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate. Last month we featured The Harpies (Hilary Hawker and Ruth Sanderson harping on), Geoff Keating giving us a bit of sax, David Hannay squeezing his small pipes, with beautifully performed poems ranging from serious, political, topical and the downright comic. Come and show Ryan Van Winkle (no relation) what we’re made of.
Tickets £5.00
Ross Donlon - The Convict's Revenge Tour
Saturday June 25th 2016
7.00 for 7.30
Tickets £5
Ross Donlon is an Australian poet – winner of the Launceston Cup, (premier spoken word event of the Tasmanian Poetry Festival) as well as two international poetry prizes. Eschewing air travel, he will walk a tightrope from Castlemaine, Australia to Gatehouse of Fleet on a European tour which takes him to Romania, Poland, Norway, Ireland, England and, of course, The Bakehouse. His work has been programmed on national radio, he is represented in the ‘Best of Australian Poetry – 2014’ , has a ‘voice that would melt concrete’ and is descended from three convicts, including one from Edinburgh - hence of Australian aristocracy. He is fond of silverware, even silver plated.
The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate awaits once more: bring poems, songs, pipes, guitars – something to entertain us in the second half.
Bad Babes
The Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival with The Bakehouse presents Annette Badland in BAD BABES.
Award winning actress and ‘queen of mean’ Annette Badland - Aunt Babe in EastEnders, Margaret Blaine in Dr Who, Mrs Fitz in Outlander and Horrid Hazel in The Archers - brilliantly brings to life literature’s best bad girls from Fanny Hill to Myra Hindley, Lizzie Borden to Madame Defarge touching on everything from horror to hilarity, men to the menopause. A Festival ‘must see’.
Saturday May 21st @ 7.30pm
The Ryan Centre, Stranraer
Fairhurst Rd, Stranraer DG9 7AP
Sunday May 22nd @ 3.00pm
The Usual Place, Dumfries
Academy Street, Dumfries DG1 1BZ
Tickets: £10.00 (£5 under 26)
Burns Night at The Bakehouse
Saturday 30th January
7pm for 7.30pm
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
THE INIMITABLE HUGH MCMILLAN
Join ‘Penpont’s Pepys’ for another witty and irreverent look at contemporary Dumfries and Galloway.
Join us for a sneak preview of McMillan’s Galloway, Tales from an Unreliable Local - due out in Easter 2016. His Poems (Not Actually Being in Dumfries: Luath) were published recently and in the meantime a strange obsession with sheep has led to a collaboration with that other inimitable Hugh (Bryden) in a pamphlet called The Conversation of Sheep. So you know what to expect......Baaaaa!
“Hugh McMillan’s poems are special, at once local, personal and universal. Treat yourself.” So says Andrew Greig.
The Fickle Tupperware Bowl of Fate awaits once more ...
Bring a poem, a song, (we can supply a keyboard), guitar, small pipes, BIG PIPES, a favourite Burns poem - an entertainment either suitable or wholly unsuitable for the occasion.
Tickets £8
(includes £3.00 for hot toddies & haggis nibbles)
The Wigtown Book Festival
Saturday 3rd October @ 6.00pm
Chrys Salt & Gerda Stevenson
Poetry Double
The Living Room
A pairing of two inspirational poets. Gerda Stevenson reads from her acclaimed collection If This Were Real, while Chrys Salt launches her fourth full collection Dancing on a Rock.
Sponsored by The Random Book Club
Tickets: £5.00
To book: Wigtown Book Festival Box Office. Tel: 01988 403222
Book Week Scotland @ Waterstones
November 26th @ 7.00 – 8.30
79-83 High St, Dumfries DG1 1BN, United Kingdom
A Waterstone’s Poetry Double:
Donald Adamson and Chrys Salt read from latest collections.
A Creative writing workshop with Professor Bashabi Fraser
Sunday November 29th 10.30 – 1.00
A creative workshop with Professor Bashabi Fraser, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Napier University, a Royal Literary Fund Fellow based at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and Honorary Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies and the University of Edinburgh.
This workshop will explore how shared memories can trigger the creative moment when the personal becomes the germinal for creative expression in a public space. Bring paper and pen.
Cost £15.00 ( includes a light lunch)
Booking: 01557 814175 ( places are limited, first come, first served)
Bashabi Fraser
BOOK WEEK, SCOTLAND AT THE BAKEHOUSE
Saturday November 28th @ 7.30
Bashabi Fraser
Saltires 2015 Woman of the Year Professor Bashabi Fraser with hot- off -the press ‘Letters to my Mother and other Mothers’ (Luath 2015)
Acclaimed poet Bashabi Fraser performs poetry on the themes of motherhood, empowerment, love and loss. Drawing on her Indian and British life experience, Bashabi engages with hard-hitting current issues such as rape culture in India, climate change and war. A son questions his mother's love after she has learned about his violent deeds. The biblical Eve is shown as a liberator. A daughter of India demands justice from her society.