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

Saturday January 28th 2017

7.00pm for 7.30pm    

Back by popular demand

Hugh McMillan

.... Hugh McMillan, one of Dumfries and Galloway's most accomplished literary sons will take us down some back passages in a quest for the spirit, if not the letter, of Robert Burns.  Entertainment guaranteed.

‘...one of the most individual, intelligent, accessible and entertaining voices in Scotland’

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

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! 

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.

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

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.