Well, well. I've just realised it's twenty-five years since my first short story was accepted for publication.
It was early 1999 and I was four months into a two-year part-time MLitt, run in partnership between the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde. The MLitt was a fabulous experience for me. At the time, I was 43, the mum to a 15 year old, a 9 year old and two 6 year olds. I'd been a professional librarian till I was 35 then explored freelance journalism for a few years before spotting the MLitt opportunity. My tutors were Margaret Elphinstone and Zoe Wickham at Strathclyde, Adam Piette and Willy Maley at Glasgow. What a talented team they were! So generous in sharing their experience with us learners. It was life-changing for me. And look at my fellow students! Anne Donovan, Jim Ferguson, Julie Kennedy, David Manderson, Rachel Seiffert, Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh, and many others. And that was just during the two years I was there. Both universities have fostered many other gifted writers on their Masters programmes before and since.
Back to my first short story publication. The piece was called 'Marion'. It was the result of an exercise set by my tutor in which I was to visualise the main character and setting that would be central to a collection of linked short stories. I tapped into my experience as a librarian in Motherwell but fictionalised it, of course.
The magazine that accepted it was Edinburgh-based Cencrastus, edited by Raymond Ross. I was overjoyed to have my story in it, published alongside some weel-kennt names. See the details in the photographs.
In the tail-end of 2023, I had some happy, happy poetry news.
First, my poem 'Walking on Sand' won the Scottish Association of Writers' James Muir Poetry Competition in October. Adjudicator Alison Chisholm was incredibly generous in her critique of it, and I treasure what she said. Here's an extract of her critique.
'Sometimes a poem leaps from the page and embeds itself in the reader's mind, flatly refusing to go away. This was my reaction to Walking on Sand, a poem of power and intensity, and yet with the sensitivity to evoke an unsentimental but emotional response. The situation is familiar and the theme has been addressed many times before; but here the treatment is so compelling that it transcends familiarity. The narrative describes the finding of a pair of hiking boots, triggering the response of "the realisation you'll never walk in them again".... One of the qualities of an excellent poem is its ability to remain fixed in the mind when the reader has walked away from it. ... Congratulations on an exceptional poem.'
Thank you, Alison, and thank you, too, to the Scottish Association of Writers.
Secondly, I was utterly astonished - and also buoyant - to learn that my poem 'Ceilidh' was included in the Scottish Poetry Library's list of the twenty Best Scottish Poems in English in 2022. Selection was made by esteemed Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn and the announcement was made in early December 2023. You can read the poems via that link, and also hear recordings of them, too. Here's a link directly to my poem, the commentary about it, and the recording of me reading it.
'Ceilidh' is from my pamphlet Reading the Landscape, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in February 2022.
Incidentally, Reading the Landscape was reviewed in issue 44 of Northwords Now by Mandy Haggith, and two reviews of it appeared in issue 4 of Dreich Broad Review, published by Jack Caradoc.
