Blue Salt Collective

Knotbrook Taylor has been published in various Scottish literary magazines, has won a couple of poetry competitions and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Shore Poets among other venues. He sees performance as an important part of being a poet and hopes "once seen never forgotten".

He recently decided to write a poem every day which has just about blown his mind. "There's a whole universe of stories, lives and questions in all of us—waiting to be formed—anyone can open the gates" he says. Just sit down and do it.

Beatitudes, Knotbrook Taylor's new poetry collection, is launched at wordfringe on 8th May.

Catriona Yule (Cat, for short) lives in Auchenblae with the other cat and tries to get more pampering! She likes wearing big fluffy socks, watching old episodes of Northern Exposure and eating chocolate, preferably all at the same time. She's into Raymond Carver short stories, Mark Haddon's poetry, and has just finished The Stornoway Way by Kevin McNeil which she read in three days.

Her short stories have been published in The Eildon Tree, The Lemon Tree brochure and Pushing Out the Boat. Her play Kitten Heels was given a semi-staged production at Aberdeen Arts Centre in 2005. Her main driving force is to explore people's voices in her writing and to this end she is currently experimenting with fiction through the Storylines course in the Open College of the Arts programme.

Her poems have been published in Spinners and Spoons, Lapidus, Markings and most recently Northwords Now. She tutors English in Aberdeenshire and is currently working on her first poetry collection and trying to design a website.

Catriona also performs in A Loon and Three Quines on 24th May.

Photo by Sally McIntosh

Born in Lancashire and resident in North-East Scotland for twenty years, Haworth Hodgkinson is best known as a poet, but he also writes short stories and is involved in music and theatre.

His poetry has appeared in Storm, Pushing Out the Boat, The Broken Fiddle, Breaking New Ground, New Writing Scotland, Spinners and Spoons and Sex in the City, as well as on the Dead Good Poets and Spring Tides websites. His poetry chapbook A Weakness for Mermaids was published by Koo Press in March 2007.

In addition to performing as a poet and musician with the Blue Salt Collective, Haworth Hodgkinson is the Founder and Director of wordfringe.

John Glenday was born in 1952 and currently works as an addictions counsellor with NHS Highland.

He is the author of two collections: The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets, 1989), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and Undark (Peterloo Poets, 1995) which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Poems have been anthologised in the Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry (Faber and Faber, 1992); The Firebox (Picador, 1998); and New British Poetry (Grey Wolf Press, 2004).

He was appointed Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow for 1990/91, based at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Aberdeen based dancer/choreographer and teacher Mhairi Allan trained in contemporary dance and has spent the past few years creating pieces of work for both community and professional performance. She works with many differant age groups and abilities, with cross generational and older dancers, utilizing fresh music compositions.

Last year she was a participant in the Facets 2006 International Choreography Laboratory at the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore.

She would love to work more with sound, lighting and text, and is looking forward to working more collectively exploring dance with other artistic mediums.

Promoted by

Blue Salt Collective
Woodend Barn
Wordfringe

Supported by

Live Literature Scotland (Scottish Book Trust)