wordfringe
2009
1st–31st May 2009
Week 5
Monday 25 May
7pm
Tarts and Crafts, Balmedie
Join us on our flights of fancy, and prepare to have your feathers ruffled
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Tuesday 26 May
6.30pm
Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen
T.S. Eliot prizewinner Jen Hadfield, Jingling Geordie Keith Armstrong, and John
Mackie's Infinite Equation #2
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Wednesday 27 May
7pm
Gordon Highlanders Museum, Aberdeen
Poems and songs on the theme of leaving and returning home
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Thursday 28 May
6.30pm
Books and Beans, Aberdeen
Makar Poets breeze into Aberdeen
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Friday 29 May
7.30pm
Crown Terrace Methodist Church, Aberdeen
An Aberdeen Writers' Circle bi-annual event
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Saturday 30 May
1pm
Better Read Books, Ellon
The author will be signing copies of his new book
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Saturday 30 May
7.30pm
Aberdeen Arts Centre
Let Hitler do his worst — Aberdeen's fishwives show him they have the guts
to cope
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Sunday 31 May
3pm
Left Bank, Tarland
Koo Press Poetry Roadshow with Catriona Yule, Haworth Hodgkinson and Douglas W. Gray
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Voyager Poets
T.S. Eliot prizewinner Jen Hadfield, Jingling Geordie Keith Armstrong, and John
Mackie's Infinite Equation #2
Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen [Map]
Admission £5 (concessions free)
No booking required
A showcase triple-bill of poets who have travelled for their writing and written
from their travels. Shetland poet Jen Hadfield won the 2008 T. S. Eliot
Prize for a collection that came out of her Canadian explorations. Poet and raconteur
Keith Armstrong comes to us from Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, but his cultural pilgrimages
have taken him from Bulgaria to Iceland, from Cuba to Kenya. Infinite Equation #2
is a two-piece ensemble combining John Mackie's lyric and narrative poetry from
forty five years of travelling and writing with the virtuoso guitar playing of Michael
Moar.
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When Jen Hadfield was awarded an Eric Gregory Award in 2003, for her first
manuscript, Almanacs, published by Bloodaxe in 2005, she used it to explore
her Canadian citizenship, travelling from Nova Scotia to the West Coast, and up
into the Arctic Circle on an epic roadtrip, a journey that launched her on her second
collection about geographic and emotional badlands Nigh-No-Place. She returned
to Shetland to live in 2006. Shetland landscape and language continue to influence
Jen's poetry and visual art, and the Shetland community to support her emotionally,
socially, professionally.
Nigh-No-Place was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2007 and won the T. S. Eliot
Prize for Poetry in 2008.
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Keith Armstrong was born and bred in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, where he
has worked as a community development worker, poet, librarian and publisher. He
was Year of the Artist 2000 Poet-in-Residence at Hexham Races.
He has recently compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners Gala and on the former
mining communities of County Durham and the market town of Hexham.
In his youth he travelled to Paris to seek out the grave of poet Charles Baudelaire
and he has been making cultural pilgrimages abroad ever since. His poetry has been
translated into Dutch, German, Russian, Italian, Icelandic and Czech.
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John Mackie has written for, amongst others, David Bowie, Brian Auger, R. J. Bunn
of Roxy Music, the jazz-funk legend Brian Auger, Jim Mullen, and the award winning
composers Howard Skempton and Dave Smith, and has been publishing poetry and song
lyrics since 1965.
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A consummate musician, Michael Moar is a master of many genres. His first
love is classical guitar, and he has played in a variety of rock and country bands
in North-East Scotland for many years. Currently studying for a degree in music
at the University of Aberdeen, he is fine tuning his compositional skills.
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