Where to begin summarising an interview like this! We spoke to Stewart Sanderson and Samuel Tongue about their recent pamphlets and got much more than we bargained for. From thylacines to mountainside verse, sestinas, and the impossibility of originality… Could you tell us a bit about your process and how your poems and/or collections take…
International Mother Tongue Day
Today is international mither tongue day, a celebration of ‘linguistic and cultural diversity’. Scotland has a troubled history with its own languages – as I’m sure many other nations have – and we’ve near enough managed to entirely kill off Gaelic and Scots. Here at Tapsalteerie we believe that the loss of a language is…
An Official Guide to Surviving the Invasion
We’ve just heard that Russell Jones’s poem, “An Official Guide to Surviving the Invasion”, is being made into a film – a horror that sees Scotland on the cusp of an unknown epidemic. Thanks to director Nathan Elliott and producers Misha McCullagh and Marian Roarty for picking up on Russell’s excellent work. You can read the poem…
Help us find out more about poetry reading habits
Tapsalteerie are trying to find out a bit more about how people read, and why people buy, poetry pamphlets. We’re hoping that the results will help both poets and publishers to figure out how best to reach readers with their work. We conducted a wee research pilot study at the StAnza poetry festival way back…
Russell Jones reading from “Dark Matters”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1p_5Zi6Vqo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaUXSJD7oEM Get the pamphlet here
“Synchronicity is everything”: An interview with Kate Tough
Kate Tough’s pamphlet of experimental and found poetry, tilt-shift, was published by Tapsalteerie in 2016, and since then has been named runner up for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award 2017, and noted in The Bottle Imp’s Best Scottish Books 2016. You might also know her as the poet behind a 2016 Best Scottish Poem, ‘People…
“Haiku moments can happen anywhere”: An interview with Iain Maloney
To launch Tapsalteerie’s very first Haiku Friday, we spoke to Iain Maloney about his recent first collection of poetry, Fractures, published by Tapsalteerie last year. Maloney was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland and he currently lives in Japan. He is known for his three novels – The Waves Burn Bright (Freight, 2016), Silma Hill (Freight, 2015)…
Ch-ch-changes
It’s exciting times here at Tapsalteerie Touers, as after an exceptional response to our recent plea for help I can now announce fully three new members of the Tapsalteerie team. I was blown away by the instant and many offers of help I received – how wonderful that so many people were so enthusiastic about…
Lyrical Breenge
Stuart A Paterson’s Aye, reviewed by Tom Hubbard Reviewing the Glasgow-born Irishman Pearse Hutchinson’s Collected Poems, Harry Clifton quoted Alexander Blok’s remark that a poet ‘is a human being by profession.’ The reviewer continued: ‘In the present climate, when poetry is less a fate and more a career-choice, the imperative is to professionalise first and…
Help required!
It’s time to admit it, Tapsalteerie needs help. I simply don’t have enough spare time to do everything that could be done. So I’m shining whatever the poetry equivalent of the bat-signal is into the crisp, clear Aberdeenshire night sky. If the idea of getting involved in a Scottish poetry micro-press tickles your fancy then…