Launch of 'The Dark Farms' at Wigtown Book Festival

'The Dark Farms', my new pamphlet from Roncadora Press, will be launched at Wigtown Book Festival on Wednesday 3 October.  You'll find me, a tad keyed up, in the Main Hall in the County Buildings at 1.30pm.  Please book via the Book Festival website - click here.

The Dark Farms focuses on the Galloway Forest Park, its depopulated glens, shrinking agriculture and extraordinarily dark skies.  I worked on The Dark Farms for eight months during 2011, walking the Forest, talking to residents and reading old books and maps.  I also spent several happy hours dodging that summer's steady rain in Newton Stewart Museum, where I encountered the Bull Mask, and the Necklace of Horse's Teeth.

I was lucky enough then to receive an award from Arts Trust Scotland for a mentored week at Cove Park.  What emerged is poetry about remote places; the ghosts of sheep; the vast night skies; the generations of paths made by human feet which have been obliterated by 20th century pine forests.

The Dark Skies at Wigtown Book Festival

Two exciting pieces of news: my new poetry pamphlet 'The Dark Farms' (Roncadora Press) will be launched at Wigtown Book Festival at my reading there on Wednesday 3 October, as part of the Dark Skies theme for this year's Festival.

Lunkie Hole, Silver Flowe

                                                  The Night Horses

                                                  are stalled between sleep and dreaming.
                                                  In the steading they lower their massive heads
                                                  to the earth’s nod. In darkness
                                                  white-faced Clydesdales lip at nothing.



And secondly, I met with artists Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman, who have been appointed artists in residence for the Galloway Dark Skies Park and Galloway and South Ayrshire Biosphere.

Robbie and Jo are planning a variety of curious and interactive ways to introduce the Dark Skies Park to festival-goers, and we're developing a collaboration which looks really exciting.  Find out more here.

I spent eight months of 2011 walking in the Forest, exploring ruins, talking to residents, poring over old maps and books and (while dodging some of last summer's rain) delving in Newton Stewart Museum.  I became completely absorbed by this remote, roadless place where hill farming is shrinking back off the high ground, and farms are abandoned, in some cases disappearing completely, except for a placename on a map, under the commercial forest plantings that have been put in during the second half of the 20th century.

The nights are very black, and very starry.

Roncadora Poets read at The Green Tea House Sat 3 March

I'm delighted to be reading among the talent and bone-dry wit of the Roncadora Poets in what must be one of the most perfect settings for verse - The Green Tea House in Moniaive. We're all published by Dumfries and Galloway’s award-winning Roncadora Press and will endeavour to wow and woo you on Saturday 3 March at 7pm. Tickets are £6, available from 01848 200099.

Here's the infamous team photo (as once captioned by Hugh McMillan: 'Roncadora are a family firm purveying mutton pies, butteries, mince rounds and bread and butter puddings. The present board of directors, photographed here, pride themselves on providing high calorie fare for the most discerning of palates."  Speak for yourself Hugh.).
More truthfully, you, the audience, can expect varied and engaging poetry helpfully complemented by a free glass of wine and canapés created by The Green Tea House. Hot drinks will also be available.
Roncadora Press is owned and managed by Hugh Bryden, renowned artist, teacher, writer – and increasingly well-regarded publisher. Roncadora Press was shortlisted in 2008 for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for Pamphlet Poetry with Hugh’s own pamphlet ‘If Ah Could Talk tae the Airtists’; then won the prize in 2009 with well- published poet Hugh McMillan’s ‘Postcards from the Hedge’, and was shortlisted again in 2011 with Jean Atkin’s ‘Lost at Sea’. Roncadora has also been successful in the prestigious Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet competition, shortlisted in 2010 with ‘Devorgilla’s Bridge’ by Hugh McMillan and again in 2011 with a selection of work by the poets reading at this event.
The reading at the Green Tea House will feature work by Jean Atkin, Hugh Bryden, Andrew Forster, Hugh McMillan and Rab Wilson. They will read from their recently published work, but also provide a taster of new poems on their way to publication, and talk about the process.

A new review of 'Lost at Sea'

'Lost at Sea', my poetry pamphlet about my great-grandfather and his family on Shetland, has just been reviewed by Nadia Kingsley of Fair Acre Press. 

Lost at Sea

poems by Jean Atkin, design by Hugh Bryden.

Published by Roncadora Press.  ISBN : 978-0-9535804-6-0

Lost at Sea is a beautiful handmade poetry pamphlet. From the start there is mystery here as no explanation, no introduction eases the reader in. However, the card pages can be folded out into one continual landscape of printed image that shows us we are in a place of islands; a place dominated by sea - a sea that is deep and bleak and is made up of creases reminiscent of skin and cotton held together by dream.

The words of the twelve poems float over this cold ocean. Each poem draws the reader deeper in. Will the reader drown like other “surnames lost at sea” or will they, like I, come out of this experience stronger and more alive, and with a greater affinity for men like Thomas Gilbert Hunter Aiken?

                     That sometimes he ate

                     ships biscuits so maggoty they

                     shuffled across his plate…

                     That in Valparaiso he

                     punched a man and knocked him

                     overboard and then jumped in and saved him…

                    That he lived to see his sons survive the War

                    and held his grandchildren, as babies…

Lost at Sea is more than a poetry pamphlet. It is the way forward - in a climate of e-books and shrinking opportunities, it stands strong as a collaborative piece of art that can be returned to again and again.

Nadia Kingsley
Fair Acre Press http://www.fairacrepress.co.uk/
2011