Shipping AIS Map

this interactive map shows real time shipping around Shetland. You can click on the boats and see where they're headed and what they're up to. Wherever we live is the centre.

Scroll down to Shipping AIS Map

Reading at Aye Write! next week

with Don Paterson, Sam Willetts and McGuire.

Mitchell Library, Wed 1st October

6-7, free.


book on 0141 287 2951 or ayewrite@glasgowlife.org.uk

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR

With bees


it's all about heat.


Hard to find ourselves


in a damp autumn dawn


now that the circus


has moved on


the worst- 


off cramponned


to a vertiginous


leaf, wings 
squeezed

to a silver panel


to sop up

what thin warmth


they can 


running


–


on empty.


We can barely buzz


but do


what we can

–
without your teaspoon


of sugar-water –


slowly rocking


our grounded weight


(so mite-laden


we look like strawberries)


from limb to limb,


grieving, really,


the slippage


of the sun. 


–


Which is in


itself to recollect 


our business which is


to be us to agitate


each stiff joint,


gather a quorum and 


shiver together hum


fiercer and groom 


our leavening pelts


as the late rays stoke us,


no surplus


perhaps but enough


to get up and among


the dog-roses


again

Reading with artist Anne Bevan in Aberdeen tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll be nipping down to Aberdeen for Mayfest and reading with Alan Spence, celebrating Orkney artist Anne Bevan's lovely exhibition. Things Unseen is all about microscopic marine life.

The Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, 3-4pm, 10th May 2014
Free! (but booking required)

Online Event at the Poetry School next week

Reading at 'Streams of Story', The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

I'll be reading from Byssus at The Fruitmarket Gallery next Thursday, to celebrate Tania Kovat's new exhibition Oceans. 

'The exhibition begins with All the Sea (2012–14), a work made from the sea water collected from around the world by individuals who responded to a public invitation to help assemble the world’s sea water in one place. Decanted into 365 glass bottles, All the Sea takes the form of a library of bodies of water, from the Adriatic to the Yellow Sea. It also represents an archive of moments in time, recordings of 250 human experiences with – and most probably in – the sea, capturing in bottles a substance that otherwise slips through our fingers.'

Details here, booking recommended.

With Paul Farley and Tim Dee in Unst...

recording next Sunday's episode of The Echo Chamber.