BurnedThumb

Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

Events

  • Fundraiser Event in Aid of MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank

    Logo of Red Squirrel Press, a squirrel in white against a read and black background

    Biggar-based publisher Red Squirrel Press invites you to an afternoon of Red Squirrel Press poets and friends in aid of MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank.

    Featuring some of the best-known names in poetry, WN (Bill) Herbert, Dundee Makar and Professor of Poetry, Sean O’Brien, multi award- winning poet and Emeritus Professor, Colin Will, writer, musician, former Scottish Poetry Library and StAnza International Poetry Festival Chair, award winning Biggar-based poet Lindsay Macgregor, Andrew Forster, highly-acclaimed poet and literature professional, including former Literary Development Officer for the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association and myself, – reading new work, as well as some favourites from Haggards and The Well of the Moon.

    This is a great line-up to be a part of!

    It will take place on the 28th October at 4pm

    in the Biggar and Upper Clydesdale Museum,

    156 High St
    Biggar, ML12 6DH

    Tickets £6

  • Glasgow Review of Books

    The Glasgow Review of Books was on hiatus for a long time, but under the direction of CD Boyland, has recently been relaunched, with a beautiful new format, and a LOT of fascinating articles, reviews poetry and more. You can find it here.

    Long-term readers of this blog will know I have been a fan of Jim Carruth’s farming poetry for years. He recently published the final volume of his Auchensale Trilogy, and I got to review it. Here is the link:

    EVER AND ALWAYS, FROM THE GROUND UP: Jim Carruth’s ‘Auchensale Trilogy’: Reviewed by Elizabeth Rimmer.

    Do seek it out – the Review, first – there are some sample poems for you to try too – but then the books.

  • Charms for the Healing of Grief

    cover of book. Black paper with a white oval cutout the title Charms for the Healing of Grief in black type

    This lovely thing just arrived. It is the booklet of the charm bracelet Hugh Bryden of Roncadora Press made

    bracelet of tiny linked books with alternating black and white edged pages and red covers in a black box

    There are seven charms, all Scottish emblems of healing – the owl, heather, daisy, pine, yarrow, oats and lark, and the charms are based on traditional healing traditions – except perhaps the owl. Often owls are seen as bad luck, but for purposes of my own – and because I like owls! – I have reinterpreted the call of a tawny owl as comforting, as in fact I find it.

    It is illustrated by Hugh Bryden who designed the book, and it exists in a limited edition of 100.

    picture of a yarrow head in white against an oval black background. Text runs For Grief that Pierces I am the bitter yarrow/my darkness is harsh against the tender/My power goes deep to mend/ what is brolen, to stanch the stream/ of loss, let life flow back.

    I have some copies which I have added to the shop. They are £12, postage and packing free within the UK. Roncadora Press will have more, and I hope to have news of a launch soon.

    blacl oval with a lark, wings outstretched in white. Text runs For grief that wakes with you. Hear the laverock rise up/ in the morning. His song/is unvanquished, he pours/ joy like a fountain./ may it find your heart.

  • Red Squirrel Press Showcase

    On 18th April at 7pm

    CCA 350 Sauchiehall Street
    Glasgow G2 3JD

    LIVE LAUNCH!

    The Scottish Writers Centre will host a Red Squirrel Press Showcase on the 18th April, when no less than nine poets whose books have come out since the pandemic will launch their new work. They are

    Patricia Ace The Lido at Night

    Chris Boyland Vessel

    Irene Evans In the Course of Conversation

    Ann MacKinnon Warp and Weft

    Ellen McAteer Honesty Mirror

    Evelyn Pye Steam

    Elizabeth Rimmer The Well of the Moon

    Morag Smith Background Noises

    SheilaTempleton Clyack

    It will be so exciting to hear the work live after all the times on Zoom! Please come – there will be copies on sale on the night, but I’m sure we would also be happy to sign copies that were bought on line!

  • Launch of Ceasing Never

    In May 2023, my friend the Edinburgh-based poet Helen Boden and I gave an online talk to the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, on Geopoetics and Poetry. While preparing it, we realised that although geopoetics has produced some very innovative and creative work in many other disciplines, and attracted attention from artists in many genres, poetry itself did not feature as strongly as might be expected. What was more, geopoeticians did not appear to be particularly aware of recent developments in eco-poetry, nature writing or writing about place, while many writers in those fields did not seem to be aware of the potential of geopoetics.

    We felt that poetry would benefit from some focussed attention, while geopoeticians might appreciate more awareness of the diversity of poets writing currently, and the need to decolonialise the poetry canon. There is a lot going on in the fields of eco-poetry and place writing, and we feel that geopoetics, with its emphasis on getting outside traditional western ways of thinking and perceiving and centring our culture on awareness of the earth itself rather thatn traditional political or cultural constructs about it, might have something distinctive to add. This website is an attempt to keep this discussion going.

    The first step was to launch our website Ceasing Never, which will publish articles, reviews and analysis. We have a core group of contributors whose work in this field is established. The good news is that the site is now LIVE, and the first two articles are up, so please look – see what is on offer, and join the discussion via the comments (They will be moderated, so it might take a day or so before they publish).

  • Third Reprint of Haggards

    cover of haggards designed by Gerry Cambridge

    Although it came out early in 2018, there is still a lot of interest in Haggards, and a third reprint is just about to be released. You can buy it from my publisher Red Squirrel Press or via the shopon this site. Neither of us charge for postage withing the UK. Early next year I will enable credit card payments for people who don’t like to use PayPal.

    I’m signing off for Christmas now, so I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Happy Christmas, and a good New Year!

  • Autumn Voices Poetry Competition

    Autumn Voices – an organisation which celebrates the creativity of older people, is running its annual poetry competion this year. You can find out more about it, the theme, judge, prizes, elegibility and so on, by following the link, where you will find that I have had the honour of being asked to be the mentor for the winners. The deadline for this is 31st October, and I look forward to meeting the successful poets!

    Poetry Competition: October 2022

  • Environment Day At The Meadows Community Garden Edinburgh

    Grassroots in the Meadows
    For Katherine Cameron
    There’s so much surprising green in this city’s
    grey stone heart, so douce, so mercantile.
    I miss that four pointed arch at Jawbone Walk
    beyond the cherry trees, all pink and lyrical
    under a wide spring sky, enormous, shocking
    in its frank commemoration of brutality,
    Yet this is generous. There are paths here
    for cyclists and joggers and grass for barbeques,
    kids making out, students with their books,
    but no-one selling anything but thought –
    all this space and no ice-cream concession,
    but campaign booths and vegan festivals
    and summer camps for children, rainbow flags.
    Radical starts here, with all the marches –
    stop climate change, ban trident, the white
    ribbon we wrapped round Edinburgh
    to make poverty history. It’s the place for change,
    beyond the university’s bounds. I saw
    my first feminist badge here – the future is female –
    pink on the coat of a mother at the swings.
    But most radical of all, on that March day
    before Thatcher, in the winter of discontent,
    when snow fell, and lay, and froze, and people
    skied down Princes Street, we put on hiking boots
    and crossed The Meadows to the Simpson,
    last day of two, the day when you were born.

    The Meadows in Edinburgh seems to me to be characterised by radical generosity, and The Community Gardens on the Meadows really demonstrates this. It is one of my favourite community projects, and I am delighted to be taking part in their Environment Day on Saturday 20th August. I will be running a creative writing workshop from 12-1.30 (It includes time to eat a picnic, if you bring one.) It is based around close observation of the garden and responses to it. Later there will be Carbon Conversations with Jean Mathieu Gaunand, and the weather looks as if it will be dry, so please come!

  • The Earth is Our Home

    I have long admired the poetry of Gerry Loose, and I am delighted to say that I have a poem in this project that he is bringing to birth. Please take a look at the on-line issue, and do consider pre-ordering a copy.

    World Poetry Movement Scotland, in association with Mythic Horse Press, is delighted to be publishing the e-book The Earth is Our Home, the work of 19 brilliant Scottish poets. It’s entirely free to download: https://issuu.com/ecojoe/docs/our_earthIn addition we are intending to print and publish a book of the same title.We are accepting pre-orders now, for publication in the summer. This will be a limited edition of 200 copies.As a bonus, a thank you, the first 100 subscribers will receive in addition a free copy of TEN SEASONS: explorations in Botanics, (Luath / SPL), 127 pages of poetry, photographs and more – in fact what it says in the title.Pre-sales are at £9.99 + P&P and the offer will last for 30 days including today.If you’re interested in poetry, photography, climate and social justice and the humans and nonhumans with whom we share Our Home, then this offer is for you.If you would like to pre-order a copy of The Earth is Our Home, please email dharma46@hotmail.com and we’ll set it up.Please share widely with your friends and contacts!

  • Poetry and Geopoetics Conversation Online

    This is an event we’ve been planning for quite some time:

    A Virtual Conversation about Poetry and Geopoetics
    with Helen Boden and Elizabeth Rimmer
    on Thursday 26 May at 17.00 BST

    A lively conversation between two experienced poets, beginning with an outline of their connection with geopoetics, (including poems as illustrations), a discussion of earth-based poetry before Kenneth White, and some suggestions of where geo-poetry and geopoetics are now. Suggested donation £5 or what you can afford, please book at Eventbrite at https://bit.ly/poetry_geopoetics.

    A Virtual Conversation about Poetry and Geopoetics
    with Helen Boden and Elizabeth Rimmer 
    on Thursday 26 May at 17.00 BST
    – please note change of date – and BOOK NOW!
    A lively conversation between two experienced poets, beginning with an outline of their connection with geopoetics, (including poems as illustrations), a discussion of earth-based poetry before Kenneth White, and some suggestions of where geo-poetry and geopoetics are now. Suggested donation £5 or what you can afford, please book at Eventbrite at https://bit.ly/poetry_geopoetics.




    Helen Boden  grew up on the edge of the Pennines and is resident on the edge of the Pentlands. Her first poetry collection, A Landscape to Figure In, from Red Squirrel Press in 2021, is about place and identity, and explores ways in which land is reimagined as map, sign or picture. She is widely published in poetry magazines and antholgies and also collaborates with visual artists. A former Lecturer in English & Scottish Literature at Edinburgh University, she works as an independent Literature professional, devising & delivering creative writing activities across a broad range of community, healthcare, cultural and environmental settings, with  particular interests in facilitating Writing & Place and  Writing for Wellbeing.

     

    Elizabeth Rimmer (@haggardherbs) is a poet, poetry editor for Red Squirrel Press and occasional translator. She has published four collections of poetry with Red Squirrel Press, Wherever We Live Now, in 2011, The Territory of Rain, in 2015, Haggards in 2018, and The Well of the Moon in 2021. She has edited fifteen full poetry collections and six pamphlets for Red Squirrel Press and two editions of Stravaig, where two essays, The Occasional Tang of Salt and By the Book: Herbs, Landscape and Ways of Knowing were published. She has also published a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Charm of Nine Herbs. Her website is www.burnedthumb.com.












     

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