If you are writing in the Forth Valley (any genre, any level,) you might like to be part of the Forth Valley Writers collective, which aims to support promote and encourage creative writing in the area – anywhere from Falkirk and Alloa to Callander and Thornhill. We have regular meetups – the next one is on Friday 23rd September at the Curly Coo in Stirling. And if you can’t make it, but you’d like to keep up, we have a blog at

ForthValleyWriters.blogspot.co.uk

And from my own personal perspective, here is a link to a poem I wrote about writing in the Forth Valley – Walking the Territory. It appears in The Territory of Rain, but Stirling Makar Clive Wright has chosen it as his poem of the month for August to September, and you can now find it here.

As part of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) celebration National Poetry Day (6th October) I’ll be reading at an open mic event at the GOMA library in Glasgow, on the theme of ‘messages’. It’s an afternoon event from 2:30, finishing around 5:30.

Meanwhile I am bashing on with The Wren in the Ash Tree. It’s at 163 lines so far, and I’m only two cantos in. And the herb poems are coming along nicely. Two of them will be in the forthcoming issue of Poetry Scotland (about borage and sage), and I’m working on meadowsweet and chamomile, getting distracted by issues of land ownership in the Scottish uplands, medieval domestic economy and ghost hoaxes. If you want to know more about the latter, I can really recommend The Folklore Podcast! This is a fascinating project run by Mark Norman, and has lots of interesting things about death coaches and Springheel Jack, and many other things that keep me from working.

Plus, all the new Red Squirrel poetry has arrived – what a feast that was! There are launch events in both Scotland and North-west England, so if you are nearby, do check out the facebook page.