Photo: Colin Hattersley

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About Stewart Conn

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Forthcoming & recent

Tuesday 2nd August 2022, from 6.30 pm

Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street
Edinburgh EH1 1DF

UNDERWOOD
Mariscat Press

with music from Caroline Snell (oboe), Lynne Bulmer (flute) and Christine Hurley (cello).

entry free / book by Eventbrite

Saturday 19th October 2019, 7:00-9:00pm

Platform Poets
Off The Rails Arthouse
Victoria St, Ladybank
Cupar KY15 7JT

Guest poets Stewart Conn and Anna Crowe, with music from duo Rachel Simpson and Seth Bennett.
£5 on the door.
To book a place please email beth.mcdonough@virgin.net

Wednesday 25th September 2019

7pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Shore Poets
Canons’ Gait Cellar Bar
232 Canongate
Edinburgh, EH8 8DQ

Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Readers: Stewart Conn, Jane McKie, Jane Bonnyman, Max Scratchmann, with music from Fire in the Grate

Tuesday 25th June 2019 (6.30 – 8.00 pm)

cover image by John Knight

Aspects of Edinburgh
Scotland Street Press

Poems by Stewart Conn — Drawings by John Knight

Blackwell's Bookshop
53 South Bridge, Edinburgh

Tickets free but bookable via Eventbrite.

Sunday 7th October 2018 (2.00-3.00)

Mistress of Unease: The Poetry of Muriel Spark

Stewart Conn highlights especially her spectral figures, and her love for the Ballads

Readings by Gerda Stevenson

part of Blairgowrie, Rattray and the Glens Bookmark Festival

Muriel Spark portrait by Alexander Moffat

Blairgowrie Community Campus

Tickets: £15  for the full day of events celebrating 100 years of Muriel Spark

Thursday 4th October 2018 at 12.30

Rededication of the Poetry Tree in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh
on National Poetry Day

Readers: past and current city makars Stewart Conn, Ron Butlin, Christine De Luca and Alan Spence 

All welcome.

The Poetry Tree, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh

wee haiku of a tree—
smallest in the garden
but holding its own

Alan Spence,
Edinburgh Makar

Saturday 7th April 2018 (10.30-11.30: coffee at 10.15)

Edinburgh: City in a Landscape

A poetry reading by Stewart Conn

Royal Overseas League in the Royal Scots Club, Abercromby Place, Edinburgh

Entry £5

Saturday 17th March 2018 14.30-16.30

Blairgowrie Bookmark Festival

Three Scottish Poets: Stewart Conn, Gerda Stevenson & John Glenday
St Catherine's Church Hall, George Street, Blairgowrie

£7 (£6 members)

Wednesday 7th February 2018: 12.45-13.30

Mistress of Unease: the Poetry of Muriel Spark
The Hawthornden Lecture Theatre,
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Muriel Spark claimed: “Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet”. Stewart Conn responds especially to the spectral figures and echoes of the Ballads which mark her as a Mistress of Unease. 
Readings by Gerda Stevenson.
Free, unticketed

Wednesday 17th January 2018: 2.30-3.30

U3A Open Meeting:
Edinburgh: City in a Landscape – poems.
Epsworth Halls, Methodist Church, 25 Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX.

Entrance: a nominal £1

 

Past

Stewart Conn has given many readings over the years at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and elsewhere:  in the British Library's millenium season, at the Voice Box in the Royal Festival Hall, at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney, at Alloway on the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth, in the Scottish Poetry Library and at Poetry Festivals ranging from Aberdeen, Bath and Bristol to Tetova, Vilnius and Zagreb. 

He and wind virtuoso John Sampson have presented 'Roull of Corstorphin' on a variety of occasions (including the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Old Town Festival, and for the Henrysoun Society in Dunfermline) since its first performance in the National Library of Scotland.

In 2010 he appeared at the Ullapool Book Festival, Aberdeen Word Festival and Wigtown Book Festival.  In Oct 2004, during his tenure as Makar, he read Emissaries, which was specially commissioned for the occasion, at Edinburgh's World City of Literature presentation in the UNESCO building in Paris.

        

Emissaries

We come wearing neither the sackcloth
of supplicants, nor the helmet of presumption,
but on winged sandals of aspiration,
bearing the triple-edged sword
of language; confident as guardians
of the written word that borders are best
kept open, through the traffic of tongues.

Emissaries for Scotland and its capital
past, present and future,
the hand-fast we proffer confirms
our belief that a nation's blood-flow
is enhanced and enriched by
transfusion from other cultures:
a sharing of the heart's vocabulary.