STEWART CONN

SUNDAY 17th JUNE

3.30

 

Stewart’s talk will be based on the 2006 anthology

‘100 FAVOURITE SCOTTISH POEMS’

which he edited for the Scottish Poetry Library in collaboration  with Luath Press.

Besides reading a selection of poems, he will tell us how the book came about,

and how and why the poems were selected. Stewart will answer questions and will end the session by reading some of his own recently published poems.  

 

 

Stewart Conn grew up in Ayrshire, where his father's relatives were farmers.  Much of his early work has a rural setting. He later pursued a double life as a poet and playwright, and until 1992 was head of BBC Scotland's radio drama department. 

 

Since then he has been a freelance writer and reviewer.

His poetry, with its strong sense of place, reveals a love of hill-walking and trout-fishing – specially in the Scottish highlands and islands.  It celebrates, too, the interplay of art and the affections. Last Spring he visited Islay to read his own and other poems

at the launch of 100 Island Poems in the Columba Centre, Bowmore.

 

He is married with two now adult sons and has for many years lived in Edinburgh. 

From 2002 to 2005 he was the capital's first poet laureate.

 

His poetry publications include:

In the Kibble Palace, The  Luncheon of the Boating Party,

Stolen Light: Selected Poems

Ghosts at Cockcrow (all published by Bloodaxe)

Distances: a personal evocation of people and places

 published by the Scottish Cultural Press. 

 

 

 

NIGHT SKY

 

Light hurtling at 186,000 miles

per second, what the eye sees

of that comet and its gas-trail

on its giddy jaunt through space

takes 12 minutes to reach us.

 

The power of lenses and mirrors

wondrous as ever. Even more

of a marvel, the way the brightness

in your eyes travels towards me

at the implausible speed of love.

 

Stewart Conn