https://cityofliterature.com/opportunities/tramlines-poetry-contest/
Fraser's music was very elegiac, but with sadness mitigated by a lilting feel like a lullaby. So moving, especially sung by a choir with such beautiful voices and in a church with great acoustics. It was lovely that quite a few people came up to me afterwards and said how much they'd enjoyed the poem.
https://www.sco.org.uk/events/monteverdi-madrigals/
Elegy for St Kilda
Why would I need this thing called a mirror?
I know I have my father’s eyes.
I know I am beautiful in my lover’s eyes.
I know a pool which tells me no lies.
Why would I need these things called trees?
I have shelter in the stone and turf of my house,
I have warmth from burning peat and dulse,
snug in our crubs like puffins in their burrows.
Why would I need this thing called money?
That which cannot be bartered is like sand;
That which does not fill the belly nor till the land,
That which is not itself, I cannot understand.
Why would I need this thing called writing?
If we don’t speak with our mouths and heart,
If we lose our memory, we lose our past;
If we fix our story, it will not last.
We made it to London! Delighted that my poem 'The Leaving of St Kilda' set to music by Fraser D. MacDonald was performed at the Holy Cross Church in London WC1 by the University of London UV8 choir on Monday 8th December.
Another fabulous outing for my poem 'The Leaving of St Kilda' set to music for four voices by Fraser MacDonald. This time part of a concert sung by the St Giles Cathedral choir commemorating 750 years of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France.
What an honour to be part of such a prestigious event - the Mayor and other Scottish dignitaries, representatives from the French Institute and all the Great and the Good of Edinburgh in a packed cathedral. Also great for Fraser's music to be performed alongside luminaries such as Fauré and James MacMillan. I was thrilled that my wee poem was also part of an event with Scotland's Makar (poet laureate), Padraig MacAoidh/Peter MacKay reading his poem Coille Lan de Shaorsa/A Whole Forest of Liberty.
The text of Fraser's music was introduced as by the 'Scottish' poet, Stephanie Green. Well, I have ne'er a drop of Scottish blood but we have lived here for 25 years, so it is my adopted country. Besides, mentioning I am English (half Irish) might not have gone down well at an event celebrating an alliance against the common enemy, England!
Expect a moving blend of Scottish and French music performed in the majestic setting of St Giles’, echoing centuries of cultural friendship.
Master of the Music - Jack Oades
Organist - Jordan English
Ave Maris Stella - Guillame Dufay (c1397-c1474)
O Radiant Dawn - James MacMillan (b. 1959)
Notre Père - Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Cantique de Jean Racine - Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Sicilienne (Pelléas et Mélisande) - Gabriel Fauré
White-note paraphrase - James MacMillan
Hymn à la Vierge - Pierre Villette (1926-1998)
A New Song - James MacMillan
Leaving St Kilda - Fraser MacDonald (b. 2001)
Loch Lomond - Traditional, arr. David Overton
Gloria in Excelsis - (from Messe Solenelle) - Louis Vierne
It was a great privilege last Saturday (day 2 of Poetry lit's Festival Finale) to host session 2 with three fantastic poets reading from Greece, Toronto and Scotland: Vasiliki Albedo, Ronna Bloom and Sukhema followed by a Q and A. The session is focused on Poetry as Healing and all the poets are concerned with either chronic illness, or various trauma, pain, grief, and poetry in health care settings. I'm sure that their comments will help anyone trying to write about difficult subject matter. However, there are recommendations for playfulness and a few laughs too!
You can watch this on PLit's You Tube site:
PoetryLit Festival Finale Session 2
Festival Finale. The PoetryLit crew reading: with Milla Van Der Have, Iain Whiteley, Lydia Harris and and myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBYt0tY4D4U&t=3254s
5 years of PoetryLit has been fantastic. Who'd have thought meeting Milla Van Der Have at Annaghmakerrig (the Tyrone Guthrie Centre) in Ireland would have borne such fruit! Sadly it's now coming to an end. But we are going out with a bang. A two day festival on Friday night (12th Sept) at the usual time of 7pm GMT on zoom featured the PoetryLit team: Iain Whiteley, Lydia Harris, Walco Van Loon, myself and Milla.
The second day (on Sat 13th Sept) is several sessions of readings, comprising 12 of our favourite poets, who have been featured on PoetryLit over the 5 years, hosted by one of the team.
If you've missed the festival or any of the past events, then you can catch up with a selection on PoetryLit's You Tube page.
It's been a wonderful experience of immersing oneself in poetry, learning from such a variety of different types of poetry and enabling others through the open mics. And apart from the poetry, I've made some terrific friends. Here are some photos with happy memories of PoetryLit or get-togethers of the team over the years.
'The Leaving of St Kilda' set to music for voices by Fraser McDonald has another outing. This time sung by the Seraphim choir in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, 30th August, 2025.
To hear audio press this link.
Alastair Savage and Ailie Robertson at their 'Scottish Roots' concert at St Mark's church, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Fringe, 2025.
To hear Alastair reading my poem 'The Leaving of St Kilda' over 'Dun' played on the clarsach by Ailie press this link
https://photos.app.goo.gl/8Bgy1fcWHQWxvY317
Delighted that my poem 'The Leaving of St Kilda' will be read during this fiddle and clarsarch concert as part of the Edinburgh Fringe on 4th August 16.30 (1 hour) at St Mark's church, Castle Terrace.
Alastair-Savage-and-Ailie-Robertson-fiddle-and-clarsach-scottish-roots
It's amazing how this poem attracts musicians. This will its second outing. The first when it was set to music by Fraser D. Macdonald back in June, 2024.
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Delighted to have been shortlisted in the Aesthetica poetry competition, 2024 and published in their Creative Writing magazine, 2024/25.
The End of Writing about my Mother
(After Ada Limòn)
Enough of gypsophila and silver moons of honesty
lighting dark corners, enough of Chanel jackets
from Oxfam, enough of Guerlain, mentholated cigarettes,
enough of ice cream sandwiches, strawberries
in punnets, and pancakes with sugar or lemon or both,
enough of bedtime kisses or on my cuts and bruises,
make it better or grin and bear it,
enough of Irish history, Irish ancestry, being the wrong
kind of Irish, enough of trauma, enough of milking it,
tragedy queen or laughter rising above,
enough of reading my boyfriend’s letters,
are you on the pill, when will you get married,
enough of phone calls on Friday nights and surprise I am in,
enough I’m your friend, not just your mother,
enough I am lonely, of hugging too close, too long,
of what I should have said, of what I never said,
how I failed, how you failed me,
enough of grief, enough if only.
It was a great honour to have a reading slot to unleash my sea-monster poems.
Delighted that the young composer, Fraser D. Macdonald has set my poem to music, for 4 voices, based on the folksong 'Soay'. Here it is sung in Copenhagen by the Edinburgh University Chamber Choir on their Scandinavian tour in the summer of 2024.
The Leaving of St Kilda (1930)
A fire in the hearth, oats on the table,
the Bible open at Exodus.
We locked the door.
We leave behind our fowling rods
and snares, our looms, spinning wheels,
and ploughs: our old way of life.
On board The Harebell, we sail
past the jagged humps of Dun which sheltered
our people for centuries.
How sheer are the cliffs from the sea.
Will anyone ever again lower
men on ropes to capture fulmars?
Hours to row, but no time by steamer -
the stacks, Lee and Armin are a maelstrom
of cries, glints, waves and wings.
Boreray appears to loom then sink.
Past Levenish, once our horizon,
the islands shrink, become a smudge
you would miss unless you knew where to look.
As we head for the open sea, the fulmars
haunting our bows, veer away.
I was delighted to be invited to read in Amsterdam with Milla Van Der Have, founder and M.C. of PoetryLit (online monthly poetry reading event) which I co-curate. But here we are not hosting other poets on PoetryLit, but launching Milla's collection 'Ox and Mandarin', mythological creatures, sort of invented by Milla. I loosed my sea-monsters poems which, being mythological, were a good pairing.Walco Van Loon (also a member of the PoetryLit team) accompanied Milla's film poem with live saxophone.
A great event, followed by an Indonesian meal (appropriately) with friends and family.
Such a pleasure to spend a few days in A'dam, then visit Utrecht where Milla lives. Equally cool, though Milla and Walco say it is cooler than A'dam, of course. It is just as pretty and less touristy. Lovely relaxing in a bar, then walking along the canals viewing the tall houses.
Delighted to be commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize, 2023.
The following prizewinning poems were chosen by our 2023 judges, Mona Arshi & Tom Sleigh (see judges’ reports & poems below):
Commended poems:
Judging an international poetry competition is both a joyful and fretful task – fretful as it’s always filled with some level…
Read full judges' reports, & 2023 prize–winning & commended poems
Poems: copyright © various named authors. All rights reserved.
Other content: copyright © Coffee–House Poetry 2008–2024. All rights reserved.
Website created and hosted by Lab 99 Web Design.
Another photo of PoetryLit at StAnza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival in St Andrews - our usual online event was also live. Here are Milla van der Have and myself outside the Byre Theatre where it all goes on.
PoetryLit!, the monthly online poetry reading event founded by Milla Van Der Have and co-curated by myself. Now in our 4th year, it was great to have this 'stage' at StAnza, Scotland's International Poetry festival in St Andrews. The event was live at the Byre Theatre but also online as usual.
This event featured four of the winners in different categories of the Wigtown Poetry Prize, 2023.
Top left: Craig Aitchinson and right, Stephanie Green
Bottom left: John Wheway and right, Robin Leiper
From Milla Van Der Have's Facebook:
Over here at Poetry Lit! Stephanie Green and Milla van der Have - Writer are super-stoked about our upcoming StAnza stint! And not just that, we get to feature the Wigtown Winners John Wheway Craig Aitchison Rob Leiper and our very own Stephanie Green (#proud). These incredible talents will read their winning poems and participate in a Q&A.
The Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology 2023
Delighted to have been shortlisted in the competition and for my poem 'Lilias' to be published in their magazine, as from 18th December.
Delighted to be Featured Writer in November's Federation of Writers (Scotland)'s Newsletter.
Featured Writer
This month we are delighted to welcome the winner of this year’s Alastair
Reid Poetry Pamphlet prize and co-curator of PoetryLit, Stephanie Green, as
our featured writer. As her biography shows, Stephanie has an excellent track
record as a writer and collaborator in poetic projects and has the distinction of
having been shortlisted for the Wigtown Poetry Prize this year as well. ‘The
Roider’, the poem she has chosen to share with newsmail readers, is one of
the poems in the prize-winning pamphlet: its visceral immediacy, economy of
language and the poignancy of its deeply moving ending amply demonstrate
the qualities of Stephanie’s writing which so impressed the Wigtown judges.
Biog.
Stephanie Green is Irish/English. Her pamphlets are ‘Glass Works’ short-listed
for the Callum McDonald Award, 2005, ‘Flout’ (HappenStance, 2015) and
‘Ortelius’ Sea-Monsters’ (Wigtown Festival Company, 2023), winner of the
Alastair Reid prize. She has collaborated with Sonja Heyer, Sound Artist,
creating poetry/sound walks: ‘Berlin Umbrella’ which appeared at StAnza,
2020 and ‘Rewilding’ (online at Writers’ Rebel) at the Orkney Nature Festival,
2023. She was shortlisted in the Wigtown main prize, 2023 and came 2nd in
the Poetry Wales Award, 2023. She co-curates ‘PoetryLit’ online, works as a
Dance reviewer and lives in Edinburgh. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/
6
Roider
A dark red H – I once knew the word -
on the black funnels of whaling ships.
I pray your flesh, dark, red, will cure me,
but I must have nil by mouth,
strung up, fed with liquids like the gulps of sea
that swooshed through your baleen, a vast brush,
each cold, rubbery strand jammed tight,
trapping thousands of micro-organisms
as once every sensation, pulse of life,
filtered through my brain.
How many remembered now?
Synapses fizzling. Black-out.
Acrid smoke fluctuates, revealing
sunlit trees, as I walk through a wood
down to the beach holding my mother’s hand.
Who is the stranger who seems to know me
as she kisses my forehead? A young man
comes less often, and is impatient to be gone –
he seems familiar – one of my ship mates, perhaps -
who sniffs the kelp and salt on the wind
and hears, as I do, the call of the white seas.
Note: H stands for ‘hval’, Icelandic for whale.
This poem is taken from ‘Ortelius’ Sea-Monsters’ (published by Wigtown
Festival Company, 2023). It was the winner of the Alastair Reid pamphlet
prize. ‘The Roider’ was first published in the Rialto.
© Stephanie Green 2023
