Category: Poetry

Katharine Macfarlane’s lyrical poetry is rooted in the history and landscape of the west of Scotland. She is currently the Harpies, Fechters and Quines Slam Champion and the Four Cities Slam Champion 2016. Katharine has recently performed with the Loud Poets in Glasgow and at the Belladrum Festival in Inverness, and hosted her first solo show, Home Words, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her work has appeared in Untitled, The Grind, and The Write Angle.

Her poem After Keats was inspired by This living hand, now warm and capable.

---

 

After Keats

 

Go slowly, dear one, through this icy silence,

and take my hand.

Grasp this world—it is pretty today—

made new for us, red-life streaming, alive.

Look to the trees, and the white that falls amongst them,

see that forgotten part that lies beneath blood.

Breathe. Fill the air between us—

these clouds have no fear of silence or spaces.

And take my hand—see here it is—I hold it towards you.

---

Katharine can be reached via her Facebook page, Home Words. More of her work can be found here.

Louise Peterkin is a poet who lives and works in Edinburgh. Her work has featured in publications such as New Writing Scotland, The Dark Horse, and The North. In 2016 she received a New Writers Award for Poetry from the Scottish Book Trust.

‘Kay’ is the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale who is kidnapped by the Snow Queen and taken to her ice palace. In this poem the Snow Queen addresses Kay and visits him as he sleeps.

---

 

Kay

 

I emboss your dreams with
diamonds, with corridors of ice,
and a soft frayed mile of white,

a see-through throne with a haar
around, a floor, a door
a long thin sliver of light.

Fortunate child, to you
I bestow an arch of stars,
delicate trappings,

the intricate spectre
of a shimmering
fountain suspended in motion.

You do not know me.
In sleep, you play in my fortress,
dragging your sleigh behind in a glitter trail.

After waking, you never tell
yet break from the crowd
to stare into the distance.

You shiver. I’m closer.
When I come for you,
you will hear bells.

---

You can reach Louise via email, louise.peterkin@ed.ac.uk. More of her work can be found here.

Alyson Kissner is a poet from Vancouver, Canada, and a recent graduate from the University of Edinburgh. She has most recently published in The Toast, Nailed Magazine, and tNY Press, as well as being featured on The University of East Anglia’s New Writers website.

---

 

How To Tell If You Are In A Nicholas Sparks Novel

 

It is summer and you have fallen in love.

You know you are in love because sometimes you hate each other, and that’s how you know you are in love, you know?

Your name is Katie or Katelyn or Katherine or Kate.

You are white and heterosexual.

You are staying in a small seaside town that is quite unlike the city where you’ve lived your entire life.

Everyone in this town is white and heterosexual.

You are living or wish to live in a rundown house that is somehow romantic and isn’t infested with rats.

Your lover’s partner is dead or abusive.

It is strongly implied you have had an encounter with a ghost. This does not unnerve you.

That beautiful man is from the military.

Someone has written a series of letters that will change your life.

You will become involved in a spontaneous instance of passionate love making without ever having discussed methods of birth control or asked your partner about their sexual past.

Someone close to you is dying of a terrible disease.

Somehow, there are horses.

The sexiest person in town has a son or a daughter with whom you develop a close relationship.

A bad man has drunk too much alcohol.

Your mother just doesn’t understand.

Don’t worry, you’re still white.

You won’t die alone.

---

Alyson can be reached at her Twitter handle @alykissner for questions, concerns, or sizeable donations.