Vespers 26 features three amazing poets. It’s on Tuesday 7 May at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. Readings start at 7.30pm but you can arrive anytime after 7pm and have a drink from the SPL bar. The line-up:
Dan O’Brien is a poet and playwright living in Los Angeles. O’Brien’s debut poetry collection, ‘War Reporter’, praised in the Guardian as “a masterpiece of truthfulness and feeling,” received the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His subsequent collections are ‘Scarsdale’ and ‘New Life’, both published by CB Editions. O’Brien’s plays have been produced off-Broadway and in London and have received many recognitions including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two PEN America Awards, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize for Best New American Play, and a shortlisting for an Evening Standard Prize. Dan O’Brien: Plays One was published in 2017 by Oberon.
David Hopkins is a poet and art historian. He teaches at Glasgow University and has published several books on Dada and Surrealism and recent art. Since the 1980s he has performed widely, collaborating with the likes of Bob Cobbing at venues such as Newcastle-upon Tyne’s Morden Tower. His sound poetry performance is included on the CD in The Order of Things (Pocketbooks, Edinburgh 2001). His poems have been published in various anthologies. In recent years he has performed at Edinburgh venues such as Caesura and the Fruitmarket Gallery. The range of his poetry is wide, shifting from dadaist humour to personal lyricism, and taking in subjects from Captain Beefheart to the moles on Queen Victoria’s back.
Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet living in Scotland, where she is completing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of the chapbook ‘Faces that Fled the Wind’, and the winner of the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest, and 2018 Ploughshares Emerging Writers’ Contest in Poetry. Her poetry has recently appeared, or is forthcoming in, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, The London Magazine, Gutter, Poetry Book Society, and others. Alycia received an MFA from the University of Oregon. She can be found on Twitter @a_pirmohamed .
£3 entry, £1 raffle tickets. The bar will be open shortly after 7pm, readings start sharp at 7.30pm. There will be the usual engagingly shambolic MCing by the Vespers team.
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