Artisan Bar, 35 London Rd.,  Edinburgh, EH7 5BQ. Friday, 11 October 2013, 19:00.

ALEC FINLAY

Alec Finlay is an artist & poet based in Edinburgh. He has adopted such innovative poetic forms such as the mesostic, embedded-poem, and circle-poem. Recent poetic works include today today today (Playspace, 2013), A Company of Mountains (morning star, 2013) Be My Reader (Shearsman, 2012), Question Your Teaspoons (Calder Wood Press, 2012) Mesostic Remedy (morning star, 2009), Mesostic Interleaved (morning star & The University of Edinburgh, 2009), and Says You (Oystercatcher Press, 2009). Finlay established morning star in 1990, a press specialising in collaborations between artists and poets, including the award-winning pocketbooks series (1999–2002). He has published over twenty books and has won two Scottish Design Awards. In 2010 Finlay was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize. He blogs regularly at www.alecfinlay.com.

SAMANTHA WALTON

Samantha Walton: has published — Amaranth Unstitched (Punch Press), City Break Weekend Songs (Critical Documents), tristanundisolde (Arthur Shilling Press); co-organises the techno-poetry night Syndicate; most recently published in/on — Black Box Manifold / Veersomes / Hi Zero / Archive of the Now; working on a book about madness, law and crime fiction (not bloody poetry).

JAMES OATES

James Oates has gained a reputation in the North of England for quality performances on the poetry circuit for over 25 years, more recently gaining the accolade of being one of the most consistently dynamic performers of poetry in the North today. This culminated recently in his representation of the North East in the 2009 Radio 4 Poetry Slam Semi-finals. He won the ‘East Durham Writer of the Year’ competition in 1997 in the
Prose (Open) category and has been featured on Amazing Radio. James had his first full Poetry collection published in 2007 (Wideyback) by Red Squirrel Press and has several pamphlet publications by other publishers.