Jane's Writing Shed.

I was delighted to be one of the writers invited to read at the launch of ' New Writing Scotland' 35 , She Said He Said I Said held at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh last night. Unfortunately Viccy Adams wasn't able to attend but it was great to meet Bryan Johnstone, Rose McDonagh, Heather Parry and Harry Smart as well as one of the editors Susie Maguire and Duncan Jones from the Association of Scottish Literary Studies. I read my poem Washerwomen on Calton Hill inspired by Thomas Begbie's wonderful photograph taken in 1887. The poem is written from the perspective of one of the washerwomen and how her feelings about the photographer might have been changed by one or two imagined incidents. Washerwomen on Calton Hill Scunnered. Such a good day for drying clothes up on the hill, away from all the smoky lums and up he comes, wants us to pose on the slopes. The cheek of him, we were all in position, standing, kneeling and his box on legs all set up, when ...

Listen to Washerwomen On Calton Hill by Echoes of the City #np on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/user-969716163/washer-women-on-calton-hill The Echoes of the City project have just launched the project and here's the podcast I mentioned in my last post. It's always fascinating when another person reads one of my poems. Another voice can really change how the poem sounds and feels. I'm really delighted with how the reader of my poem, Natalie, seems to bring the words to life and takes me back to the original inspiration for the poem. I took the title of my poem from the Calotype taken by Thomas Begbie in 1887. The image can be viewed on the Capital Collections website https://capitalcollections.org.uk and search under 'Washerwomen on Calton Hill'.

I haven't written my blog for a while but have continued to write poems and last year I also signed up to an Open University Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. I've almost completed the second year of a six year course, studied part time and funded by the Scottish Government. I will be 70 by the time I complete the course but who cares, it will feel like a real achievement and well worth waiting and working for! I'm also waiting to hear the outcome of my submission of 30 poems to a poetry publisher. I know that I'm on a short list for publication of a poetry pamphlet with this publisher, which feels exciting but though I'm a pretty patient person, waiting for a decision feels excruciating. However sometimes it pays to keep waiting. A poem that I wrote last summer has been accepted as a podcast for the Echoes of the City project in Edinburgh and for the forthcoming anthology of New Writing Scotland. Writing poetry feels like a positive activity...

The medium is the message – the power of public poetry http://gu.com/p/4hk3t?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

This poem was written in response to a recent item on the BBC news website which described the death of a young dolphin in the USA as people flocked to take selfies with the poor creature... Taken It began as a dare, a stunt, a young dolphin trapped in a cowboy's net, its slipperiness handed round a harbour-side throng, its face pressed into theirs, to cries of go on, take one, but no-one in the instagram crowd noticed those dead prisoner's eyes or thought this is wrong and as its fight for life grew less and less each click a frame of death by the time the last person was offered a lifeless form they wondered what had happened and what they'd lost. Jane Aldous 2016

Jackie Kay announced as new Scots Makar - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35810962

Pretty, yet poisonous, favourite of poets http://gu.com/p/4h7tv?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger