Thursday 9 August 2007

Nice surprise

The latest issue of Poetry Scotland was waiting for me when I got home last night. It's always a good read, packing an awful lot in for just £1 a time, and issue 51 contains poems by the likes of Les Murray, William Oxley and my fellow Happenstancers Rob Mackenzie and Gill McEvoy. To my surprise, it also contains two poems by me. I'd submitted them not so long ago, and wasn't particularly surprised to have received no reply yet, but clearly it went astray somewhere along the line. A good way to hear the news, anyway.
One of Rob's poems is called Lagavulin, and does justice to its illustrious name, which is not quite up there in my medal positions where single malts are concerned (they'd be 1. Laphroaig; 2. Talisker; 3. Highland Park) but is not far off.
But anyway, next time you save a fiver on your favourite single malt at Sainsbury's, use it to subscribe to Poetry Scotland, and get five packed issues for your £5.

2 comments:

Rob said...

Cheers, Matt. Good to see your poems in there too. A good Lagavulin is hard to beat - it's like Laphroaig, except even peatier. But I like Laphroaig too - and this is my poem about it, first published in Markings.

Laphroaig

If whisky is the devil’s brew
I’ll drink Laphroaig until I drop
And if he comes to claim his due
I’ll offer him my empty cup.

Matt Merritt said...

I like it! Now there's an idea for a poetry collection - a poem for each Scottish distillery. It'd be fun to write, for sure.
I'm determined to make a combined birding/whisky trip to Islay sometime soon.