National Poetry Day...whey hey?

Hello Long Lost Friends,

Do you ever feel like a criminal? I'm going dark here, but I started to feel like an eco criminal every time I put a plastic food tray in the bin. Now my kitchen cupboards are stuffed with empty grape tubs, because I can't find a place to recycle them, in a city the size of Glasgow. 

I contacted the council, who sent me on a fruitless goose chase. At the municipal recycling centre (aka, The Dump) a man in a high viz jacket pronounced, 

Plastic's plastic, hen. Just chuck it all in thi'gither

On twitter, a council official told me what I already suspected. This was blue bin 'contamination' and not correct. So I'm back to feeling like a 'crim' with plastic tubs filling up my cupboards, trying to find somewhere to recycle them. And yes, we should be trying to buy fewer (less?) of them to start with. 

Here's me, years ago, before I was aware of my eco-criminal status. I was watching a boy called 'Beans' iron my tartan trousers in a photo-shoot for Belle and Sebastian. I say photo-shoot, but really, we had no idea what we were doing. My mother once described us as 'not wise'. 

Anyway,  did you tell me it was National Poetry Day? 

As poet Hollie McNish put it on twitter, 'you go outside and no-one gives two shits.' That made me smile.

But, fie, my friends....we will celebrate poetry and words at The Wigtown Book Festival this weekend. 

Me and my 'paw' (Bernard MacLaverty) are doing a reading for Scottish Pen talking about place and peace, Ireland to Scotland, culture and borders, life and love. 

I will leave you with this poem that reduced me to tears. The kind of poem I wish I could write. It's so apt in these crazy and catastrophic times. We're all in it thi-gither, as the bin man said. He wasn't wrong on that .

Two last links!

Pat's West End Website / Glasgow Poets - here

and, treat yourself to some plastic-free, poetry pamphlets via

Tapsalteerie Press - here!