iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This free site-based art and writing workshop for 16-25 year olds you to respond to how artists & others have taken their inspiration from water, & how their works might in turn inspire you in own creative mark making. www.ticketsource.com/imagined-spa...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

A new short story, ‘Get Up’, by Kirsty Gunn, a film and photographs by Merran Gunn, on the lure of strange places. A reading experience somewhere between all of these for your weekend reading pleasure. @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/...

imaginedspaces.org

The Lure of Strange Places — IMAGINED SPACES

A new short story, ‘Get Up’, a film and photographs on the lure of strange places. A reading experience that lies somewhere between all of these. “[Of the story, Kirsty Gunn writes] A strange text th...

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David Atkinson @davidatkinsonpoet.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

This reimagining of The Odyssey is a counterpoint to the heroic narrative of war It transforms the myth into a meditation on war, migration, & the impact of paternal absence So many great lines & images in this poem - the bombed cathedral is now a cathedral of trees #poetry #poemoftheday #Odyssey

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Jeannie MacLean in conversation with Scottish and New Zealand poet, Lynn Davidson, introduced by Kirsty Gunn. The discussion that follows touches on the memoir form and a fragmentary and essaying poetics. @lynndavidson.bsky.social @mainpoint @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/conversation...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

We invited the ESOL class from the Dundee International Womens Centre for a morning's taster row. Here is a lovely short essay by Monjita Dutta on the experience ( www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/... ) and two poems from the class ( www.imaginedspaces.org/the-writing-... ) @asls.org.uk

imaginedspaces.org

Where Rivers connect... — IMAGINED SPACES

Wormit Boating Club invited the women from the ESOL class at Dundee International Women’s Centre out for a morning excursion at Woodhaven Harbour. We also encouraged the women to write about their exp...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

The 2026 DJCAD degree show is in now full swing with such a diversity of talent & artefacts on display. So here is a left-field approach to wandering around these rooms all filled with imaginative, sensual, arresting, astonishing, & magical work. @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/taking-a-lin...

imaginedspaces.org

Blog 2 — IMAGINED SPACES

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Alan Riach in Conversation with Roderick Watson... a celebration of The Silver of Old Mirrors in the context of Scottish Literature, and an introduction to the new reprinting of the classic novels of Neil Gunn. A fascinating hour indeed! @asls.org.uk youtu.be/iXpZue7LrnQ?...

youtu.be

Alan Riach In Conversation with Roderick Watson

YouTube video by Imagined Spaces

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

“The silver of old mirrors slightly foxed with float glass made on a molten pool of tin holds us tightly locked in its cool…” Join us for some Creative Conversations! Professor Alan Riach will be in conversation with the poet-scholar Roderick Watson. @asls.org.uk www.gla.ac.uk/events/listi...

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/02/2026

“So what was Glasgow like to a young gay writer in that period … You don’t go silent. You circumvent, you encode, you enfabulate … You work by methods not unlike those used by dissidents in authoritarian regimes.” —Edwin Morgan, “Transgression in Glasgow” #LGBTplusHM 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ asls.org.uk/publications...

I already felt myself to be ‘different’, and had had gay experiences, but without having the word ‘gay’ and without having much knowledge of the things I was increasingly drawn to. It was a time of silences and inhibitions and guilts and quests and mistakes and very gradual understanding.

So what was Glasgow like to a young gay writer in that period from say the late 1930s through to the 1950s (I can’t speak about wartime Glasgow because I wasn’t there, I was abroad in the army from 1940 to 1946 – that’s another story, of which perhaps a little, later on). Physically, visually, the city was very different from what it is today after the massive stone-cleaning, smoke abatement, and general refurbishment of recent years. It was a dark city. I’d like to quote from a little article I recently wrote about this. The piece was written for a public brochure about Glasgow, but I quote it because it has some coded homosexual references. It’s called ‘Fog City’:

Without being nostalgic about it, I have a strong recollection of the great Glasgow fogs of the decade after the Second World War. In the spruced-up city of today, these are now no more than memories, and no doubt thought of as a good riddance, but to a writer (or indeed any artist) dark cities can be as attractive as bright ones. At the end of the 1940s, Glasgow was still heavily industrialized, with many soot-blackened and grime-encrusted buildings, and with smoke pouring from thousands of coal-burning chimneys. It was also a city of unabashed and prolific smokers. And of course it is a northern city of early winter evenings. So its fogs could be spectacular. One night in 1947 or 1948 I was returning by train from London, and when I got into Central Station I could not understand why such a crowd of people was

massed at the entrance. I soon found out why. Gordon Street was a silent wall of impenetrable grey. There were no buses, trams, taxis or cars to be seen or heard. It was a stricken, immobile place. No one could get home. I booked a room in the Central Hotel, and as I slipped between the sheets I reflected it was the first time I had stayed at a hotel in my own town: an experience! These fogs penetrated everywhere; in the cinemas each film looked like Quai des brumes, and the Golden Divans in Green’s Playhouse were more than usually seductive. The long cinema queues of those pre-booking days, snaking round whole blocks, huddled together as if afraid some segment might break off and be lost for ever. We did not curse the fog: it was simply one recurring phase of the environment. Half-sinister, half-romantic wanderings by the River Kelvin seemed incomplete unless the nose-prickling waves of an oncoming fog combined with the acrid but haunting smell of the scummy effluent on the water to fix a future memory unmodified by anything politically correct.
(Moira Burgess, Reading Glasgow).

Green’s Playhouse is a huge cinema, which was famous as a place of gay resort for many years; people came to it from far and near, and on a foggy night, when you could hardly see the screen, anything could and did happen. The management would periodically conduct a sudden blitz on the activities, using some of their better-looking staff as agents provocateurs, who would sit beside you, make advances, and if you responded would march you out to the foyer and declare that you were barred. You left it for a week or two, came back, and no one noticed. It was a great Glasgow institution, and there must have been many sad hearts when the building was demolished. Another reference in the article which would say more to some people than to others is the night scene by the River Kelvin: Kelvingrove Park was (and is) one of the main trolling areas after dark, and also, perhaps inevitably, a haunt of

muggers, so my description of it as half-romantic and half-sinister contains or conceals that other resonance.

Perhaps the fog that I used in that passage, though perfectly real, can also be taken as a metaphor. Gay contacts, gay friendships, were by no means unobtainable but took place in an atmosphere of secrecy, of deception and pretence and machination. Information was by word of mouth; there were no gay clubs or magazines or videos, and if any establishment such as a pub attracted a gay clientele it could never advertise the fact. The shadow of illegality, of the severe penalties of being caught (not only of imprisonment, but also social ostracism), hung like a cloud in the background all the time. I don’t forget how I happened to be in a cinema (not Green’s Playhouse!) at a time shortly after Sir John Gielgud had been arrested and charged with persistent importuning of male persons, and when his name appeared on the screen of a film that was being shown the audience uttered a hiss of disapproval. That was the climate of the period, and it meant that most gays, whether they wanted to or not, were leading double lives. And can I remind you that this situation lasted not until 1967, when the law was changed in England and Wales, but until 1980, when the separate Scottish legal system at last got round to a degree of liberalisation. So it was an oppressive time, and if you are a writer, a poet, you have to find ways and means of dealing with it. You don’t go silent. You circumvent, you encode, you enfabulate, you invent parallel or analogous worlds. You work by methods not unlike those used by dissidents in authoritarian regimes. From the 1950s onwards, I knew that I wanted somehow to write about that side of my life, and that side of my life in Glasgow and Scotland, and I developed my own strategies for doing so.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 01/01/2026

Wring the Scottish rain clouds dry; Take sleet, the driving snow, the hail; Winter twilight; the summer’s sun slowed down to pearl-sheen dusk on hillsides, city-roofs, on lochs at midnight… —Rob Butlin, “A Recipe for Whisky” 🥃 in WITHOUT A BACKWARD GLANCE (Barzan 2005) Happy New Year! #poem #poetry

A Recipe for Whisky
by Ron Butlin

Wring the Scottish rain clouds dry;
Take sleet, the driving snow, the hail;
Winter twilight; the summer’s sun slowed down
to pearl-sheen dusk on hillsides, city-roofs,
on lochs at midnight.
And, most of all, take the years that have already run
to dust, the dust we spill behind us…

All this, distill. And cask. And wait.
The senselessness of human things resolves
to who we are – our present fate.
Let’s taste, let’s savour and enjoy.
Let’s share once more.
Another glass for absent friends. Pour
until the bottle’s done.

Here’s life! Here’s courage to go on!

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Enjoyed the clip of Roderick Watson reading the title poem of his new collection, The Silver of Old Mirrors? Watch the entire book launch, filmed and edited by Helena Ohman (of Rare Bird video) at www.imaginedspaces.org/conversation.... @asls.org.uk

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Last week Roderick Watson launched his poetry collection, The Silver of Old Mirrors, at the University of Dundee Main Library. Here's a short clip from the event: Watson reading the title poem. @asls.org.uk youtu.be/XddI30Q1JxE

youtu.be

Roderick Watson reading "The Silver of Old Mirrors"

YouTube video by Imagined Spaces

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

The Voyage Out Press invites all to the launch of Roderick Watson's new poetry book @ Dundee Uni Library, 5pm 10/11/25 Free & open to all; to book pp.events/bq8B5y7K “These are poems made to last, to return to, to keep giving. And they do.” (Alan Riach) @asls.org.uk @byleaveswelive.bsky.social

pp.events

You're invited to "Book Launch & Reading." Tap here to RSVP - Paperless Post Flyer

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Michael Sorkin's 250 things an architect should know reimagined for creative writing students. Probably something all writers would feel some connection with...? ‘15 things a creative writing student should know’ — IMAGINED SPACES share.google/Yl9pzJpFzUju...

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‘15 things a creative writing student should know’ — IMAGINED SPACES

This was an exercise set at the very end of our Creative Essays module, which I caught sight of again recently. Kirsty and I loved the original list by the architect Michael Sorkin, titled ‘ 250 thing...

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 21/06/2025

Fade then, light; but longing never will. Midsummer makes the west spectacular and even gives its last glow a show of reluctance, as if it had postponed midnight… —Edwin Morgan, “21 June” Published in CATHURES, @carcanet.bsky.social 2002 #BookWormSat www.carcanet.co.uk/978185754617...

Edwin Morgan
21 June

Fade then, light; but longing never will.
Midsummer makes the west spectacular
and even gives its last glow a show
of reluctance, as if it had postponed
midnight. But midnight is too faithful.
You're back among the black, the black,
you're down and fit to drown, to drown,
you're padding into nightmare town.
You haven't got a house, a bed-light,
there are no clocks or telephones out there,
you are on your own, you have a large panic
waiting to break through your chest, you are panting,
you count, as it arrives, each brimming pang.
What a clutch of sheets! What a parody of pain!

The longest day, the night is not so long.
You fling back the curtains, the morning sky
is like a meadow. What is it you want?
I don't know. You cannot walk there. No.
So what do you want? The morning, perhaps,
and then I want the day, another day.

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Here's a really interesting, evocative piece of creative writing by Zoe Faloon developed from Kirsty Gunn's Masterclass using material from Pretty Ugly (Rough Trade Books 2024) in late March of this year. @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/the-writing-...

imaginedspaces.org

‘Flight Path’ — IMAGINED SPACES

A masterclass workshop by Kirsty Gunn at the University of Dundee, 28 March. The workshop used an extract from ‘Flight Path’ in Pretty Ugly (Rough Trade, 2024) as a means to engender more creative ...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

A lovely meditative essay by William Hume pondering how we imagine & connect with the past via an encounter with Andrew Baldwin's 2020 sculptures, The Sisters, at Woodbridge Boat Yard in Suffolk. @ianhume.bsky.social @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/...

imaginedspaces.org

Past, Present..… — IMAGINED SPACES

In what ways do these iron-cast women [ The Sisters ] contain the seeds of their lives lived in flesh? Ornery women whose presences are recollected in the boatyard with voices boomeranging the open ri...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Bernadette Ashby reflects on her experiences as a practising clinician in Neuropsychology… of the importance of putting those ‘embedded, complicated and for the large part wordless set of experiences’ she still holds within her into words. @asls.org.uk @britishneuropsych.bsky.social bit.ly/3DJMain

imaginedspaces.org

The Imagined Spaces of Self — IMAGINED SPACES

Bernadette Ashby reflects on her experiences as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the NHS, with a specialism paediatrics and health, and neuropsychology. She writes of the need to put those ‘embed...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Andy Jackson's invitation to write in response to Trump's 'Executive Orders' made me smile: 'It's going to be a beautiful thing, folks. People say it may be the greatest poetry project of all time, maybe ever... what are you waiting for? Poem, baby, poem!' www.facebook.com/share/p/19EU...

facebook.com

Redirecting...

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The Alasdair Gray Archive @agrayarchive.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Pls share! ⭐️ GRAY DAY 2025 ⭐️ our FIFTH annual event in what would have been AG’s 90th birthday year, Glasgow’s 850th & AGA’s own 5th anniversary through an evening of celebration, this is a crucial fundraiser to help us keep operational so pls come support & celebrate 🎟️ via link in bio 🙏

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

New on 'The Writing Studio' of imaginedspaces.org. 'The dress' by @Marianne L Berghuis from a BookWeekScotland , inspired by Kirsty Gunn's short story, 'Mirror, Mirror' from her @roughtrade1976.bsky.social short story collection, Pretty Ugly. @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/the-writing-...

imaginedspaces.org

Mirror, Mirror — IMAGINED SPACES

This is an edited film in two parts of an Imagined Spaces workshop for Book Week Scotland at The Larick Centre, Tayport, 21 November 2024.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 20/01/2025

When we take prisoners from other worlds we are not cruel. We let their bodies die. They become words, filtered into air… —Edwin Morgan, “Twilight of a Tyranny” a #ScienceFiction #poem – from COLLECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 1997 www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/inde...

Twilight of a Tyranny
Edwin Morgan

When we take prisoners from other worlds
we are not cruel. We let their bodies die.
They become words, filtered into air.

We became words, we infiltrate the air.

I know sometimes in the long midnights
we throw open a window. It is hot,
the bluish branches are all motionless.
We cannot sleep. And some poor word creeps in.

Cold, blue was your skin when I crept in.

The mines are stiff with gold, our treasuries
are locked and locked and locked, our guards are guarded
by passwords we’ve suborned with baseless hopes.

Deep in the vaults I am the password, hope.

Even you might tremble at our plans,
great lords. What do we care for life that comes
and goes as we sit in our iron seats?
We’re armed; there are no dragons; time is long.
We shout, and words come singing with our wine.

They shout. We sing the curdling of the wine.

Astronomers once said our sun was dying.
Where are they now? Our towers blaze and stare.
We made them words to wander with the wind.

We warned you, in the rising of the wind.

You know you’ll never see your world again?
Threats, bribes, tears, guns you can put away.
No urns – no dust! Watch me at the switch,
and then you can complain like nightingales
for all the sense dead words will ever speak.

Your thrones are death. Ours is the reign of speech.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 09/01/2025

Winter Words Festival 2025 Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 21–23 Feb The programme includes the Festival’s new Artistic Director, Alan Cumming; Liz Lochhead; Val McDermid; Andrew O’Hagan; Michael Pedersen; Arun Sood; Douglas Stuart; Kirsty Wark; & many more pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/winter-words...

pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com

Winter Words Festival | Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Winter Words Festival from 21 to 23 February 2025. Curated by new Artistic Director Alan Cumming and featuring authors, poets, broadcasters and chefs from around Scotland for a celebration of the coun...

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

TS Eliot Prize shortlisted and just published on DURA: 'Razor sharp and attentive to its aim of depicting the high jump as the Icarus story, Hibbett’s first poetry collection hits the ground running.' @bansheepress.bsky.social dura-dundee.org.uk/2025/01/08/h...

dura-dundee.org.uk

High Jump as Icarus Story

Gustav Parker Hibbett(Banshee Press, 2024); pbk, £10.99 Gustav Parker Hibbett’s unusual blend of sports and Greek mythology presents an outstanding debut collection. A black poet,…

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

TSEliot Prize shortlisted no.3 : '"‘exhilarating verbal energy and emotional subtlety"... reading or hearing Mann’s poems... a sense of words transforming bodies, of bodies transforming words.' dura-dundee.org.uk/2024/02/27/e...

dura-dundee.org.uk

Eleanor Among the Saints

Rachel Mann(Carcanet 2024); £11.99 Rachel Mann’s second poetry collection, Eleanor Among the Saints, begins in the seamstress’s workshop with the poem ‘Embroidering a Priest’. He…

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Faber Books @faberbooks.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Our Christmas Day poem is an extract from White Egrets by Derek Walcott.

VI

I hadn’t seen them for half of the Christmas week,
the egrets, and no one told me why they had gone,
but they are back with the rain now, orange beak,
pink shanks and stabbing head, back on the lawn
where they used to be in the clear, limitless rain
of the Santa Cruz Valley, which, when it rains, falls
steadily against the cedars till it mists the plain.
The egrets are the colour of waterfalls,
and of clouds. Some friends, the few I have left,
are dying, but the egrets stalk through the rain
as if nothing mortal can affect them, or they lift
like abrupt angels, sail, then settle again.
Sometimes the hills themselves disappear
like friends, slowly, but I am happier
that they have come back now, like memory, like prayer.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 25/12/2024

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand; The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea; And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee… —RLS, “Christmas at Sea” www.theguardian.com/books/2012/d...

theguardian.com

Poem of the week: Christmas at Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson

Carol Rumens: Robert Louis Stevenson telescopes the distance between a cosy Christmas scene and a life-and-death struggle on the high seas

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

'Poetry here becomes a temporal puzzling, a thinking out, letting ‘a sentence find its own wilderness’... 'much to learn, to attend to, to linger over... from these ‘songs… built from things too difficult to speak of’. @carcanet.bsky.social www.imaginedspaces.org/taking-a-lin...

imaginedspaces.org

Scattered Snows, To the North — IMAGINED SPACES

Carl Phillips asks in ‘Foliage’, ‘When did syntax and life become indistinguishable from one another?’ Art and Life; poetry as the transformation (not transcription) of experience in words. In re...

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

WE ARE STILL IN THIS. Wipe your tears. This is the difficult business of hope and defying expectation. We do not give up. We run through the tape. Y’all aren’t allowed to throw in the towel until I do. 😉 Big breath. Locked in. Let’s do this.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 16/12/2024

Currently on BBC Sounds: TAKE FOUR BOOKS A.L. Kennedy talks about her new novel, ALIVE IN THE MERCIFUL COUNTRY, & its connections to 3 other literary works: MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville (1851); PETERSBURG by Andrei Bely (1913); & THE LORD OF THE RINGS by JRR Tolkien www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - Take Four Books, A. L. Kennedy

James Crawford speaks to writer A. L. Kennedy about her new book and three key influences.

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Imagined Spaces @imaginedspaces.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

"Threads", new work by William Hume from the @BookWeekScot "Mirror, Mirror" workshop. @scotlit.bsky.social @ianhume.bsky.social www.imaginedspaces.org/the-writing-...

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