An Evening of Poetry with Jane Bonnyman, Annie Brechin & Marianne MacRae

Join Jane Bonnyman, Annie Brechin & Marianne MacRae on Tuesday 7th April, at 7pm, as they read from their latest collections in a showcase of local indie poetry press, Blue Diode Publishing.

With 'Date Show', Jane Bonnyman takes a delicious dive into "This Dating Malarkey", as one poem title puts it. Each poem builds a cast of characters from Just a Dude to Storm-Lover to Joe Cool to name a few, and even Gatsby shows up. The search for the fairytale romance is arduous, heart-breaking, and hilarious as a candle-lit dinner, where the author writes, “I lean towards you and set fire to my hair.”

Annie Brechin's 'How to Make Love' is no instruction manual. It’s a double meaning, a rumbustious, poetic odyssey through five cities – London, Prague, Paris, Dubai and Edinburgh – and the amorous encounters found there: the hopes, disappointments, frustrations, and heartbreaks, which ultimately lay the foundations of an unlikely path towards real love. These poems reject a sanitised version of romance. They are bold, messy, compassionate, visceral and revelatory. They present ordinary human minds and bodies, fragile and splintered, which they then “chisel into wonder/ over and over.”

Marianne MacRae is a poet and researcher based in Edinburgh. Her work has been widely published in journals including Magma, Ambit and Acumen. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for poetry in 2020. Her poem ‘Fox’ won first prize in The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition 2024. 'Recital' is her first full collection.

Book your tickets today!

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Doors: 6.30pm, event starts: 7pm, please arrive early to secure a good seat.

Tickets are £3

The bookshop has level access, events are seated and speakers use microphones. If you have any concerns about accessibility, please do get in touch and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Refunds are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, we are unable to offer a refund after the event.

For more information or if you would like a signed copy because you can't make it to the event, please contact the Blackwell's events team on 0131 622 8222 or [email protected]

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