Skeleton Architecture

A card showing the outside of the shop, with a rather large and lovely octopus on top, reading a book.  A new bookshop opened near us a YEAR ago, and we finally managed a visit!  Seahorse Bookstore is in a great location in Ardrossan, on the way to the Arran ferry terminal, Asda and Cecchini's restaurant, just around the corner from the gorgeous new veggie cafe, Moka, and with plenty of parking nearby.  It's also close to the Ardrossan Town and Ardrossan Harbour train stations, and there are plenty of bus stands nearby. The book shop is clean, bright and friendly, set out over three rooms - non-fiction, fiction, and kids, with a fantastic selection of modern books and classics, and with hot drinks and biscuits, and places to sit and enjoy them. It was quite busy on the day I went so I didn't take pictures in the shop, but there are pictures online here . Things I loved included the white shelving, gorgeous little book display stands (which I think were bamboo, and which I...

I've been struggling to find words I feel are worth writing of late.  Of course the first conclusion I jumped to was that I was done - nothing more of use would come of my writing. But then I thought of other women around my age, in particular the amazing poet who I once met leaving early as I was arriving late for a writing event. Why was she leaving? She said it was because there was nothing she could say. I tried to convince her otherwise, but I failed, and I was horrified that we missed out on her voice because of what I could only think was a crisis of confidence. Lately that same thing has been happening to me. I've attended events, feeling like I ought to go, like I'll enjoy it when I'm there, and then I've not enjoyed it. I've found myself unable to write anything I'd want anyone else to hear, ashamed of my awfulness. I found myself looking at my writing and thinking, who would care anyway? A lot of this I'm putting down to perimenopause - I'...

All the best to you and yours for the festive season and let's hope 2022 brings an easier year for us all. Having spent the beginning of the covid period writing daily poems, getting involved with endless online events, launching a book in lockdown (get in touch at caralmckee at gmail dot com to get your copy), and with a flurry of poetry publications in journals and the like, I found this year's quietness a surprise.  Family members took ill and died (not covid, but certainly not helped), my children struggled with the endless days of schoolwork and not much else, we all struggled. On the day my daughter's guinea pig died she said "everything is dying and nothing is good." I couldn't argue with her. I also couldn't write. I did try sometimes. I attended some events, I tried to style myself through it, but I felt like everything I wrote was terrible. Instead of enjoying events and poetry podcasts I would think them irrelevant or pointless, or decide that i...

 Hello I haven't checked in for a while so thought I'd say hello and let you know what's going on with me. Basically I have a lot going on in my life at the moment, and so I'm not able to do as much writing. However, things are still happening. I try to keep the page which talks about my poetry up to date, so you can always click on that to find out where to find the latest things. Just yesterday I was delighted to have my poem, The Bird  on the Bind Collective website . The Bind Collective is an online platform for creative work examining ecology and the natural world. It's beautifully designed, and well worth an exploration. I particularly enjoyed Judith Klausner's work, (de)composed . I am also delighted to have a poem coming out in issue 96 of Obsessed with Pipework . I have been submitting to them for quite a while, but never found a fit before. One of the editors at OwP is Katerina Neocleous  who, like me, has had a book published with Maytree Press ( you...

 Can we start by getting the 'Don't judge a book by its cover' thing out of the way? Book covers are so important. They tell you what you're getting yourself into - crime, romance, a gritty thriller, you'll be able to tell from the cover. If you spot a book that looks like one by a favourite author, it's because someone wants you to connect it with their writing, and it's probably worth a read. I seem to always have three books on the go at the moment, so let's have a look at what I'm reading right now and what the covers have to say about them: 1. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - this is a beautiful looking book, as are all the books in the series. I bought this because I heard an interview with Becky on the Imaginary Worlds Podcast  which was fascinating, but I recognised the book because of the beautiful cover. You can buy it here . I'm really enjoying reading this but I am struggling with my attention span during the c...

Happy Yorkshire Day!  It's a weird kind of Yorkshire day with lockdown closing down my home town of Ilkley where we were supposed to be this weekend. I had hoped for afternoon tea at the White House on the moor, instead I'll be visiting the new market in my new home town in Scotland. This time last year I was on holiday in Scarborough (pictured) with my family, and my poem, My First Kiss, had just come out on the rather marvellous The Poetry Village website. You can see that here . For a while I'd been trying to get a publisher interested in a small collection of my poems, with no luck. When I saw that Maytree Press , the independent publisher associated with The Poetry Village, were looking for small collections I decided I'd send them something, but instead of sending them poems from the collection I'd brought together myself, I sent them poems that were connected with Yorkshire.  To be honest, I didn't expect much to happen. I'd been rejected many times, ...

First Kiss is available now! You can buy it from me - just click the button below to buy your copy, which I'm happy to sign.    Want it signed? Alternatively, you can buy it in the Maytree Press shop , along with other books like the award winning The Collective Nouns for Birds by Amanda Huggins. Here's what people have been saying about it so far: "terribly beautiful, and also terribly intriguing..." - Dave  "Your book is fantastic, love all of them, well done" - Wendy If you missed the live launch on Instagram you can still find it on IGTV here .