Imagined Spaces
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imaginedspaces.bsky.social
Imagined Spaces
@imaginedspaces.bsky.social
26 followers 15 following 24 posts
We see writing as making & thinking, & thinking as a means of making writing. We value exchanges, initiating conversations with artists and writers & people from all walks of life to explore what it means to be alive today. Website: imaginedspaces.org
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imaginedspaces.bsky.social
Spolia becoming stories... Skendha Singh's marvellous essay on walking through Delhi. @skendhasingh.bsky.social share.google/VmgzoeNdhZQ1...
Staking the snake: on seeing, knowing & other imaginations — IMAGINED SPACES
I am looking for correspondences, not answers. After twenty-one years in the city, I decide to take guided walking tours of its heritage monuments. The first is of the Qutub Minar complex. Some physic...
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September 25, 2025 at 11:39 AM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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...
‘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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September 25, 2025 at 11:31 AM
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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.
June 21, 2025 at 3:55 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
Acts of Creation: On art and motherhood engages head and heart. The exhibits engender a conversation with viewers. Thoughtful and engaging. www.imaginedspaces.org/taking-a-lin...
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood — IMAGINED SPACES
Acts of Creation engages both head and heart. The exhibition asks us to think about how ‘the image of motherhood changes when the artist is drawing on lived experience’ and ‘what challenges are level...
www.imaginedspaces.org
June 20, 2025 at 9:47 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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-...
‘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 ...
www.imaginedspaces.org
June 4, 2025 at 3:37 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
Reflecting on the University of Dundee DJCAD 2025 degree: a conversation about art, exhibitions, artist statements, the importance of being able to experiment and play. (Last day to visit 1st June.) @asls.org.uk @vadundee.bsky.social @dundeeculture.bsky.social
www.imaginedspaces.org/taking-a-lin...
Reflecting on the 2025 DJCAD degree show... — IMAGINED SPACES
Helen Pryde and Gail Low sample the University of Dundee DJCAD degree show. The visit, and the impressions made by the small sample of work they did manage to see, sparked a reflective exchange about ...
www.imaginedspaces.org
May 31, 2025 at 10:36 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
Ever want to know how song writers compose? Here's a marvellously thoughtful essay by the Dundee musician & lyricist, Nicola Madill, on the making of her new album, "The Night is Long". Links to some tracks too. @asls.org.uk @vadundee.bsky.social www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/...
Listening as Thinking: On The Night is Long..… — IMAGINED SPACES
I’ve always been interested in the way that different forms of writing feed one another. The way that lines in books can become hooks for songs, and verses can become stories that are shared around th...
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May 30, 2025 at 8:21 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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/...
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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April 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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
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...
www.imaginedspaces.org
March 27, 2025 at 7:11 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
A lovely new essay by @chrispowici.bsky.social on 'spacetime', intense moments of apprehension when commonplace assumptions about reality fall away. @asls.org.uk www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/...
Strathallan Spacetime: The Glamourie of Place — IMAGINED SPACES
“… something had ‘happened’ to me as I walked. I’d felt, touched , a word once used commonly (including, I seem to recall, by my mother) for people who behave in a benignly odd way, as if they have b...
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February 27, 2025 at 9:27 AM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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...
Redirecting...
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January 24, 2025 at 11:30 AM
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agrayarchive.bsky.social
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 🙏
January 24, 2025 at 8:44 AM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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-...
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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January 24, 2025 at 11:16 AM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
New on imaginedspaces.org: Charlie Ellis considers the work of Bernard Crick on the shape & mode of the political essay. @asls.org.uk @charlieellis www.imaginedspaces.org/new-writing/...
In defence of the political essay — IMAGINED SPACES
Charlie Ellis considers the work of Bernard Crick on the shape and mode of the political essay: “The essay should try to tell a deeper story…. we might usefully draw a distinction between the essay an...
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January 24, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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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.
January 20, 2025 at 4:53 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
@tseliotprize shortlisted: 'Pilgrimage strengthens faith that the words will reach us and the echo of their music remain.... Fierce Elegy, in its ferocity, is for the Ages.' @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social
@poetrysociety.bsky.social
dura-dundee.org.uk/2025/01/12/f...
Fierce Elegy
Peter Gizzi(Penguin Books, 2024); pbk, £9.99 In his collection, Fierce Elegy, Peter Gizzi offers us words which recognise all the contradictions in loss and grieving.…
dura-dundee.org.uk
January 12, 2025 at 7:16 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
TSEliot Prize shortlisted: 'An altogether emotionally enriching and open-fisted collection for a world transformed by newness, and suffused with love and renewal.'
@picadorbooks.bsky.social
@poetrysociety.bsky.social
www.imaginedspaces.org/taking-a-lin...
Signs, Music — IMAGINED SPACES
Much has been written more recently about new mothers, laughed at or conspiratorially grimaced with in face-to-face encounters in post-natal and toddler groups. And because pregnancy and childbirth ar...
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January 11, 2025 at 5:16 PM
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asls.org.uk
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...
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...
pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
January 9, 2025 at 1:29 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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...
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,…
dura-dundee.org.uk
January 8, 2025 at 7:43 PM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
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...
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…
dura-dundee.org.uk
December 28, 2024 at 8:00 PM
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faberbooks.bsky.social
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.
December 25, 2024 at 10:00 AM
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asls.org.uk
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...
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
www.theguardian.com
December 25, 2024 at 10:21 AM
imaginedspaces.bsky.social
'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...
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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December 23, 2024 at 7:17 PM
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literaryhub.bsky.social
Palestinian stories and voices tracing a long, painful year in Gaza.
Looking Back at the Long Year in Gaza
Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, which will soon enter its fifteenth month, has killed scores of Palestinian writers and journalists, obliterated the region’s cultural infrastructure, and sent shoc…
lithub.com
December 16, 2024 at 4:30 PM
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literaryhub.bsky.social
Karla Kelsey considers gender, agency and freedom on both sides of the photographer’s lens.
The Art of Watching and the Art of Being Watched: On Sophie Calle’s The Sleepers
It is the first week of April, Paris, 1979. You arrive at noon in Montparnasse, the address you’d been given, and ring the buzzer. You’re let in and climb several flights of stairs, until you reach…
lithub.com
December 16, 2024 at 5:30 PM