Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism

Excitement is mounting here at Tapsalteerie for the publication of a first collection by the young Scottish poet Calum Rodger. Called "Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism", it's due out on March 8th and will make its first public appearance at the Stanza poet's market in St Andrews.

One thing we particularly love about Calum is his digital poetry, of which "the worst of my faults is a certain impatient gaiety of disposition" is a prime example. This poem will feature in the upcoming pamphlet, alongside poems written in the more traditional (organic?) manner.

"The worst of my faults..." was created by sending pre-existing text through a poetry generator called Gnoetry 0.2 (developed for Linux by Jon Trowbridge and Eric Elshtain). In this case Calum has mashed together Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ with various MDMA experiences as reported on erowid.org.

The basic pattern is that Calum fires the text into Gnoetry, which has a pretty strong grasp of the grammatical structures of the English language, and Gnoetry fires lines of poetry back at him. Calum then puts the text through an editorial process, finally emerging at a completed poem. While it's rare that the generator will produce a perfect stanza, it does often produce some quite exceptional lines. "And I know that this is only a bovine volume" in the above poem is a personal favourite.

Gnoetry 0.2 is free and available for you to play with by the way, as are other excellent programs such as JanusNode (which helped create another poem in "Know yr Stuff").

While the digital poems are excellent, Calum's original poetry is still superior in Tapsalteerie's humble opinion. We'll focus on that in our next brief preview...

Tapsalteerie in the news!

Excitingly Tapsalteerie have been featured on a new podcast run by the Scots Language Centre, which has just gone online in the past week. It was great fun to be interviewed. I'm always keen to chat about publishing, particularly Scots language publishing, so it only took a few questions for me to be off and running!

Tapsalteerie takes up a few minutes of the podcast around the 21 minute mark, but I would encourage you to listen to the whole show. Overall it's a really interesting, entertaining and professional programme, not just because of the novelty value of hearing Scots online. I wonder if Radio Scotland are paying attention...

http://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/type/id/7

Over the past few months we've managed to generate quite a bit of interest in traditional media, with a couple of local papers in the North-east of Scotland taking an interest and writing articles about us. Bill Thom and I even found ourselves posing for a paparazza session!

It just shows the enthusiasm there is for the Scots language at the moment - and it's a pleasure to be able to contribute to this in our own small way.

Poetry at Books and Beans

Last night we launched our first pamphlet and I have to say it went swimmingly well. Books and Beans was packed out, Bill read his poem very succesfully - the audience was on tenterhooks for most of it - and we had some great guest appearances. Couldn't have hoped for a better start to our publishing adventure, so thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a memorable evening.

Launch Night for The Quait Chiel

It's a great pleasure to be able to say that on Thursday 26th September we'll finally release The Quait Chiel, Bill Thom's first (and rather superb!) poetry pamphlet.

We're launching it at the regular Poetry at Books and Beans night in Aberdeen, which happens on the last Thrusday of every month. It's a great regular fixture in the Aberdeen poetry scene so we're very pleased to take Bill's pamphlet along to it.

They've been good enough to make a special Doric evening out of the event; alongside Bill we'll have readings from the legendary Douglas Kynoch, as well as the excellent Grainne Smith. We'll also get the pleasure of music from Louise Counsell on top of as the usual open mic, so it promises to be a quality evening.

See you there!

https://www.facebook.com/events/501580573259526/?ref=22

The pictures are here!

Tapsalteerie recently received the illustrations for our first pamphlet, expertly drawn as ever by the mighty Scott Simpson. I was going to post a few drafts of the design as it went along, but actually everything has fallen into place really quickly - and I don't really want to give away the poem's plot (yes, it has a plot - a proper beginning, middle and end story)!

Instead I decided to put together some words and an image from the early part of the poem, just so you can get a flavour of what's to come. Below it is the cover design:

It looks like we're heading for a September release date. More news to follow soon!

"The Quait Cheil" By Bill Thom

We're now getting to the final stages in preparing to launch our first pamphlet, The Quait Cheil by Bill Thom. The illustrations are almost ready, the text is basically complete. All that's left is the final cover design and typesetting. We'll be previewing some parts of the process on the blog here so you can see things as they develop.

Bill's debut pamphlet is well worth a read (of course we would say that!). It consists of one long poem in the old north-eastern ballad style, written entirely in Banffshire Doric. Although Tapsalteerie are well aware that the long poem isn't exactly "in" at the moment, Bill has managed to create a piece that really grabs the attention. He's produced a cracking story, told with a rhythm born out of traditional Scottish folk music. We're very pleased to be able to help him release it.

The Quait Cheil 
[extract from beginning section]

Thi twa o them aye disagreed,

Fit een o them wid takk thi lead,

Fan aye they cum up tae thi wid,

Wi thochts o fit thi darkness hid,

For lang they kent o stories old,

O ghosts an spirits they were told,

Bit through thi wid thi pathie geed,

An intae trouble wis guaranteed.

So huddin in atween thi trees,

Thi lack o licht caased their displease,

Nae moon thi nicht, nae licht wis seen,

Nor even stars oot up abeen.

By Bill Thom

Release date: early July

In praise of crowdfunding

And so Tapsalteerie's crowdfunding campaign has been successful, having raised a grand total of £625 so far. Of course there's still a little time to donate if you would like - anything more than this total would be massively useful - but at least the minimum amount I needed to get the press off the ground has been reached. It really is fantastic news, and I'm very grateful to all the generous crowdfunders out there who made it happen.

I would heartily recommend anyone to give the crowdfunding a go. I was genuinely surprised by the amount of people who showed their support so readily, including those I both knew and didn't know.

So what would I count as the main reasons for Tapsalteerie's success? Firstly, a worthy cause combining a few different elements. Not only did we have the Scots language side, but also the idea of helping young Scottish artists. I was also launching two things for quite a modest amount of money - both a new poet's first collection and a new publishing company. I do think this means people could get quite a bit of bang for their buck, which probably helps when they're deciding to donate or not.

The thing is that a solid idea with clear motives and goals is not enough for success. You also need the support of those around you, and if it wasn't for my personal and professional networks I don't think the funding target would have been reached. Although it all happened through the internet, it was in the real world that the success was built.