D & W Launch of 'This Kilt of Many Colours' by David Bleiman

In this May Day celebration of David Bleiman's debut pamphlet of poems the music of the spoken word will be interlaced with klezmer and Scots medleys from the fiddle of Gemma Sharples and David will read alongside three distinguished guest poets: John Glenday, Jim Mackintosh and Jay Whittaker.

David Bleiman writes out of Edinburgh in English, Scots, Spanish, Yiddish and a largely imagined dialect of Scots-Yiddish which won him the Sangschaw prize in 2020 for The Trebbler’s Tale. In this first pamphlet he paints a broad canvas, drawing on family heritage and life in Scotland to celebrate the warp and weft of a complex and multilingual identity.

'This Kilt of Many Colours' will be available in the UK from March 25th, from https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/davidbleiman.html, priced at £8.00 including p&p.

Guest performers

John Glenday

John Glenday is the author of four collections. ‘Grain’ (Picador 2009) was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Ted Hughes Award and ‘The Golden Mean’ (Picador 2015) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year and won the 2016 Roehampton Poetry Prize. His most recent publications are a limited edition artbook ‘mira’, (Coast to Coast to Coast 2019) and a pamphlet, ‘The Firth’ (Mariscat Press). His Selected Poems came out with Picador in 2020.

Jim Mackintosh

Perthshire poet, editor and producer Jim Mackintosh is the current Makar of the Federation of Writers Scotland. He is also the Makar of the Cateran EcoMuseum in east Perthshire, the Poet in Chief of The Hampden Collection, the Cultural Ambassador of The Friends of Pskov and the Programme Manager for the Hamish Matters Festival. He has published six collections of poetry, the latest of which was Flipstones published by Tippermuir Books of Perth.

Jay Whittaker

Jay Whittaker is an Edinburgh-based poet who grew up much further south, in Devon and Nottingham. By day, she works for the University of Edinburgh in a role that has nothing to do with poetry. Her second full-length collection, Sweet Anaesthetist, was published in 2020, and her debut, Wristwatch, was Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2018 in the Saltire Society Literary Awards.

Gemma Sharples

Gemma Sharples is an award-winning violinist and chamber musician who performs around the UK and internationally. She is a member of London Mozart Players and the Gildas Quartet, with whom she has performed at Wigmore Hall and live on Radio 3, as well as touring to China, Australia, South Africa and Europe. She has always had an interest in Klezmer music and spent some time depping for the bands ’She’koyokh’ and ‘Oi Va Voi’ while studying for her masters.