The Centre for Poetic Innovation addresses poetry and poetics creatively, critically and historically, promoting and studying poetic innovation in a broad sense of both terms, from poetry as traditionally understood to poetic aspects of visual and material art forms, of prose writing as well as interactions with music, dance and digital poetry. The key aims of the Centre are:
- Hosting speakers, workshops and conferences
- Support and development of doctoral and post-doctoral research
- Public engagement and impact activities
- Joint Research Grant applications and research projects
Upcoming events
Book Presentation with Marcas Mac an Tuairneir and Deborah Moffatt
Friday 22 May 2026
Hebdomadar’s Room
5-7pm
This wide-ranging anthology showcases the talented cohort of Gaelic poets who have come to prominence since the turn of the millennium. The contributors to his wide-ranging anthology engage with political and social concerns, women’s and LGBTQ identities, local, multicultural, and international perspectives, alongside explorations of history, cultural exchange, love, land and language. Their oeuvre spans free verse, vibrant re-imaginings of traditional poetry and song forms, nature poetry, urban lyrics and panegyrics. This anthology builds on the legacy of earlier volumes edited by the late Donald MacAulay, Christopher Whyte, and Ronald Black. A new compendium introducing these sensitive and often radical voices to wider readerships through translation into English, Scots, and other European languages – often by the writers themselves and their peers, working in close creative collaboration.
York-born, Edinburgh-based Marcas Mac an Tuairneir (Mark Spencer Turner) has published four poetry collections and a co-authored pamphlet. Dùileach (Elemental) (Evertype, 2021) and Polaris (Leamington Books, 2022) were shortlisted for the Derick Thomson Prize and Polaris was also shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Poetry Book of the Year in 2022 and a Saboteur Award. In 2023, he was awarded the Gold Medal for poetry at the Royal National Mòd. He won the Wigtown Gaelic Poetry prize in 2017 and has been shortlisted seven times. In 2024 he was co-winner of the Wigtown International Poetry Award. Also a literary translator, Cruinneachadh (Drunk Muse Press, 2023) anthologised poetries from across the North Atlantic Archipelago and Europe, translated for the first time into Scottish Gaelic. Teisteanasan (Depositions), included his translations of the poetry Anton Floyd (Glóir, 2024). He was the 2024 Makar of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) and is Poet-in-residence at the Balmoral Hotel.
Deborah Moffatt was born in Vermont, USA, and has lived in Fife, Scotland, since 1982. She writes in Gaelic and in English, and has been widely published in the UK and Ireland. She has had four collections of poetry published – Càirdeas ’s Ceòl ’s Eòlas (Clàr, 2024), Dàin nan Dùil (Clàr, 2019), Eating Thistles (Smokestack Books, 2019) and Far From Home (Lapwing, 2004). Her fiction has been published in anthologies from Bloomsbury, Faber, Harper Collins and Virago.
Project Earth: The Green Chapter
Wednesday 27 May 2026
St Andrews, Laidlaw Music Centre, McPherson Recital Room
7:30 to 9:00 pm
Free
In Project Earth, the Iris Trio brings vital new works by internationally decorated poet Karen Solie and celebrated Canadian composers Andrew Downing and Sarah Slean to Scotland.
The Iris Trio, Christine Carter (clarinet), Zoë Martin-Doike (viola) and Anna Petrova (piano), have performed on major concert stages from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Sydney Opera House.
An interdisciplinary address to environmental crises and to beauty worth protecting, The Green Chapter has been praised by Miranda Massie, Founder and Director of New York City’s Climate Museum as “striking and beautiful, its presentation of spoken poetry combined with musical performances perfectly calibrated, and the principals’ performances staggeringly accomplished, in sync, and alive”.
“…a beauty of sound and striking expression that is rarely surpassed.”
– Bremen Weser Kurier (Germany)
“These mysterious works are uncannily beautiful, and this rendition is absolutely breathtaking.”
– The WholeNote (Canada)
“These are extraordinarily, mutually attuned practitioners that deserve our acclaim. They take on the classic and the present-day with equal poise and authentic fluency.”
– Classical-Modern Music Review (United States)
“The Iris Trio plays with great beauty, clarity, prowess, authenticity, and teamwork…”
– American Record Guide (United States)
“…joy and risk without restraint…”
– Ritmo Magazine (Spain)
“…an enthralling performance. The interpretation and level of execution are exceptional.”
– The Clarinet (International)
Karen Solie’s most recent poetry collection, Wellwater, won the Forward Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Governor General’s Award for poetry. A recipient of a 2026 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, she teaches for the University of St Andrews.
Decolonial Ecopoetics Writing Workshop, with Roshni Gallagher
Thursday, 28 May, 2 – 4 pm
Laidlaw Music Centre Reading Room
In this creative writing poetry workshop, we will draw on decolonial environmental thought to consider the ways in which race and legacies of colonialism affect climate crisis and shape our individual and collective relationship to the environment. We will write about Scotland and beyond through both a historical and personal lens. Paying attention to the body, we will explore themes of memory, land, and belonging.
This workshop is open to all, and spaces will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis. BPoC writers are especially encouraged to apply. No previous writing experience is needed. If you would like to attend, please email [email protected]
Roshni Gallagher is a poet from Leeds of Indo-Guyanese and Irish heritage. Her debut collection Even the Trees is forthcoming with Bloodaxe books in September 2026 and was joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize. She is co-winner of the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her pamphlet Bird Cherry was published by VERVE Poetry Press. She has an MFA in creative writing Poetry from the University of St Andrews. She lives in Edinburgh.
‘Pandora’s Box’
by Ghayath Almadhoun
Tuesday, 23 June, from 5:00 pm to 5:55 pm
UCO School 3
This event is part of the 16th EURAMAL CONFERENCE
HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS,
DEPARTMENT OF ARABIC & PERSIAN
22‒26 June 2026, St Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
CATASTROPHE AND BEYOND: REPRESENTATIONS OF VIOLENCE AND TRAUMA IN MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE
In this lecture, the acclaimed poet Ghayath Almadhoun will reflect on the role of poetry in times of war. How can language begin to express the deepest injustices and sufferings?
Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet, born in Damascus, who lives between Berlin and Stockholm. He was born in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, the son of a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother. As both Palestinian and Syrian, Almadhoun describes himself as a “double refugee.”
His work draws on memory and lived experience to write the present and to trace its impact on language and the body. In this sense, he writes our time. Composing in Arabic and reaching readers through translations into more than 30 languages, his poetry moves between the personal and the political, dissolving the distance between them. He has created several poetry films, collaborated widely with artists and scholars, and curated numerous events, readings, and literary anthologies. Critics have described his work as “urgent and necessary,” “a sustained detonation,” and as “poetry that grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck,” highlighting its uncompromising portrayal of violence and its refusal of consolation. His writing confronts the brutality and contradictions of our time, insisting on a language capable of bearing witness without looking away. He continues to divide his time between Berlin and Stockholm.
Almadhoun’s poignant poetry explores life in exile and, above all, the terrors of war. How can words make the suffering of war tangible? What does it mean to live at a distance while one’s homeland is being destroyed?
For further information about this event, please contact Dr Fabio Caiani ([email protected])