Tag Archives: Barrie Tullett

Presence haiku journal

September 16, 2025 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

I took over as co-editor of Presence Haiku Journal recently, along with James Roderick Burns and Becky Dwyer who are, like me, members of Edinburgh Haiku Circle.

Our first issue (#82) appeared at the end of July, and we’re currently open for submissions for #83 – until the end of September, with the magazine due out towards the end of November.

We’ve changed a few things, but kept a lot the same, including the sequence of the contents – starting with tanka, having the haiku in seasonal sections (concluding with a no-season section) and interspersing these with haibun. The magazine closes with an essay and a substantial Reviews section, and we’re grateful for the continuing work of Judy Kendall and Julie Mellor in commissioning and compiling these.

Matthew Paul continues to manage the website.

As for the changes, we’re delighted that Barrie Tullett has brought his designer’s eye to bear on the parts and the whole. We’ve reduced the number of poems we publish too, so that those we do select are given more room on the page.

And Sean O’Connor will join us from #83 as Haibun Editor.

You can buy individual copies or take out an annual subscription (which buys you three copies) here.

Poems, Publications, Translations

New prints & books from The Caseroom Press

February 23, 2024 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

Some new publications from The Caseroom Press, designed and printed by Barrie Tullett.

There are two prints of individual poems, both published but uncollected.

I wrote ‘Hands’ in 2014, when I was working for the first time in care homes; it’s based partly on what residents told me they’d used their hands for, and partly on my own experiences and memories.

‘Close’ dates from 1996; it’s a poem I put aside, but I rediscovered it when I used it for a poetry walk a few years ago, and now I’m very fond of it. It’s a moment that’s long passed – my daughter has grown up, the ‘newspapermen’ have gone and buses no longer run along that stretch of the Mile – so in it’s way it’s become a historical document.

There are also two books – a single-poem artist’s book, and a little Edinburgh anthology.

Позже / Später / Later features a single poem by Wassily Kandinsky from his 1913 book Klänge. It’s the second in an ongoing series from The Caseroom Press – the first was Гимн / Hymnus / Hymn, published in 2022. This post from the time shows that book, and gives some background about Kandinsky’s book and the current project.

Wale comprises my selection of quotes about Edinburgh from over the centuries. The title is from Robert Fergusson – ‘Auld Reikie, wale o ika toun / That Scotland kens beneath the moon!’, ‘wale’ meaning the choice, the pick, the best. The cover image shows a detail from the paving outside the Scottish parliament building.

If you’d like copies of any of these, please get in touch via the Contact page.

‘Hands’, A3, £10
‘Close’, A4, £5
Wale, 107x107mm, £5
Позже / Später / Later, 220x220mm, £20
P&P will be added to the above prices.

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Poems, Publications, Translations, Walks

Edinburgh (2nd edition)

March 13, 2023 Ken Cockburn 1 Comment

Almost 18 months ago Barie Tullet’s Caseroom Press published the pamphlet Edinburgh: poems and translations. The first edition – hand-sewn, with covers in a wide range of colours – is now sold out, and last month a second edition appeared, with staples and a uniform cover. The contents remain the same – poems about the city written in 1996-97 and 2016, plus translations from Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane and the 17th century Latin of Arthur Johnston.

The first sales were at last month’s Artists Book Fair at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Also on sale there were two new pamphlets, both featuring poems that would have made the cut for Edinburgh: poems and translations had they been written a little sooner.

They were commissioned by the first Push the Boat Out festival in autumn 2021, and again refer to sites in Edinburgh’s Old Town: ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ beneath the railways bridge at the junction of Calton Road and New Street, and ‘The Ballad of William Knox’ at the poet’s memorial stone in the New Calton Burial Ground, not far from the Stevenson vault, where Robert Louis’s grandfather, father, and uncle are all buried. (There are some photos of his memorial in an earlier blog, part of An Edinburgh Alphabet – scroll down to ‘K’.)

Edinburgh: poems & translations
ISBN 978-1-905821-35-8
210 x 125mm, 16 pages, soft covers

Jacob’s Ladder
No ISBN
282 x 99mm, 4pp, grey endpapers

The Ballad of William Knox
No ISBN
282 x 99mm, 4pp, blue endpapers

Artists, Poems, Publications, Translations, Visual Arts

Kandinsky’s Hymn (1913 / 2022)

November 17, 2022 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

In June I was contacted by my friend Barrie Tullett. His wife Jantze had “an idea to illustrate a poem (or three) by Wassily Kandinsky, from his book Klänge, which was published in 1913”. I was asked to translate the eight-line poem from the German, which I did, and recently they sent me a copy of the finished article, a book featuring one line of the poem (in Russian, German and English), with illustrations, on each page-spread. You can read more about it here.

Apparently Kandinsky originally wrote the texts in Russian, but then found a German publisher, so translated them himself. The idea was that after the German edition, they’d make a Russian one – but the German edition didn’t sell, so it never happened.

This is the complete eight-line poem in German, followed by my translation (in which I’ve prioritised the rhythm, and to a lesser extent the rhymes):

Innen wiegt die blaue Woge.
Das zerrissne rote Tuch
Rote Fetzen. Blaue Wellen.
Das verschlossne alte Buch.
Schauen schweigend in die Ferne.
Dunkles Irren in den Wald.
Tiefer werden blaue Wellen.
Rotes Tuch versinkt nun bald.

Within the breaker blue is swaying.
Cloth that’s red is ripped and torn.
Red is shredded. Blue is wavey.
Padlocked shut the book that’s old.
Silent look into the distance.
Err in darkness in the woods.
Deeper darkens blue that’s wavey.
Cloth that’s red will sink down soon.

You can see the pages of the original if you search for ‘Klänge’ here.

There is a recent edition of the woodcuts available on issuu.

And if you want a bit of background, there is always wikipedia.

Edinburgh Poetry Tours, Poets, Walks

Edinburgh: poems & translations

September 27, 2021 Ken Cockburn 1 Comment

It’s been a long time since I offered a poetry walk in the Old Town – almost two years. I gave some illustrated talks to U3A groups before the first lockdown, and since then have done a couple of online presentations.

In early 2020 I had a pamphlet of poems ready to publish with The Caseroom Press in early summer, with a view to promoting it during that year’s Edinburgh Fringe… but things didn’t go according to plan. For a while it seemed possible I could do something for the 2021 Fringe, but deadlines came and went.

It’s now ready, and I’m launching it in the days following National Poetry Day. First there’s a walk through the Old Town, from St Giles down the High Street and Canongate and into Holyrood Park, and then I’m also doing an online launch a few days later, for those unable (or unwilling) to venture into central Edinburgh and brave the autumn weather.

The walk is on Saturday 9 October at 11.00; the online launch on Tuesday 12 October at 19.00. For the latter I’ll be joined by Barrie Tullett, who designed and published the pamphlet for The Caseroom Press. You can book both the walk and the online launch via Eventbrite, and when booking you also have the option to buy a copy of the pamphlet.

Edinburgh: poems and translations includes original poems about Register House (and specifically the magnificent central dome designed by Robert Adam), the Scottish parliament building, and my then four-year old daughter running up and down Fleshmarket Close. There’s also a poem about Deacon Brodie who, despite being a legendary Edinburgh character, has been neglected by poets. The translations are of poems by Arthur Johnston, the 17th century Latin poet much admired by his near-namesake Samuel Johnson, by Victor Hugo, who conjures a romantically ruined Holyrood despite never visiting the city, and by Theodor Fontane, who did visit but whose ‘John Knox’s Death’ is full of anachronisms, all intentional no doubt

Edinburgh: Book Launch & Poetry Walk
Sat, 9 October 2021, 11:00 – 12:15 BST
Meet outside St Giles’ Cathedral, High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1RE

Edinburgh: online book launch
Tue, 12 Oct 2021 19:00-20.00
With Ken Cockburn & Barrie Tullett

Otherwise, if you’d like to buy a copy of the book get in touch! Until 12th October they cost £5.00 + P&P (thereafter £7.00 + P&P). As the photo above shows, the books are available in a variety of cover colours. If you have a preference, let me know.

Edinburgh: poems & translations
ISBN 978-1-905821-35-8
210 x 130mm, 16 pages, soft covers, saddle stitch binding

Publications

New from The Caseroom Press

May 11, 2018 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

The Caseroom Press recently published two books which I had a hand in.

O | O 3: Word Disco is the third in an unintended trilogy of found poems, and follows Overheard Overlooked (2011) and Overlooked Overheard (2015). Visually it departs from the previous books, with the texts being typeset, distorted on photocopiers and then edited and composed in Photoshop. Barrie Tullett again designed it, and as with Overlooked Overheard his students at the University of Lincoln found the poems it contains. It’s available via The Caseroom Press website.

Woodland Orienteering presents six six-letter word-pairs composed in 2011 for an orienteering circuit in Dufftown, Moray, but never used (a seventh word-pair was, and remains in situ). If you’d like to buy a copy please contact me directly.

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DSCF3496 DSCF3500

Poems, Readings & Talks, Visual Arts, Walks

Curved Stream at Traquair House

September 16, 2015 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

Curved Stream is an exhibition by seven artists and one writer (myself) at Traquair House, near Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders. Each of the artists has a work in one of the garden pavilions to the rear of the house, and a related work in the main house and / or in the gardens and grounds.

One of the pavilions has, as its centre-piece, an anonymous ceiling-painting depicting an episode in the story of Diana and Actaeon (told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), just before the transformation of Actaeon into a stag. The survival, intact, of this beautiful artefact, embedded in the fabric of the building, exemplifies many of the special qualities of the site as a whole.

The work I’ve made is called DEA SILVARUM (Goddess of the Woods), as Ovid describes Diana, and is a walk with poems on the theme of hunting in the gardens and grounds of Traquair House. The poems include Ted Hughes’ version of Ovid, plus works by Robert Burns, Edna St Vincent Millay and the great Anon, among others. I led a first walk at the exhibition opening on 5 September, and will lead a second on Saturday 10 October at 2.30pm.

In the pavilion is a printed sheet listing the poems I selected for the walk, typeset by Barrie Tullett, with handwritten annotations featuring extracts from and reflections on the poems, as well as notes as to where I’d planned to read them. The sheet is in a drawer, so you have to open it to read the text – the idea for that was taken from a Victorian Game Book which was (but is not longer) on display in the house, in a glass below a window with a sheet of dark fabric draped over it to protect it from the light. I liked that ‘reveal’, and it seemed to echo the events in Actaeon’s story as well, so the text is hidden in the drawer, until its own ‘reveal’.

If you don’t know the story: Actaeon has been hunting deer with his friends in the woods. After a successful, bloody morning, they pause; Actaeon wanders off alone and stumbles upon a cavern where the goddess Diana, is bathing. Angry that he has seen her naked, she turns him into a stag, and he is hunted down and killed by his own dogs.)

The artists involved are Gordon Brennan, Mark Haddon, Jane Hyslop, Paul Keir, Deirdre Macleod, Andrew Mackenzie and Mary Morrison. There is more information about the exhibition and their work at the Curved Stream website and Facebook page.

Readings & Talks, Walks

Spring Shoots – Readings in April & May

April 3, 2013 Ken Cockburn 1 Comment

After a long hibernation, the days are getting longer and several events in the diary are getting closer.

First up is a launch event for Out of Books, with Alec Finlay, on Thursday 11 April at 6.30pm, at the Scottish Poetry Library, and a second event as part of the Boswell Book Festival at Auchinleck, Ayrshire, on Sunday 19 May. Out of Books is collaborative project inspired by Boswell and Johnson’s 1773 journey across the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Taking their texts as their guides, we’ll set out to revisit particular landscapes and recover particular views. Over the summer and along the route we will host a series of events inspired by their antecedents’ famous journey, with further events in and around Inverness, on the Isles of Skye, Coll and Mull, and in Inveraray.

Barrie ‘Caseroom’ Tullett is visiting Edinburgh for the Fruitmarket Gallery Book Fair on Saturday 20 April. I’ll do a stint on the table as well, and read something from Snapdragon about 12.30.

Arne Rautenberg is visiting Scotland later in the month, and we’re doing two readings together – at the Goethe Institut in Glasgow on Tuesday 23 April at 6.30pm, and at the Edinburgh Bookshop the following day at 7.30pm (this is the Facebook page about it).

In May, I’m leading two poetry walks in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12, both at 2.00pm. Content still to be decided, but certainly some Chinese classics, haiku, maybe Burns in rural-floral mode, something from The Road North…

And finally, a reading with Pierre Joris and Lila Matsumoto at Little Sparta on Sunday 26 May at 5.00pm, linked to the University of Glasgow’s Assembling Identities conference. Tickets are available here.

Perhaps the snow will have melted from the Pentlands by then.

Poems, Publications, Visual Arts

Letterpress & Typewriters

October 29, 2012 Ken Cockburn 1 Comment

I spent Saturday at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. They were running their annual bookfair, By Leaves We Live, and it must have been one of the best attended ever. I was mostly at The Caseroom Press table with Barrie Tullett, who brought a small selection from his typewriter collection to display, and be used. They were joined by Edwin Morgan’s Blue Bell (part of his archive held by the SPL), and a red Olivetti Valentine, which Angus Reid had bought for his daughter in a Stockbridge charity shop for a tenner, but which drew admiring and even covetous looks from those that know about typewriters.

Barrie recently drew on the old Pepsi advert to write a text about LETTERPRESSIN’, which he letterpressed as a poster, and asked if I’d contribute something similar about POETRY. I obliged, and the result is above. It’s in an edition of 25, at £25.00 each, and copies are still available from the SPL.

A good day of conversations, rounded off with a party for Hamish Whyte’s Mariscat Press, now thirty years young and still going strong.

Publications, Translations

Snapdragon

August 23, 2012 Ken Cockburn Leave a comment

Snapdragon is a newly published collection of my translations of poems by the German writer Arne Rautenberg, made over the past decade. Arne lives in Kiel, where I’ve visited him on several occasions, and he has been to Scotland twice, in 2003 and 2007.

As all books are, it is a collaborative effort. I was introduced to Arne by Alec Finlay, who has written the cover blurb above; Stewart Conn heard Arne and me read in Edinburgh and 2003, and his poem ‘Translations’ describing that occasion is included; the book is designed and laid out by Barrie Tullett, with whom I’ve worked on many projects over the years; and the cover was designed by Jantze Tullett, Barrie’s wife.

The ladybird
On the hibiscus flower
In the ashtray

(Haiku)

The poems are fomally varied: monologues, lists and fairy tales – haiku, double haiku and football haiku – one-word poems, nudges and inversions. They are presented as parallel text, German on the left and English on the right.

Between turbulence
And the monstrous rivets
A beckoning home.

His gaze deep in the
Rear wheel of a juggernaut
Thundering on by.

(from ‘Kiel After Rain’)

I mention my choice of title in the Afterword: “I settled on Snapdragon as it seemed to sum up much of Arne’s work: a flower-name, so a word that’s rooted in the real, something delicate and beautiful; yet also with outlandish and unsettling associations.”

The formal details are:
published by The Caseroom Press, 180 x 125 mm, 64 pages, ISBN 978-1-905821-21-1, cover price £5.00.

A review by Lesley Harrison has appeared in Northwords Now, no.22 (if you download the pdf, it’s on p.22). “I don’t speak German, but the English versions conjured very clearly a city-world still recovering from war, and Cockburn’s clipped, wry translations seem to be a perfect window to it, both clever and compelling.”

Poems on the page and in the world