Heads up for 15 June - save the day for laughter

'A Penny Spitfire' will be presented at Gracefield Arts Centre Cafe on Wednesday 15 June at 7pm by well known and much awarded writer Brindley Hallam Dennis, aka Mike Smith. I think we can safely say this will be a most entertaining author event: Brindley Hallam Dennis has a well-deserved reputation as a raconteur, whose dry wit and laconic delivery already has a following in D&G.

'A Penny Spitfire' is set in October 1947, in a town inspired by his childhood memories of Burton Upon Trent. To a background of industrial steam engines, hauling their trains between the dark brick walls of brewery buildings, the characters struggle with the changes that war and history have forced upon them and their town.

Brindley Hallam Dennis writes poetry, prose and drama. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and his comic monologues, That’s What Ya Get! Kowalski’s Assertions, were published recently by Unbound Press. Mike teaches Creative Writing at Cumbria University, runs fiction writing workshops, and blogs regularly at http://bhdandme.wordpress.com/

Launch of Southlight 8 tomorrow night

You are warmly invited to the convivial Gracefield Café Bar to meet the editors of South West Scotland’s literary magazines, Southlight from Dumfries and Galloway and The Eildon Tree from the Borders. 7pm, free entry.

It'll be a friendly crowd with a warm welcome for newcomers. Hear writers reading from their published work and find out how you could increase the chances of success for getting your work accepted by literary magazines.

This is also an opportunity to view Peter Scott Tudhope’s Landscapes of Southwest Scotland, which will be on display at Gracefield.

Charlie Poulsen exhibition at Gracefield explores art, land - and daffodils

Growing is a new exhibition by Scottish Borders based sculptor Charlie Poulsen. It opens to the public for the first time at Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries on Saturday 19 March before going on tour across southern Scotland.

Charlie Poulsen is known for his ambitious landscape projects such as the 2005 ‘Point of Resolution’ on the Southern Upland Way above Innerleithen in The Scottish Borders - but here at Gracefield you'll find the scale a little smaller - but just as surprising and insightful.
The Gracefield grounds have been planted with a living sculpture 'Host', which has inspired a link with The Wordsworth Trust on 13 April. As a fresh interpretation of a lovely but hackneyed poem, it made me smile. Come and have a look.

In Gallery 2 you'll find Charlie’s striking monochrome drawings. They're not drawing for sculpture but a separate though connected activity. His current abstract drawings have been inspired by the structure of hedges, trees and ploughed fields in winter.

The latest series of Charlie’s sculptures all use part of a tree as a starting point. Combining the materials of wood and lead takes the object away from the familiar. In Charlie’s words; “I am aiming at a point where the response to seeing the piece is not tree but something other - a suggestion of a machine perhaps."

The exhibition, supported by dgArts, runs until 14 May and is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm. On Wednesday 13 April Charlie will give an illustrated talk about his work as part of a day long series of activities entitled Homage to Wordsworth, also includes free poetry events run by The Wordsworth Trust – see www.dgarts.co.uk or www.dumgal.gov.uk/gracefield for full details. This is a free event but booking is essential – telephone 01387 262084.

Rab Wilson and John Burns reading at Gracefield Arts Centre this Wednesday

We're looking forward to 7.30pm Wednesday night (that's the 2nd) when Rab Wilson and John Burns will read from their new collections from glorious Roncadora Press. John Burns will introduce 'Open Sky', richly illustrated by Roncadora, and Rab Wilson, Dumfries & Galloway's Burns Writing Fellow, will read from 'Ye're there Horace! Horace's first buik o satires owerset and adaptit into Scots'.

Gracefield Arts Centre Gallery 2 is hosting an exhibition of Roncadora's new work until 12 March. Hugh Bryden, artist, poet and publisher, has created an extraordinarily various range of work for his publications since the imprint began in 2005. Roncadora Press pamphlets have swept away the Callum Macdonald Memorial Awards and were shortlisted in the even more prestigious Michael Marks Award.

The Cafe makes a great place for a reading and a glass of wine, and these poets will take you all the way from blackly humorous satire through aching beauty via the meaning of humanity... Free, as well. Hope to see you there!