Thursday 1st October

Lindsey Shields Waters / Nuala Watt / Stewart Sanderson / Gerry Mangan

Please join us for the Glasgow book launch of Knottis by Lindsey Shields Waters, published by Blue Diode.

Lindsey Shields Waters reflects on connections – on love and its memory, humanity and nature, the past and the present – in a sparkling debut collection of poems fluently written in both English and Older Scots. Subtle, complex and rigorously affecting, these poems recreate language for our darkest and lightest hours. She was born on the Isle of Cumbrae and lives in Glasgow with her family. She has
studied and worked in Glasgow, Bavaria, Washington DC and Leiden and was a Clydebuilt 10 poet mentee in 2016/17 (mentor: Gerry Loose). Her poems have been published in various poetry magazines and anthologies. Knottis is her first full collection.

“So, this is what it sounds like to make poetry anew and tune into the prehistoric force of language at the same time. With astonishing vividness, the ‘volatile blend’ of poetry that surges through this collection stuns with living minutiae (an unwatered oxalis, pancaikes) as much as surprises with the elemental: ‘it’s a synge fra abufe’. Knottis is a pressing reminder that ‘all livin' language is sacred’ and that all language is living, just waiting on a poet like Lindsey Shields Waters.” — Colin Herd

Nuala Watt is a disability activist and Quaker. She has taught English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her poems have appeared on BBC Radio and in magazines including Bad Lilies, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Wordgathering. She views poetry as a form of activism and a method of thinking. Her first full collection, The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish, was published by Blue Diode Press in 2024.

Stewart Sanderson is a poet from Glasgow, who has published and performed widely in the UK and internationally. He is the author of the pamphlets Fios (2015) and An Offering (2018), as well as the book-length collections The Sleep Road (2021) and Weathershaker (2025) – all published by Tapsalteerie Press. Three times shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, his work has also been recognised by accolades including an Eric Gregory Award and Robert Louis Stevenson and Jessie
Kesson Fellowships.

Gerald Mangan is a Scottish poet, journalist, playwright and illustrator, born in Glasgow in 1951. His collections include Waiting for the Storm (Bloodaxe), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and his stage plays include Crying Wolf (Communicado Theatre). He is a former writer-in-residence at Dundee College of Art and at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh, where he also worked as an actor, designer and musician. He recently returned to live in Scotland after many years in Paris, where he reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement and other journals, contributed political cartoons to Le Monde, and served as a cultural correspondent for the French Service of Radio Canada.