About this Event
Please note: this event will be held in person at Glasgow Zine Library.
Parents, babies and everyone else - you're invited to the double launch of Annie Muir's Middle Child and Saskia McCracken's Let Me Carry That For You - both poetry collections shaped by parenthood.Let Me Carry That For You by Saskia McCracken is a collection of poems that meditate on the complex relationship between maternity and family history. Both poignant and refreshing, McCracken’s verses swing from the darkness of generational guilt to the intoxicating joy of new life, from ecological mourning to the strange weight of unsolicited remarks from strangers. It is a thoroughly original and moving account of pregnancy, intergenerational memory and what it means to carry.
‘A fascinating consideration of how the family tree might reach its branches right into the womb… these are poems that investigate while they love, and love while they generously invite us to learn.’ – JL Williams
Middle Child by Annie Muir is a book of sharp, funny, quietly brutal recognitions, where the everyday turns uncanny and the self keeps slipping between roles, versions, and borrowed scripts. Through poems that riff on Frankenstein, pop culture, pub lore, found images and borrowed forms, Muir writes the middle child’s sensibility as a kind of heightened surveillance, noticing how bodies are appraised, threatened, desired, marketed, and made to perform. Across the book, domestic objects become portals, photographs become moral tests, and memory behaves like a myth being revised in real time.
'Here is a voice that shifts and slips from self to ‘other’ to elsewhere, and then back again. The reader is both held and destabilized within a lyric that nips at the folds of time and place to reveal not only the delicate layers of a single heartfelt moment, but also what preceded it and what might happen next. From encounters over a jukebox, to an unsettling gift of a doll, Middle Child believes in seeing, and is full of startling insights into all the contradictions and paradoxes of a life, that ultimately give it meaning.' — Tessa Berring
CW: Nazism, birth trauma
About the authors:
Annie Muir is a poet and workshop facilitator based in Glasgow. She has a podcast, Time for One Poem, aimed at complete beginners to poetry. Follow Annie here.
Saskia is a poet and author bsaed in Glasgow. She teaches Life Writing at the University of Glasgow. Follow Saskia here.
Ticket information for this event:
There will be 12 attendees maximum, and the event will feature comfort breaks. During this event, participants will be involved in: Listening to readings
This event will take place at the GZL space on Albert Road in Govanhill.
You may be asked to wear a mask at this event.
If you have any questions or access requirements, please get in touch with us via [email protected]
All events will adhere to our safer spaces policy, which you can learn about here.
GZL pledges to support The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. As part of this pledge we may participate in strikes called in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. If this event falls on a strike day and is cancelled, we will work with event leaders to reschedule the event asap. Participants will also have the option of receiving an immediate refund for any ticket purchases and travel booked to attend.
How to access the event:
After booking a ticket, you will be sent several reminder emails from Eventbrite leading up to the event. We will also send emails that share any resources that attendees will need access to, including any required materials.
Please email [email protected] for any queries or issues.
Support GZL:
Join the GZL Patreon and support the library on a monthly basis.
Event venue & nearby stays
Glasgow Zine Library, 32-34 Albert Road, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.