Join Scottish poets David Kinloch and Colin Herd, reading from their latest books and talking about what queer poetics means to them today.

Please join host Iain Morrison for an evening with Scottish poets David Kinloch and Colin Herd, and hear them read from their latest books and talk about what queer poetics means to them today in Scotland.

David Kinloch was one of the first in the UK to write about the Aids Crisis and is co-founder the Edwin Morgan Award and Trust, both created in the honour of one of Scotland's most influential and innovative Scottish gay poets. Kinloch's first collection Paris-Forfar (Polygon), contains 'Fifth Quarter', a tribute to filmmaker and activist Derek Jarman who died of Aids, and his poem 'Warmer Bruder', named after a slang expression used for homosexuals in the Nazi Concentrations Camps. Many of these poems can now be found in Kinloch's fifth Carcanet collection, Greengown: New and Selected Poems, which also includes poems dedicated to and even featuring Edwin Morgan.

Influenced by the American movements The New York School and Language Poetry, Colin Herd has been writing and performing poetry in the poetry scenes of Glasgow and Edinburgh for many years. He was included in Penguin's 100 Queer Poems anthology, Pilot Press's Modern Queer Poets Vol. 1 and edited The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection for Speculative Books. He has also acted as a mentor for Queer Words Project Scotland and HIV Scotland. A firm embracer of the kitsch and the every day surface pleasures of life, Herd playfully explores queer art and desire, pop and consumer culture in books like Click and Collect (Boiler House Press) and You Name It (Dostoyevsky Wannabe). He now has a new book Aquafaba (Spite Press) in which topics including dating apps and the gym feature.

Iain Morrison is a poet, performer, and cultural programmer based in Edinburgh. His first collection I’m a Pretty Circler was shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Prize. In 2024 he was a guest at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he presented the most recent iteration of Subject Index, a durational performance reading of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems that he has been sharing for over ten years. Other performance work includes a night of drag queen poetry at the Scottish Poetry Library and, with Leiza McLeod, a sung stage show of women’s writing from the Beat Generation. His work has appeared in anthologies such as Makar/Unmakar: Twelve Contemporary Poets in Scotland and group publications such as not just A NY QUINCUNX, alongside Colin Herd, Jane Goldman, Nicky Melville and Maria Sledmere. His extended essay on the poetry of Callie Gardner was published in the Scottish Literary Review’s recentQueer Form special issue. In 2026 he curated Fruitmarket’s the poem that could not wait, a poem sculpture exhibition of work by CAConrad and Anna Mendelssohn. Iain studied music at the University of Cambridge. His practice moves between artforms, often ending up in a gallery.

The evening is raising money for the Terrance Higgins Trust in Glasgow.

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