lower case is the space for sharing events and occurrences from indy and micro press, radical publishers, fanzines, etc. We welcome suggestions.
One of the first updates they give their treasured readers is: “For Wednesday February 19 you can opt for attending the Glasgow Launch of the latest Gutter issue at the Alchemy Experiment on Byres Road or go to Sweeney’s on the Park in the southside for the Time for One Poem open mic.” Celebrations for Gutter will be led by Sean Wai Keung and Cal Bannerman, with readings from Kate Wallace Fry, Rachelle Atalla, Gabriel Levine Brislin, and Niamh Gordon.
If you couldn’t make it to the Glasgow launch or just want more of Gutter, fear not. A second event will be held at Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh on Thursday, February 20. As with the other event, this will be happening with online streaming. Join us for readings by Mattea Gernentz, Harry Josephine Giles, Ioannis Kalkounos, and Rebecca Smith.
Monday, February 24, and the Big Red Cat zine arrives with their first event of the year. They promise an open showcase loosely Valentine’s-themed, open mic slots, and an amusing session of poem speed dating. Keep on top of their Instagram for ticket bookings (£5).
Speaking of which, the mighty GUTTER, their latest and most impressive yet, is available on newsstands now (31). With only two issues a year, every February and August, they keep us waiting with good reason. The new issue contains essays, poetry, interviews, fiction, and a collaboration of works from the Alasdair Gray Archive Commissions including a fantastic essay by Joey Simmons. It has been said by the editors that this variegated collection is held together with ‘an undercurrent of change’ and ‘a glistening thread of transfiguration.
In Ioannis Kalkounos’ poem, “The Taxi Driver’s Testimony,” a man in the back seat of a car becomes a seal. Similarly, Charis de Kock’s evocative short story introduces an unnamed female character who is transformed into a gorse bush. It started with her mouth, first her tongue, then her teeth, and finally to be seen outside and turning into golden yellow flowers with thorns. The whole idea involves transformation, the transformation of things and a transformation that an individual may undergo. Unlike Kafka’s Gregory Samsa, the dejection from the metamorphosis is felt by the main character in de Kock’s tale. She has “escaped an unforgiving city” and found “a new connection.” Thus, metamorphosis can sometimes feel like going home.
Something pretty close to what Hera Lindsay Bird pens in ‘Sometimes I Get So Fucking Tired Of It All’ In those singular, exuberant tones of hers, Bird pictures cutting free of regular life, borne on some huge maybe magic goose over Russia’s forests and post-Bolshevik deserted gymnasiums.
With Cailean Gallagher at the expert helm of the Scottish Left Review, the magazine has thrived. This issue was vol. 144, February/March 2025, its pages given over to ‘New Coalitions of Service and Care’, with articles from April O’Neill, who writes ‘We Feel Discarded’: The Silver Lining to the National Care Service’; Jen Bell – ‘Solving Poverty: Launching a Radical Scottish Minimum Income Guarantee’; Arianna Introna – ‘Imagining Alternative Futures: Towards an Independent Scotland with Less Reliance on Ableism and Austerity’; Luke Beesley – Elite Escalation as Class War: The National Care Service as Hostage; and numerous others.
“Care” is an issue of considerable neglect within our society, and it has become a chaotic one under the management of the Scottish Government.
Subscription details can be found HERE. The available options are as follows: a six-issue print subscription for £12, digital subscription for £10, Solidarity Subscription for £50 in support of artists and writers.
Polaris
Janette Ayachi is the editor of Polaris and the zine can be found online HERE. It’s been more than two years since any of us had a chance to see, or work with, new poems by Kevin Williamson… welcome back! … which will be launched from this more than worthy enterprise, dedicated to ‘a celebration of poetry, art and nature’…
Kevin says, “Everybody’s invited to the book launch of my new collection of poems on March 8. It’s been two and a half years since my last poetry reading (the final Neu! Reekie!) and the last time I put any new work out was more kind of just doing an actual poetic work. Most of what I’ve been doing lately is an exploration of lyrical content rather than performance. The piece I will share is ‘Walking Through Carrifran With Sascha’ from the new issue of the great Polaris zine.
Product
Product Magazine is currently looking for writers to write a story, fiction or non-fiction, and place it within a publication.New writers especially are encouraged to test out their writing skills. All are welcome to participate. Details can be found at HERE.
Last year, Product launched FIRST LOVE, a ‘lo-fi collection filled with imaginative, playful, and grand writing from Scotland and beyond’, with my personal favourite of the bunch being the story of floating art student, Fran, in Euan Currie’s ‘That Famous Photograph’. Purchase it HERE.
