July 2026 Open Mic

HighlandLIT open mic report for 9/07/2026

by Margaret Chrystall

with photos by Marion Timperley

There was a good mix of old and new faces at HighlandLIT’s July open mic night on Thursday. And due to illness, there was an unscheduled but welcome return of former chairman and open mic host - Paul Shanks - who also shared an in-progress short story of his own to invite comments from the audience.

The event included stories, poetry, an extract from a memoir and had writers sharing their work for the first time with HighlandLIT’s open mic crowd.

Paul opened the night on a topical note: “If you’re bored with sport on TV, fed up with football, disgruntled by Scotland and horrified by current affairs, then this is the place to be, isn’t it, with the proviso that it’s perfectly legitimate that someone may read a piece tonight which is about sport or current affairs!”

First up was David Goldie with two poems. He revealed that the first, The Debateable Lands, was one of three that he had submitted to Poetry Scotland and it had featured in the magazine’s spring edition.

“I can’t really judge my own poetry,” he confessed before reading the poem in sonnet format. “But I sent three poems and this was the one I thought was the least likely to be published!”

It began: “Gravity drives the vast system of watersheds through hanging valleys, draped glen and peats… Teeming rain and wind are the principal elements in a constant argument between the seasons.”

David said his second poem “got me wondering” about the Medieval guilds of London, of butchers and bakers and other trades, and what The Worshipful Company Of Poets – the title of his poem – might be like. He said the poem also referenced some of the poets he has liked over the years:

“The poets are at the city gates armed only with rhetorical devices … some veterans of the siege of metaphor bend the castle walls with odes … stars like bright eyes searching the dim vale for any sign of life. An archipelago of poets watch … sing softly to doomed sailors … salvaging the songs that are lost at sea … Tuning into your wavelengths, station to station, drivers and conductors of the soul train, the drum n bass, brass, vocals, lead guitar, playing beats and breaks of gospel, roots, folk music, jazz, rolling it to you in sense, sound and syntax. Seers, they are still watching … gleaners of lost words with hidden meanings … Sometimes they have left before dawn to watch your dreams from a distance. But they will speak to you soon …” 

Not for the first time over the course of the readings, it occurred to you that it would be good to get a chance to read some of the pieces again to catch any words you might have missed or just wanted to enjoy again!

Host Paul commented that David had read two great poems, the first trying to write the landscape and personalise it. And he said he had heard a speaker at a conference describe poetry itself is a kind of mapping. He likened the second poem and its idea that poetry is a guild, is heroic, with its drawing back to the roots of poetry which are descriptions of warfare, martial imagery and myth if you go back to the Iliad.

Paul then read his own story The Way Back – “make of it what you will”. It described a train journey where “a massive red moon was partially obscured by orange-flecked clouds” as the narrator travels overnight to an acting audition in London before the return trip to Scotland.

Regular reader Tim Williams remarked he’d been described as “thundering” in last month’s event report/review and vowed “I’m going to thunder again!”.

Plans to share a poem he was reworking for a slam poetry session coming up at Belladrum, changed – as it wasn’t ready. Instead he read poem The Doors Of Imperception, describing a disappearing landscape: “Titania and Oberon and Puck are long gone… beneath the hum-buzzing pylons… The Magic Forest has been clear-felled.”

Paul commented he himself has been alarmed by deforestation in the area and a pond he knew with dragonflies has had a massive tractor put through it … “it’s just a bloody mess now. You can’t ever be untouched by that…”

Next,  Catherine McAleese explained: “I’m trying to write a memoir … and describe what life was like in my family. For a bit of context, my dad was in the military in the UK … and in Rhodesia.”

She continued that the family moved back to the UK when she was small, her dad with a woman called Lizzie. Catherine took us back to a time when she was eight, having a conversation with Lizzie about a photograph in her dad’s house, with a sense of all the people she didn’t know, “emerging like mushrooms from the dark soil of my parents’ lives”.

“I try to look into Lizzie’s face, through the glasses, the make-up, the blinking, there is a slippery sheen like there is a face behind her face. It is a type of mystery …”

Paul said he had liked the way Catherine used the photos as a device. “Brilliant stuff and really good writing, we want to hear more!”

Beth Jordan read from Touched By Silence, a story she had finished the previous Sunday at 5.25am, she told us, the story beginning with her mother’s reaction to familiar fruit: “A large, freshly-peeled and sliced mango … She reached out and picked up a tiny piece of the golden flesh and let it settle on her tongue…”

Paul praised Beth afterwards: “That was wonderful, a well-structured story and I loved the descriptions – ‘sticky fingers seeming to blush with warmth’ – and it was making me feel hungry!“

Malcolm Timperley shared a work-in-progress where the audience’s comments would be welcome afterwards. He said edited versions of two of his stories had ended up in anthologies.

Then he shared Human Remains.

“The first version had big enough holes in it to deliver a fridge through!” he laughed.

A futuristic horror story, it unfolded at a wedding from the moment one man couldn’t hold his peace and stood up to declare of the couple – “They can’t marry – it’s not allowed!”

Later, Paul said the story was “strange – and alarming” and praised its great plot.

Usually a member of the audience at the open mic night, Derek Young stood up and read a story, then a poem defining the importance of friendship in Friendship’s Priceless Treasure.

Based on a true adventure in the hills, the story entitled Whiteout described the surprising effects of a turn in the weather. HighlandLIT listeners had the chance to join Derek and his friend, fellow writer Scott Fraser, on a walk to Ballater, when they had encountered dangerous conditions out of the blue - “sometimes the snow was up to our waists”, and seeing “snow and mist together, I’d never seen that before”.

The story unfolded with the two lost for a time, benighted before finding the path again and realising they had been “… a few steps between blizzard and heaven… like two different worlds within a few feet of each other”.

Derek captured another moment most of us will never experience: “Another surprise - we came across an amazing scene – deer, hundreds of them, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing so many in one place… not one herd, but four or five distinct groups. We carried on down the path through the deer who were aware of our presence and moved away slowly. We were certainly aware of them, the smell of so many deer together was honking … they started to scurry out of our path. Maybe we didn’t smell too good either!”

Then Derek shared a poem: “Good friendships are a priceless treasure to be nurtured and cherished above gold, diamonds or blockchain bitcoin…”

The poem saw a thoughtful examination of what powers friendship. And it ended with one definition: “An energetic, never-ending filament of light, a cycle of eternal manifestation of life being light.”

“That was some experience!” Paul revealed of Whiteout. “And I enjoyed the images in your poem too.”

Scott Fraser revealed the surprise of hearing Derek read Whiteout. “I was the other half of that story! I didn’t know he was going to read that tonight!”

For his own piece, Scott returned to his story of life in a future Scotland – he had shared an earlier part at a previous meeting.

Here, his hero Finn is invited to leave Scotland for a five-year journey into space. But it leaves him with dilemmas, as he considers what an upcoming meeting might offer and what he has to lose.

“He loved this country and the thought of leaving it for five years seemed preposterous. But there was a hook in his lip … that he could not shake off. A month away had been bad enough … The trajectory took them towards Caithness Base 4 … the vast structures stood like megalithic standing stones across the water… He was looking forward to getting his feet back on solid ground.”

Paul said “Very interesting, a little worldbuilding there and a crossroads for the main protagonist. And I like the juxtaposition of a rural Scotland and the sci fi. It would be good to hear more of that.

“We’ve had a nice variety of voices and styles and genres tonight,” Paul finished, thanking all the readers.

There was also a reminder that a HighlandLIT special event coming up on Thursday, September 10 would see the writer Cal Flyn coming to talk.

The next HighlandLIT Open Mic will be held on Thursday, August 13 at 7pm at the Roots Café at the top of Stephen’s Brae (where  Crown Avenue meets Stephen’s Street). For more information on the group, becoming a member or more about the Cal Flyn event, go to www.highlandlit.com 

If you would like to request a reading slot at the next open mic, email: highlandlit.com@gmail.com