Indie Poetry Night: Julie Laing, Vicki Husband & Eloise Birtwhistle

We are very excited to get to start 2026 with an evening focusing on poetry which interrogates subject matters like ecology, health politics and social justice through a deeply inventive lens!

We will celebrate the recent publications of Glasgoscopy by Vicki Husband, the edge of rhizome by Julie Laing and Splenectomy by Eloise Birtwhistle.

All three publications are brought to us by independent Scottish poetry presses!

In Glasgoscopy a community health professional takes the pulse of North West Glasgow, observes connections and disconnections between city and citizen, examines how language, physical and social environments affect health. Vicki Husband has created a series of microstories, which are a fictionalised collage of her experience and her lyrical reflections on over twenty-five years of being a brief guest in so many lives.

the edge of rhizome is a pamphlet of visual poetry. The winner of the 2023 William Bonar Pamphlet Prize, the book is inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus and responds to ecological concerns and phenomena using the rhizome as a metaphor.

Eloise Birtwhistle’s debut pamphlet Splenectomy puts the body and its histories under a scrutinizing lens in a study of our physical and mental agency. This extended poem weaves ancient with modern; clinical with natural; human with non-human; deep sea with air. Using wonder, precision, and a distinct intimacy, Splenectomy renders blood and bile anew.

Speaker bios:

Vicki Husband’s first poetry collection This Far Back Everything Shimmers was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of the Year award 2016. Vicki’s poems have been widely published, broadcast on radio and read at international literary festivals and local libraries. Vicki has collaborated on translations with poets from Pakistan and Ukraine, and exhibited in visual-poetry exhibitions. Meanwhile Vicki has worked as an Occupational Therapist in the NHS for over twenty-five years, the majority in community rehabilitation, her latest book ‘Glasgoscopy' draws on this experience.

Julie Laing is a writer and artist from Glasgow. Her debut pamphlet, the edge of rhizome, was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2025 and her first collection is forthcoming in 2026 with Art Riot Press. Julie won the 2023 William Bonar Poetry Prize, the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2022 and her poem, livestream, hope street, was selected as one of Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems 2022. Other work has been published in New Writing Scotland, Gutter magazine and elsewhere. She was mentored through the St Mungo Mirrorball’s Clydebuilt 13 verse apprenticeship scheme and co-hosts off-page visual poetry programme with CD Boyland and Leo Plumb.

Eloise Birtwhistle's poetry has been published in journals including Gutter, SPAM Zine and New Writing Scotland and she has been a guest editor for Wet Grain. She won a 2023 New Writers Award and was a Finalist of the Mslexia and Poetry Book Society Women's Poetry Prize. A previous recipient of a St Mungo's Mirrorball Clydebuilt Apprenticeship, she now co-ordinates the Clydebuilt scheme. Her debut pamphlet Splenectomy was published in 2025 with Stewed Rhubarb Press.