February Recap

The shortest month seemed to go on forever. I know I wasn’t the only one to find February a slog if all the ‘thank fuck it’s March’ posts across social media are anything to go by. Despite its seemingly interminable duration it was a month filled with good, solid work and the culmination of an important project for me.

My time was again mainly occupied in the visiting of, writing about and generally obsessing over brutalist architecture. These misunderstood, ‘ugly’ relics of an abandoned future have become an unlikely muse for my writing as I move towards the culmination of my Creative Scotland funded project. By its completion I will have 60+ poems about these buildings and their civic histories, amongst them some of my best work to date.

I also found time to do some teaching, delivering two guest lectures at the University of the West of Scotland’s Advanced Songwriting and Performance course. I really enjoyed introducing the next generation of talented musicians to a bunch of weird theatre techniques and making them sit through the entirety of Future Islands live on Letterman as an example of Stanislavski (it made sense in my head).

But the main event of the month was undoubtedly the showcase performance for the brilliant Creative Recovery participants at the Beacon Book Festival. I’ve been working with the group for the last three months, creating new work and exploring the edges of poetic form. Our showcase at the book festival was a chance to share that work with a live audience. Despite the nerves, everyone rose to the occasion and held the audience rapt with their personal pieces exploring addiction, recovery and overcoming adversity to find your voice. One of those special afternoons were you see people fill up with confidence in realtime and prove to themselves that they deserve to take up space as much as the next person.

A wee note about these creative engagement projects though: I often feel like there’s a focus (understandably) on legacy - what happens to the participants once the project is finished. And it’s important to have transitions, other opportunities and maybe even a physical legacy of the work moving forward. But so often the facilitators themselves are absent from that equation.

There’s a sense of guilt but also abandonment at the end of a project when you have become emotionally invested. You’ve connected with participants, shared stories, learned about each other’s life - there are bonds of friendship there that transcend the teacher/student relationship from which they originated. But when a project reaches its culmination and the contract has expired so too does the basis of those relationships. As a socially engaged artist I always find the toughest part of the project isn’t the creation of the work or instilling participants with confidence - it’s saying goodbye and moving on to the next thing once it’s all over.

Where can you find me in March?

6th March

I’ll be hosting the next edition of Speakeasy Stirling with a brilliant line-up including Scott Agnew, Amy Matthews, Aurora Engine and Ash Dickinson.

22nd March

I’ll be performing as part of Commissioned at Glasgow Comedy Festival. One of my favourite gigs of the year, an unhinged cavalcade of specially curated material.

Commissioned - Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Cult comedy festival hit Commissioned returns for its 13th year. A night of new comedy on a subject commissioned by YOU! Yes, you can commission the

Work in Progress

Every month I aim to share a bit of work in progress. This could be a poem, a section of a play or just a snippet of writing I find interesting. This month is another poem from my new brutalist collection. This piece is about Elmbank Gardens and more specifically about the migrant communities housed in the hotel there and the masses of bikes sitting outside waiting for another shift of takeaway deliveries.

From the Archive

This Voice, live at Marginalia @ The Stand, April 2025

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter, please feel free to let me know if you enjoyed it and would like to see more/less of anything in particular. I’ll be back with another update next month but in the meantime you can follow me on social media @kevinpgilday - with instagram being where I’m most active nowadays.

Pisces season is upon us, be appropriately sensitive.

Cheers,
Kev x