Our round-the-world poetry tour begins with readings from Alycia Pirmohamed. One of the finest poets at work in these islands, Pirmohamed’s first full collection, Another Way to Split Water, was published by Birlinn in September and has already received many garlands, including the Edwin Morgan Prize. The poet’s preoccupations with points of division – of the human from the natural, the self from the home, whether that be Edmonton or Edinburgh – find lush expression in Pirmohamed’s work, and it is a true pleasure to welcome one of the country’s finest nature poets to open the festival.

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of Another Way to Split Water, the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind. She is co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge.