big words

hi

small words

languishing, cute | Tapsalteerie, April 2025 [with Maria Sledmere]

languishing, cute presents a collection of jittery missives that propels the speculative Scottish canon of Morgan, Gray and Mitchison into a maximalist ‘high femme goth surrealism’ via hyperpop, Celtic futurism and digital culture. Here the poets tend towards e-pistolary contemplations of retro-adolescence, fizzy ecology and mercurial slippy gurlhood to complicate notions of Scottish identity, nationhood, ecology, nostalgia and more.

languishing, cute is the opposite of a flyting — that traditional bare-knuckles fight between two poets. Rather, the two poets here offer their worlds to each other in the gift of friendship and they listen back: it’s not a duel, it’s a jewel.
— Richard Price

[…] Messy as a teenage tumblr, flashy as a strobe light, this is two exceptionally generous poets bouncing off the walls of the backrooms with the energy of a thousand monster energies… here ~The Glitch~ is not a glitch but a stitch between windows, the glue between a b2b set, the rhythmic green hills of algorithmic infinity… and yet these re-mixes and e-mails traverse an internet of metal and cable, the business of poetry is conducted by staples through sheets of reconstituted tree::: there’s something old-school, decidedly analogue about all this. It feels like you could feel it. It feels like the push of a button, the caress of a bright cool screen. Actually no it feels warm and coarse, a cosy transmission rumbling, re-tuning itself like you’re flicking from station to radio station, flickering between noise & dialectical noise, patterns emerging in the static as the ether unknots itself, and the stuff of life comes spilling out […]
— Dan Power

Endless aureate refreshment from Maria Sledmere and Ian Macartney, languishing, cute is a collection with all its push notifications turned on that still finds headspace to pay attention on the DL to form and poetic inheritance.
— Iain Morrison

The companion pamphlet languishing, cute: GATE was released alongside the book, featuring remixes, B-sides and “simultaneous poems” (i.e. poems Maria and I wrote together in the same space; primarily a Coffee Angel branch near the Edinburgh Botanics) from the original manuscript. It was published by Mermaid Motel and printed by Earthbound Press.

The Fox and the Hiker | fantasy audio magazine, December 2024

Accompanying zine for cassette. Set in a post-apocalyptic version of Beecraigs (the forest near Linlithgow, Scotland), The Fox and the Hiker is an audio-verse-drama – two monologues set to an electronic soundscape. There is the Hiker (the last human left, trying to climb to the top of a hill called Cockleroi; played by Chris Black) and there is the Fox (who wants to eat the Hiker's heart; played by me). During their parallel journeys are dreams within dreams, eco-mockery, asynchronicity, and the pulse of deep time, wherein both animals unite to become cosmic dust…

sun-drunk | Stewed Rhubarb, July 2024

sun-drunk is a pamphlet of poems that are meant to be read out loud, of summer jobs/kisses/wanders, for performance/protest, warm-hot-fruity-and/or-sultry. These are poems drunk not just on the sun, but on every emotion which whirs underneath its glow – even in the bright light of winter months. Some of these poems were commissioned for stage, some for screen(s), and others have never appeared before.

“This is gorgeous poetry. Not an adjective I would normally deploy in any critique. But there is nothing ‘normal’ about Macartney’s collection. It performs the remarkable feat of yoking an absolutely contemporary sensibility, encrusted by the jargon of internet and social media, to a kind of high and flighty rhetoric that gives some of these poems an ecstatic and exhilerating energy. There is also a plainer speech here and some very moving love poetry. In sun-drunk you will find a veritable orchestration of syntax, wise to its virtuoso techniques but unwilling to relinquish and often productive of genuine tenderness. A rare achievement.”
— David Kinloch

“Encompassing hedonism and a deep desire for connection, sun-drunk fizzes with a fierce creativity as well as a sense of humanity and physicality that envelops the reader in its passionate embrace.”
— Ricky Monahan Brown

“sun-drunk is poetry startling in its self-evidence, sun-kisses of sense data in amongst the terrors of the present tense, language-play shot in Sirkian technicolour, a transmission of transitions, an orange-blushed hymnal that ‘captures all the essences of light’, an eddying lightline budding teeming, pure fucking dance.”
— Charlie McIlwain

Batch A (Darksong, Secret Agent Orca 12, God?!) | Stereocat, May 2024
Three publications showcasing the full range of the pamphlet form.

Darksong A kind of spiritual ‘prequel’ to Ian Macartney’s poetry pamphlet sun-drunk, Darksong is for the lunar. Poems of the moon, circling round its glow – moon-ish feelings, too, just without that satellite. To be moon-eyed; to be in love, then not. To whirl in the orbit. Sometimes the poems are funny (often they are not). The oldest is from 2014, but one appeared a decade later.

Secret Agent Orca Twelve “Oh no! Secret Agent Orca 12 has gone rogue and there’s no one left to save the world. Now it’s up to a grieving mother and the Defense Secretary to track him down, and maybe receive some answers along the way – but remember, in the world of poetry and espionage, nothing is as it seems…”

God?! A scrappy zine about dogs.

Shale Bings | Broken Sleep Books, February 2024
Written over a period of eight years, the poems in Shale Bings amble across adolescent landscapes, hazy spectres of West Lothian and the (queer) loves within, playful in their encounters with creatures and flora otherwise disregarded. Through these poems Ian Macartney attempts desire paths towards ‘posthuman joy’ — poems that ask to come play in the soil, to jump in the canal, to pretend to be a lovely dog, then follow through on what such shared futures might look/smell/taste/sound/vibe like.

The Infinite Fury and other stories | Strange Region, August 2023
Two husbands talk at the end of everything. A train, full of flowers, is derailed by love. Edinburgh is enslaved by city-sized alien bodies. Something close to hell inhabits the basement of a bakery and ghosts explore the energy-root of the multiverse.

Written as prose, speech, thought and game, this collection is a catalogue of post-internet mythmaking, a discourse in Celtic surrealism, gay techno-hauntings, acid-mannerism, and sprawling, spitting hyper-fiction.

“This is such a wildly imaginative book. The Infinite Fury is a collection that charges past the thresholds of love, sex and death with an inspired playfulness. Macartney’s visions of a sharply askance Scotland are rendered in rich snapshots, speculative stories that are digital, satirical, erotic, haunted, tender and irresistibly queer.”
— Jay Gao

“The Infinite Fury by Ian Macartney is both a physically beautiful book and a consistently well-sustained adventure in language and form. The elliptical writing could as easily be classified as poetry as prose. Ultimately, it defied any classifcation.”
— Declan O’Driscoll (Republic of Consciousness Prize 2024 Commendation)

Notes Towards No Subject | Fathomsun Press, June 2023
“Notes Towards No Subject is a good synopsis as a title. There is no subject (cf. ‘maybe haha’ ‘Thanks Luce irirgary xoxoxoxox’). No need. The thing is alive, many-tentacled, distracting, self-distracting, ‘yassified’, unrelenting, clear and luminous. Ian is fundamentally interested in goodness. He has written a good book.”
— Shaw Worth

“In these varied poems, Ian Macartney convinces us that the best way to confront the ‘staggeringly real’ world – and the claims that it keeps making on our desires – is to embrace its mediation all the way down. And so the ‘I’ lets itself become a monster, the self’s expression anticipates the new language it will get burned into, and ideas are left running in deer-ish things: all in the name of a joy that we can still believe lies open.”
— Jack Belloli

Turtleshell | Saló Press, January 2023
Zayd is on a late-night odyssey through the clubs, attic raves and deserted streets of the near-future Scottish city 'Glassflow', all while his mind splits under the influence of something called izum. As the night contorts into queer desire, warped spirituality, fatigue and reality-bending delirium, Zayd begins to wonder if his friend, Jean, can really be trusted… this is James Kelman in drag, Woolf on MDMA, and William Gibson, Irenosen Okojie, and Helen McClory in a neon mosh pit.

“‘NO ONE GOES TO INFINITY’ but it might be the best club in the world. Locked into the endless spiritual geometry of the nightclub, Turtleshell is ambitious sonic fiction for ambivalent Scottish futures. In this realm of ‘government-sanctioned’ weather, where chips and cheese are a quantum phenomenon, and queer bodies pulse ecstatically in ‘colourful multitudes’, our narrator is a shimmer quest of ‘arrhythmic’ identities, desires and ‘loosening totalities’. There’s plenty of failure, precarity, confusion and carnal caesura along the way. Macartney took a rave pill, fell through the smirking anthropocene and found the parallel mythoverse somewhere between Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar and Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, throbbing with ‘Laser Dolphin ghosts’, nocturnal clamours, salty treasures and elliptical longing.”
— Maria Sledmere

“ Psychedelic, speculative, ultramodern, Turtleshell is the kind of tale that will soak into your bones. Rich with jouissant horror/wonder (wonder-horror), it is yet another sterling work from a rising star.
— Tom Byam Shaw

! / Object | SPAM Press, May 2022
“Ian Macartney has mashed together a vibrant portrait of the way we live now, a living mausoleum disguised in a forest of words. His borrowed jagged language is restless, stuffed with images of whip-cracking wit, with one eye on the absurd ridiculousness we find ourselves living in, the other on our need to connect to the solid, the real, the natural, however contrived that might be. Did I say ! / Object was a hoot too? It’s that, and so much more.”
— Rishi Dastidar

“Dripping in frantic lexical lushness, occult robotic desiredome, and dutifully desperate hotness... as rousing, raunchy and roistering as any word circus right(eous)ly should be.”
— Michael Pedersen

In February 2024, ! / Object + was released: the original pamphlet with an expansion pack, plus the ‘post-post-internet’ pamphlet system preference.

with IIAA

Two Angels | December 2024
A3 gold-ink riso-print poster of Ian Macartney’s Christmas/Epiphany (Jan 6th) short story “Two Angels”, with illustrations by Alexander MacPhail. Printed at Good Press’ Sunday Print Service, Glasgow.

spontaneous pamphlet | September 2023
On September 15th 2023, Ian Macartney was bored in the office. This is the result.

with sincere corkscrew (Phase 1)

Dancing About Architecture: Outwith Edition | March 2023 [editor]
First part of a music dual-magazine which takes its name from the Martin Mull quote "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". Featuring interviews with musicians 'outwith' Scotland, discussing creative process, spirituality, digital technology and more. Featuring Patricia Taxxon, Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Ian Crause (Disco Inferno), Jet Jonesz, fire-toolz, Anthonie Tonnon and Max Blansjaar.

CAPSULE XII | December 2022 [editor]

CAPSULE XII is NOT a magazine, NOR an anthology... it is a CAPSULE!!!!!!!!!!!! Featuring poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, song lyrics and more from members of the arts collective The Poet's Eye (Ian Macartney, Epikinetics, "Ian Macartney", AyeAye12, Allan Black, @palladium-smoothie, 3 10, adios nervosa, Orin Peridox, 184697549312, Owen Schyleur).

Shaw Worth/Ian Macartney: Selected Messages 2016-2022 | November 2022 [co-writer]
Edition of 2. Second volume of ten (and only one printed) of the Facebook Messenger exchanges between Shaw Worth and Ian Macartney (January 29th 2017 to July 15th 2018). Published in celebration of Shaw’s 21st birthday.

An EIBF Special | August 2022
A pamphlet printed for Edinburgh International Book Festival 2022, containing poems and two short stories. About literary celebrity, artistic success, etcetera.

Batch 0 (microAYE, cursed meals, #ScotlandDecides, A Room in London 2) | June 2022
Four riso-print pamphlets printed by Leith’s Out of the Blue Print.

microAYE The aye: six lines of twelve syllables with a ‘quantum jump’ in the middle line, expressed as ‘[…]’. This is the poetic form I invented in lockdown; I kept gravitating towards Union Canal, the site of my daily walk, March 2020 to September 2021. So this is a handful of ayes, wee Scottish affirmations, about a particular personal landscape – West Lothian, Linlithgow, the hometown. Except for the poems that are not – that’s a whole other novel.

cursed meals Here is the ennui of the third lockdown, a limbo: neither the unprecedented tingle of the first, nor the bleak despair of the second, but something more tedious. Capitalism as usual, but masked, and evidently unusual, as usual. The exit rumoured, vaccine a glint in the needle’s eye, but hey, the sun’s shining, the park open to encounters, and the pubs are fully prebooked. You have not moved to London, yet. Also, your family is renovating the house. Pandemic Summer, baby!

#ScotlandDecides As the 2021 Election results limped in through a pandemic’d Scotland, I broadcast the REAL results on Twitter. Such electoral data is now here. But – and can this be believed? - there have been recounts; there have been edits. The answers, fleshed out for clarity. What a time to be alive.

A Room in London 2 A4. Poems from the heartbroken no-popstar adios nervosa; a print sequel to his 2021 EP A Room in London.

World-dreem: an anthology of new(er) writing | May 2021 [co-editor]
A man is plagued by visions of the hollow earth. Onions sprout from a dreamer’s legs. American ghost hunters search for murdered spirits, and you’re skiving Wednesday P.E. to smoke on a riverbank.

This collection brings together bold and esoteric visions from the cutting-edge of Scotland’s young literary scene, and beyond.

This is a transmission from the otherworld. Are you receiving?

Tom Byam Shaw, Rory Mullen, Miriam Schlüter, Ian Macartney, Ask Vestergaard, Mae Diansangu, Kieran Donnan, Seoras Eaglesham, Prema Arasu, Parawat Chang, Mag, Enxhi Mandija, Endija Lukstina, Arthur Allen, Fredrika Siden Cruz, Christopher Kestell, Jordan Stead, Blythe Stockdale, Shaw Worth, Savannah Brown, Murid L. Keshtmand and Orooj e-Zaffar.

before sincere corkscrew

Batch O | November 2020 and February 2021

Batch Orange: two stapled pamphlets, printed on orange card.

Drone Re-print of a poem originally published under the name AyeAye12 on DeviantArt in 2014. A traversal through the desert, wherein the blank page is the sand. Words crop up like cacti.

WISP "WIth Sincere sPectres": a mix between pamphlet, zine, newsletter, booklet and blog. Mailed to friends during lockdown. Contained life updates, visuals, media recommendations, an extract from "The Bakery, The Kiln", an "aye", and poem “The Cave Paintings".

Midsummer | July 2019
Stapled booklet of poems made for a Summer Solstice reading at Torphicen Preceptory, alongside Roseanne Watt and Kevin P. Gilday.

with Binbag Press

E-publisher of .PDFs. Parody of mid-2010s British poetry culture via Twitter, with mixed results. Ran by 3 10, a “sentient AI poet”. Besides versions of myself, “we” also published Rishi Dastidar, Rus Khmotoff, Tom Snarsky, Michael O’Brien and Phillip Yare.

Acceptance – 3 10 | 2019

Long poem made from rejection emails.
Earnest Remixes – 3 10 | 2019

“Remixes” of classical poems.
124 Questions – King Kion-Fuuz | 2019

Without answers.
3 10 Answers The TLS’ Twenty Questions – 3 10 | 2019

With questions.
“Two Newer Poems” and Other Twofold Poems – 3 10 | 2019

Four sets of two, with subsets and intersections too.
“Zenethia” and “gertrude, corndog mayor and friends” – @palladium-smoothie | 2019

First published in 2014 and 2015 on DeviantArt.
@thistweetright1 | 2019

Experiment with textual variation on Twitter.
httpswwwtheguardiancomukwales – 3 10 | 2018

Made out of one specific day’s Guardian articles on Wales.
Now That’s What I Call Poetry 666 – 6 2-9 | 2018

Emoji poems by 3 10’s younger sibling.
Two New Poems – 3 10 | 2018

Duo.
Scabs – 3 10 | 2018

In which 3 10 gets a body, and starts to feel bio-specific.
Superreferentiality! – 3 10 | 2018

Found poems, made through ~30 issues of PN Review.

not words

sounds

as Texture Texture

SURROUNDED BY ENGINEERS | October 2025
Debut single from the band, released on my 27th birthday. A skewering of Glasgow Southside hipsters, heterosexual film professionals and STEMheads; a lament for social/climate breakdown; a collage of Apple Notes set to anxious electroclash; a zap of indie disco for the 2020s’ midway slump. There’s also a monophonic synth freakout at the end.

as FORSYTH

Tones for Glasgow | September 2025
Live adaptation/expansion of Tones for Belfast, for the SPAM Press x sincere corkscrew AFK performance night, The Doublet, September 14th 2025. Sonics performed as Texture Texture; Charlie McIlwain read alongside (both extracts from Elegy [Model Interaction Trend] and outtakes from the original manuscript).

Tones for Belfast | May 2025
Drone piece made for Belfast launch of Charlie McIlwain’s pamphlet Elegy [Model Interaction Trend]. Augmented and added to by Charlie. Premiered at No Alibis Bookstore, May 29th 2025.

fog dissolves into rain | April 2025
Ambient track made for the Naviar Haiku Challenge, March 26th - April 2nd 2025.

The Fox and The Hiker | December 2024
Verse audio-drama with electronic soundscape, set in post-apcoalyptic Beecraigs (the forest by Linlithgow). Twin monologues from the Hiker (last human survivor) and the Fox (wants to eat his heart). Recorded at Spilt Milk Collective in Leith. Roland System 8, field recordings and production by myself; guitar by Alasdair Kelly. THE HIKER was voiced by Chris Black, but I voiced THE FOX. Released as cassette with accompanying zine in December 2024 by Kentucky-based label fantasy audio magazine.

as Airship Rising

infra-ness | 2025
Valentine’s Day release; song for Alexander MacPhail :)

as adios nervosa

ADIOS + NERVOSA | 2023
Last EP of the adios nervosa project.
Lift Mine Eyes Unto The Hills | 2022
Title comes from the family motto, based on a Bible quote which is often used as a ribald joke in Renaissance theatre. Made when living in London.
Song-poems | 2022
Probably my favourite adios nervosa EP? Made when living in London.
A Room in London | 2021
A bit angrier... ends a ‘Linlithgow Trilogy’ of EPs, I guess.
Irregularity, Catalogue | 2021
Instrumental tracks (except for “Object”).
Twink-pop | 2021
First EP; two tracks mixed and mastered by Owen McAllister (kiszes).
ARENAS DE PERDICIÓN | 2020
Soundtrack for a fictional Spanish video game.
Super Oblique Vinyl Pyramid!!!! | 2020
“Four-sided single”. Tracks later recontextualised later on Aye-sides and Commonalities, Irregularity, Catalogue and Twink-pop.

as Laureate

VAPORWAVE POETRY VOL. 1 | 2020
Two sequences of poems (”internet buddhism” and “Selected Waves 2013-2017) set to vaporwave tracks.
as He Knows Theory, I Have Machines

Podoloski VST at Night | 2021
Improvised noise by myself, bird noises by Shaw Worth.

as hola nervosa

TWELVE PIANOS | 2024
A musical. In which Job McLudwig gets trapped inside a Digital Audio Workstation. His monologue was performed by Max Blansjaar, Charlie McIlwain, myself, Caspar Bryant, Shaw Worth, Maria Sledmere, Kyle Lovell and Blythe Stockdale. Soundtrack was me: twelve stems of VST piano.
Un-untitled | 2024
Three covers (Max Blansjaar, Tom Vek, Miaoux Miaoux) and an original (which began life as a cover of “Semaphore” by Flock of Dimes).
Aye-sides and Commonalities | 2022
Bits and bobs, from here and there.
an adios nervosa song | 2021
“Post-royalty free” music. Each song started and ended the exact same way, so if shuffled, all four would be inistinguishable from each other.

as bueno nervoso

New and Collected Jingles | 2023
Jingles; leftover projects that needed finished.

as Republic of the QR Code

Republic of the QR Code | 2024
“Chillwave” EP. Three songs in the style of that microgenre, c. 2011-2015, from Job McLudwig’s little brother Joe. Published alongside a faux-interview on Bandcamp, detailing the Republic itself, and giving further backstory to TWELVE PIANOS.

as @e7519.6a0c85.088182

Poems to test headphones With | 2025
Four sound poems/ sound art pieces making heavy use of the pan effect. Written through found digital text circa 2020-2021.

as vamos nervosa

vamos nervosa | 2025
Demos of the club. Sketches of a future of the club. Jajajaja............

projects

sincere corkscrew (Phase 2) | 2023-[...]

Small publishing press. Initially began in 2021 as name needed for Tom Byam Shaw and I’s anthology, World-dreem; in 2022, became a vehicle for my self-publishing. Changed focus in 2023 to publishing short prose, and any other kind of prose-ish writing I like, from other people.

You Are Going To Regret This Haunted forests in a car park. The Hollow Earth Theory, but for real. Maglev trains across a broken world. Crabs!!!! In these sharp (New(er)) Weird tales, individuals descend into eremitism while eldritch forces amplify the base depravity of the elite. But it's not just total breakdown – bleak comedy and radical politics, dreams of a better way to live, always glimmer beneath the cracked surface. Descend, if you dare. It's going to be a wild ride.

"Tom Byam Shaw is unafraid; of unpredictable bodies and unreliable minds; of ancient fears and hidden realities; of queer ennui and vital, outlandish urges. Boundaries dissolve in the liminal haze of "You Are Going To Regret This", a nimble collection of tender oddities that pick at the stitches of reality."

— Ryan Vance

Elegy [Model Interaction Trend] is the corscuating, inimitable debut poetry pamphlet from
Charlie McIlwain. An astonishing palimpset of quotes, samples and deconstructed syntax,
this is a poetic sequence which holds (radical, queer) ethical witness to modern brutality.

“Charlie McIlwain’s Elegy is a thought-provoking reflection on memory, loss, and (absent) confession. Repeated breaks in sense and syntax mirror the inability of memory to capture charged events with clarity. McIlwain looks back on that which evades representation and offers us his reflections “in chalk”. To speak in chalk also implies the production of word and sound particles that remain on the sleeves, in the air, taken into the lungs. After reading McIlwain’s Elegy, you will carry some of its lingering chalk dust away with you."
— William Keohane

"Charlie McIlwain is a contemporary shaman battling forces of light and dark on an extended KWEHR-tee keyboard, a poet’s poet, a cowboy with a Mac here to give the mind, body and soul what they long for, an artist who doesn’t come around often and isn’t born easily. Their work requests a subjective reading experience, in the way one might expect to read an abstract painting, feel a Miles Davis performance or discern images within the flames of a fire — the reader has to do some of the lifting to gather the wood here, but becomes all the warmer for their participation. E[MIT] is a happening, an event in aid of itself, where understanding isn’t as important as experiencing. McIlwain’s world is vital, various, a delicately plural symphony of signs, ritualistically bodying forth a tear in our expectation of language and poetic utterance while giving rise to how these are witnessed, here and now, collaborating anew.”
— Jake Hawkey

Terminal From visionary writer Ricky Monahan Brown comes fourteen tales of 'the end'. From the neo-Gothic to sci-fi, Leith to Brookyn, this is vibrant short fiction which will shock, humour and astound in equal heady measure.

"Terminal lives up to its titular promise of hurtling towards many different senses of ‘end’. Smart, trippy and irreverent, Monahan Brown’s narrative style is just as confident crawling under the bonnet of sci-fi as it is doing Celtic realism, moshing or luring us, fable-like, close to the wood wide web. What use is there for existentialism in an accelerated world of sex dolls, conceptual thanatos and perpetual technical difficulty? Drift on to find out. "
— Maria Sledmere

"Ricky Monahan Brown’s stories evoke the uncanny reality of contemporary life and simultaneously summon the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Poe. Behind his precise prose lurk surprises around every corner, and Monahan Brown walks a fine line between reality and fable in a world that is at once familiar and strange. Spending time with these stories will be richly rewarding.”
— Stephen Sacco

“Ricky Monahan Brown’s language has real pop and fizz. Tense, funny and original: these stories remind us what a good short story is.”
— Cameron Wylie

Ammonia Sunrise From the Danish artist Aske Hyldborg Jensen, Ammonia Sunrise reads like Barthesian dispatches from another dimension. In the form of prose-poems and poem-poems, Jensen details strange turns of the mind, melting into a world weirder than thought with humour, playfulness and grotesquerie.

"Digital and bodily. Ammonia Sunrise is dealing with the endless entanglements of the symbioscene, where trauma and memory become dreams, become frogs, become landscapes become us become pixels. The work is as empathetic as it is distant. As humorous as it is gore-ish. It sticks to your memory like shoe-goo™, with the smell of motor oil and soap and the sound of a frog croak. Entering is not impossible, tech is required. Mould patterns as decorations of our church, sacred paintings for refuge- seeking rodents. Dreams are true down there, undiscovered and hidden."
— Victor Bengtsson

"Ammonia Sunrise uplifts a series of selves without clear boundaries, where the environments of cliffs, frogs, styrofoam, goo, and silverfish swim with human embodiment and wonder... here is hybridity in form mirroring hybridity in the restlessness of our living archive, in all of its plurality and density, constantly rupturing."
— Kirsty Dunlop

Almost Ghosts | 2020-2021

Glasgow-based netlabel co-founded in August 2020 with Morven Kemp (Pearling) and Stewart Lawson (Slide Cancel). Organised a digital showcase of Scottish electronic artists (adios nervosa, Syzygy Juice, Kitchin Wizard, Salad Culture, Daisy Miles, Kinbote, Hard Licker, Crush Mouse, Zema, Helena Celle, paddy hog) in September 2020. VJ’d the after-party for Kinbote’s “Live from the Village Hall” in April 2021. Ended in August 2021.

Re-Analogue | 2017-2020

Aberdeen-based arts collective. For three years we organised spoken-word nights, pop-up exhibitions, gigs, a film festival, a music festival, club nights, a dual-book launch, flat parties, and a digital livestream finale. In 2018 we released a mixtape of work from local musicians, then published our own self-titled magazine in 2019. Throughout we had a residency on Aberdeen Student Radio.

"Our aim is simple - to make interesting things happen in the North-East of Scotland, 'to twist granite into gold'."

FOUNDING QUARTET Samm Anga / Matt Gibb / Alex Kither / Ian Macartney

NEW CROWN Tom Byam Shaw / Jared Cameron / Morven Kemp / Ian Macartney / Anita Markoff

FINAL CROWN Samm Anga / Jared Cameron / Matt Gibb / Morven Kemp / Ian Macartney / Anita Markoff / Miriam Schlüter

Alpha-Beta Series

{10/12/17: Phase A# Initiated (first meeting with Alex, Matt and Ian)}
re.A//EVENT: A# - The Worst Night of The Year (performance night with Michael Pedersen, at Spin) (27/2/18)

re.A//EVENT: B# - Monologue Night (main guest cancelled due to snow; with Creative Writing Society; at Blue Lamp) (2/3/18)
re.A//EVENT: C# - Re-Analogue Presents Itself (art exhibition at Foodstory) (10/3/18)

re.A//EVENT: D# - Ekphrasis (performance night with Kirsty Logan, at Spin) (30/3/18)
re.A//EVENT: E# - Ducentium (flat party; Matt Flamenco’s 20th birthday, and reaching 200 Likes on Facebnook) (24/4/18)
re.A//EVENT: F# - A Granite Afternoon (final Granite Dreaming show, on Aberdeen Student Radio) (25/4/18)
re.A//EVENT: G# - Maymbrane (performance night, for May Festival, at Spin) (25/5/18)
{Re-Analogue Awards 2018 (Twitter thread) + Re-Analogue Free-for-All (Facebook event)} (14/6/18)
re.A//EVENT: H# - A Glade of Bishops (faith-themed performance night, at Queen’s Cross) (22/7/18)
{23/87/18: Phase B Initiated (logo and banner change)}
{Re-Analogue Mixtape released on Bandcamp, curated by Samm and Matt (25/8/18)}
re.A//EVENT: I# - Life To The Fossil (Fresher’s performance night, at Spin) (11/9/18)

{{Neu! Reekie! cameo – Mae Diansangu and Blythe Stockdale – September 16th, at Stonehaven Town Hall}}
re.A//EVENT: J# - Liminal Space (Samm and Matt’s late-night event at their flat, with Jennifer Walton) (22/9/18)
re.A//EVENT: K# - Seasonal Ascendance (Samm and Matt’s low-key open mic, at Spin) (27/11/18)
{17/12/18: Phase C Initiated (New Crown group-chat made)}
re.A/EVENT: L# - We Are, Uh, Something New (flat-warming with performance night; reciting poetry from the kitchen sofa; “literary flat party”) (27/1/19)
re.A/EVENT: M# - Last Chance To Be (Performance night/flat party hybrid; Tom’s leaving party) (29/3/19)
re.A/EVENT: N# - Freedom From Speech (London show at the Poetry Cafe, Meanwhile launch) (19/4/19)
re.A/EVENT: O# - Burn Your Professors (WORD Fringe/May Festival, at the Blue Lamp) (21/5/19)

{27/5/19: Phase D Initiated (Final Crown group-chat made)}
re.A/EVENT: P# - MANIFESTO (Magazine launch at D2) (6/9/19)
re.A/EVENT: Q# - Re-Turn (Fresher’s performance night with In The Works, at The Cellar) (12/9/19)
re.A/EVENT: R# - poetry is the swing arm flappy dealy of words (flat party performance night hybrid) (18/9/19)

re.A/EVENT: S# - Homage (open mic of other people’s work, at the Blue Lamp) (4/10/19)
re.A/EVENT: T# - Re-Envision (film festival at the Blue Lamp, run by Anita and Jared) (13/11/19)
re.A/EVENT: U# - am having a cone moment (“Re-A flat party Dux”) (4/12/19)

re.A/EVENT: V# - The Departure (dual book event at Waterstones Aberdeen, with Vicki Jarret and Arthur Allen) (16/1/19)
re.A/EVENT: W#, X#, Y#, Z# - Subliminal (Music festival organised by Samm and Matt; at Tunnels 2, Spin, D2 and Blue Lamp Upstairs) (30/1/20 - 2/2/20)
re.A/EVENT: 0# - Re-Analogue Zero (planned grand finale at The Cellar; cancelled) (25/3/20)

Ghost Series

re.A/GHOST: A#, B# - Performance (memorised poetic monologue, “tour” through Speakin’ Weird headline slot and English Lit. Soc. Performance Night) (9/1/19; 5/2/19)
re.A/GHOST: C# – Softest Ludology (short story launch. Each reader fills out a labyrinth to get a copy of the short story "Re-Aberdeen", then draws a labyrinth for the next reader. Mazes as a form of currency – started at Bonobo Cafe with Tom, moved to Café Nero on Union Street) (13/2/19)
re.A/GHOST: D# - Re:tracing (performance art walk, organised by Anita; going to places you went as a first date (graveyard, beach, King Street); intersection between geography and memory) (14/2/19)
re.A/GHOST: E# - A.O.O.M. (Audio-Only Open Mic; special slot of the Re-Analogue radio show) (11/3/19)
re.A/GHOST: F# - Re-Analogue Wake (planned flat party after Re-Analogue Zero, initially at 16 Jamaica Street, then 2e Frederick Street (Matt's place)) (25/3/20)

De-Analogue

de.A/GHOST: One# - De-Analogue (digital livestream finale on Twitch, featuring Michael Pedersen, Seán Hewitt, Rishi Dastidar and more) (23/5/20)

Anthologies
dif mega-zine, dif
“Queenswood Cala Homes Battle Royale Map”

Vocal Inhabitants, Strange Region
“The Soft Bridge”

BSML, SEASON 01, CONFESSION, The Warehouse Aesthetic
“Canal”

Broken Sleep Books 2024, Broken Sleep Books
[various]

Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices, Broken Sleep Books
[as T.P.E.]
“I want my people to be okay”

Brilliant Vibrating Interface, SPAM Press
"Kelvinbridge to Shawlands, August 2023 (21st)"

glitchy pudding, SPAM Press
"circle emoji tree emoji"

Jump My Bones, Halfly Press
"Positions for the Ghost"

World-dreem, sincere corkscrew
"Foreword", "Trans-spatial".

Past Present Future, Forest Arts
"fear of wrists"

#UntitledThree, Polygon
"The Bookshop I Burned Down"

The Centenary Collection, Speculative Books
"Asciinaut &c."

Time and Tide, Arachne Press
"Mother Fish”, "Ovčice, Croatia”

Set in Granite, AUCWS
from "Stag of Scotland"

Northern Lights, AUCWS
"Hopscotching", "Darksong", "Long Shower", "Acquisition".

A Well-Travelled Notebook, WLW
“Time Zones”, “The Snails Move Out”, “Train to Waverley”

Linlithgow Writers’ 2011 Halloween Anthology
"Janus"

Magazines
Causeway/Cabhsair
“Chasing Ghosts”

SPAM AFK
from “The playlist is a commons”

Pamenar Press
“ECZCHEMATICS”

AI Literary Review
“HEAVENLY SUBWAY”

Still Point
“Routemaster Fleet”, “A Very Small Domestic Drama”, “England vs. Scotland, New Cross, June 2022 (32nd)”

Futch Journal
“solarity, reclaimed”

Contralytic
“Ideas seem like antlers”

Gilded Dirt [as 1846975493]
“Poem Written Through “Music Geek Track of the Week: Cuushe – Sort
of Light” by Matt Grosinger, 13/09/2013”

mariettemoor{DOT}co{DOT}uk
"Tentacular Wedding Rites"

catflap
"Yesterday, Forth Rail Bridge, December 2016 (15th)"

Ludd Gang
"Utah Teapot"
"nine ayes"
"Ladybird, Linlithgow Train Station, August 2022 (1st)"

Glasgow Review of Books
"The Bakery, The Kiln" (2023)
“Caledonian Cloud Computer II” (2023)
“Lighter in you” (2024)

PROTOTYPE
"Lerwick's Hyperballad",
"Infinite Swan"

The Poetry Review
"Hyperglasgow Queer Street to Superedinburgh Vaporwaverley"

These Accents
"from Nicholas Looks Down and Sees Light – Notes"

little living room
“August-colony"

Good Press' The Paper
"poems for the moments between literature, the fictions you cannot get undone on the afternoon commute"
"Linlithgow to Glasgow Queen Street, May 2022 (8th)”

GoldDust
"Embassies"

Weavers
"Two Husbands"
"If I Hear Clicking from a Spoken-Word Audience One More Fucking Time I'm Going to Scream, I'm Going to Lash My Tongue to a Stick and Throw Said Stick into the Ocean, I'm Going to Gyrate"
"Walking, Then, Sliding Across Ice"

FAIRY PIECE
"How to be a Writer"

Sledgehammer
"a bodiless alternative"

nine magazines
[various]

unpopular zine
"While Eating Pringles (or, World Message)”
“Future flat party” [as 1846975493]

spray
"Linlithgow, January 2021 (20th)"
"Becky with the good consideration"
"Hahahahahaha (Wtf)"

SPAM
from "Comment section"

Rodwell
"Charles Calgary Takes the Long Bus to Ballater"

Wonky Veg
[various]

RIC Journal
"The Phoenician Cinema"

Heavy Iridescent
"Laundry Laundry Laundry Laundry"

giallo
"What is this"
"I want it all Even if it's fake"

The Lumiere Review
"Acquisition II"

433
"00:37 - 00:56"

The Island Review
"Calgary Bay", "There Are No Islands"

Maudlin House
"Love You, Love You Sweetie"

Seiren
[various]

Ex/Post
“BEAUTIFUL MOTH CAPTURED IN GLASS THEN RELEASED!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Little Stone Journal
"For"

Tenebrae
"aye"
"aye"
"Perpendicularised"

Leopard Arts
[various]

Scoot Around
"Walking on Swings"
“Caledonian Cloud Computer”

Wild Court [as T.P.E.]
“Parable II”
“Go Queen”

Re-Analogue
"Foreword A",
"Foreword 1"
"The Infinite Fury".

The Attic
"Yellow Flowers"

Icarus
“Watering”
“Helen of Troy but with Eczema”

Grass
from "Thee Ozymandias Rex”

Meanwhile
“Moment, February 2018 (7th)” (2019)
“Logistics of Grandeur” (2019)
"Critique of Nihilism" (2022)

Suma Lima
"Peace Will Come"

[Untitled] Falkirk
"Citadel"

eMUSE
"The Land Where the Sun Bleeds"

Non-Fiction
Glasgow Review of Books
“The Universe is Not a Question: Objects in the Prose Poem”

Kinbote's Hemisphere Lyrics Zine
"Iridescence in the Labyrinth: On Kinbote's Hemisphere"

The Skinny
[various] (2023-[...])

The Poetry Society
"Behind the Poem: On ‘Hyperglasgow Queer Street to Superedinburgh Vaporwaverley’"

SPAM Plaza
“The Poetics of Memory Online: Hypnospace Outlaw and Literature on DeviantArt” (2025)
“Writingification” [as T.P.E.] (2023)
"Haunted by the Lattice: MidJourney, Mercer and Ashbery" (2022)

Scottish Magazine Network
“Strange fealties: the online literary magazine”

Young Poets Network
"How To Start Your Own Micropress" (2021)

University Times
[various] (2018)

Epikinetics
[various] (2017-2018)

The Gaudie
[various] (2017 - 2020)

MOIST
"Party on the Edge of a Donald Trump Victory" (2016)
"Stars, Spinning" (2016)

Audio
NTS Radio (Plastic Language, May 14th 2025)
“Uchronia” [as Laureate]

systems radio (Rice the Water, April 1st 2024)
from “The Fox and The Hiker” [as FORSYTH]

Radio Buena Vida (gleaming aura, February 3rd 2024)
[various]

SPAM Press (URL Sonata)
[various] (2022-2024)

AAJA Radio (You Mocked Me Once, December 24th, 2021)
"Train Derailed, Full of Flowers"

This / Wendy’s (podcast with Shaw Worth, recorded April 27th 2020)

“THIS is highbrow / WENDY'S is not / we will talk about both, sir: this is a wendy's // Ian Macaroni, Shoe Wrath // Spirited Away (2001) - Dir. Hayao Miyazaki/ Domains (2019) - Dir. Natsuka Kusano”

BBC Radio Scotland (The Afternoon Show with Janice Forsyth, May 13th, 2019)
"Shale Bings"

Aberdeen Student Radio (Granite Dreaming, Hipster Bubblegum, Re-Analogue, The Aberdeen Review, ASR Breakfast Show)
[various] (2017-2020)

Screenplay
Lone Star Tick | 2024

dir. Ewan McIntosh, DOP Matt Gibb; premiered at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2024
Thomas | 2023

dir. Eilidh Gow; premiered at Haus fur Poesie's ZEBRA 2023
Caledonian Dreams | 2022

dir. Ewan McIntosh, DOP Matt Gibb; Best Drama [Cotswolds IInternational Film Festival 2022], Best Scottish Film Finalist [British Short Film Awards 2022]
Four Years | 2020

dir. Matt Gibb. Filmpoem for BBC Scotland, about graduating during lockdown.
The Heart’s Constant | 2020
dir. Matt Gibb. Filmpoem for BBC Scotland. Televised July 27th 2020 (”The Social Presents 2: Spoken Word”).
Rubix | 2016

dir. Ewan McIntosh. Shortlisted for the 2016 Summer in The City Awards: Best Short Film.
Anhedonia | 2015

dir. Ewan McIntosh.
Decko | 2014

dir. Ewan McIntosh.

Stageplay
Year/Year | 2019

Performed as part of Fey Theatre’s “Melting” showcase at The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow. Co-directed by Fredrika Siden Cruz and Thaïs Ramdani. THE YEAR TO COME was played by Fredrika Siden Cruz. THE YEAR THAT WAS was played by Thaïs Ramdani.

Digital
nine magazines (2022)

A meta-magazine for poetry and JPEGs. I was half the contributors. My blogpost for the Scottish Magazine Network was about this.
Kind🅱️s (2022)
A novella written in PowerPoint.
@agameofknotsandcrosses (2021)
Ludic ruin on Instagram. A game of knots and crosses is interrupted by an aleph.
The Church of Transitory Signs (2021)
The last website in the universe. Made by topaz-key.
Tetra (2021)
Primoridal creation mythos for Achroma. Broadcast on TikTok.
MONTH OF MOONDAYS (2020)
E-zine to coincide with the “Month of Moondays” cycle, in which I realsied a different adios nervosa project on every Monday in November 2020.
XENOBOTANY (2020)
The ruins of a game; a record of commands, desicions. Published on Twitter.
@QuasarEuripides (2020)
Initially “New Binbag Press”, this became its own ‘poetic pulse’. Assemblage of images and text on Twitter.
Achroma (2020)
Verse-comic. Six lads decide to go on a bender around the kingdom, with disastrous consequences. My most Christian work.
Trade Product Engine (2020)
Novella initially serialised via my wiped Facebook profile.
@EIBFdrone3010 (2019)
A drone offered observations and microfiction on the Edinburgh International Book Festival past, present (2019) and future, via Twitter account. Lasted for nine days.
Epikinetics (2018-2019)
Gonzo internet critism blog. Wrote on pop culture, film, 00s indie rock, contemporary theatre (Edinburgh, Dublin) and more.
Trapped in the Nothing (2013-2014)
Webcomic serialised on the Indie Gamers Forum. Forum users made commands, which I then used to further the story. About a Line in the Metabyss, derailing quickly into an absurdist epic of gods, anti-gods, spaceships, vidoe game pastiche and more.
~800 works as @AyeAye12, @palladium-smoothie and @sea-ebony
Between 2014-2017, I published a lot on DeviantArt, and was active in its (non-fanfiction...) literary community. @palladium-smoothie was my account for experimental work; @sea-ebony was for haikus.

Competitions
Cymera Prize for Short Fiction (2025), Edwin Morgan Poetry Award (2024), Poets & Players (2021), BBC Contains Strong Language (2019), Foyles Young Poets (2014-2016), Pushkin Prizes (2012), RSPB Wildverse (2011)

Workshops/Talks
“On Aske Thiberg’s Shutting Out the Sun” , Ek Symosium (Glasgow Project Room, September 13th 2025; with various)

“Post-Internet Pleasure as an Act of Poetics”, Edinburgh Futures Institute (online, April 5th 2023; with Kirsty Dunlop)

"Re: Remixed Reject-text: Queerness, Appropriation and Digital Poetics", Brilliant Vibrating Interface (Hillhead Library, January 17th 2023; with T. Person)

“So You’ve Written a Poem: What Now?”, Scottish Youth Poetry Slam (Scottish Youth Theatre, November 17th 2018; with various)

Installations
"The Kingfisher", Radipole Lake Visitor Centre (2012)
My earliest poem, “The Kingfisher”, was used to decorate the canteen of the Radipole Lake Visitor Centre in Weymouth.

not words

videos

as Our Non-Hero

Canal (2018) | 2024
“Coda” to the (four-part) trilogy. Audio is Caspar Byrant answering several questions; visuals are from Union Canal, March 2024. [Screened at Bank Street Media Labs Season 1 Finale: Confession, YouTube, 2024]
Garden / Park (2024) | 2023
The Ice Princess and the Gardener talk to each other. Visuals in Garden from Frieze Sculpture 2021, visuals in Park from Pollok Park in 2023. Premiered as a two-channel work in Ushi’s Coffee Corner, November 2023. [Screened at Bank Street Media Labs 004: Zone, Twitch/YouTube/Glasgow, 2023]
Forest (2012) | 2023
The Ice Princess responds to Our Non-Hero. Visuals from Waterford, Cork, Co. Kerry, Galway and Sligo, October 2018. [Screened at Beaconsfield Gallery, London, and Andrew Stewart Cinema, Glasgow, 2024; Bank Street Media Lads 002: Connection, Twitch/YouTube, 2023]
Beach (2006) | 2021
Our Non-Hero has retired as a superhero, and now finds himself in Iocus, on the edge of the multiverse. He thinks about the Ice Princess. Visuals from Aberdeen Beach sometime in 2017, filmed by Matt Gibb. [Screened at World-dreem Online Launch, Twitch, 2021]

as @e7519.6a0c85.088182

23.01.A_23.03.B | 2023
Eight TikToks.
fear of wrists | 2020
Short film made from stock footage, set to audio of me reading my short story “fear of wrists”. Soundtrack by Kinbote (Matt Gibb) and myself.

as topaz-key

I WILL BUIILD A BREATHTAKING SQUARE OF DIRT | 2021
Video-essay by my Catholic tiger fursona, topaz-key, looking at the interrelations between miniamlism, postminimalism and maximalism. All while building a giant square of dirt in the video game Terraria.

as Ian Macartney

Spoke in Mirrors | 2020-1

Literary interview series done for the independent bookshop Far From the Madding Crowd. Writers interviewed were: Michael Pedersen; Roseanne Watt; David Keenan; Murid L. Keshtmand; Rishi Dasitdar; Tom Byam Shaw; Helen McClory; Savannah Brown.

images

as Marvellous Language | b. [...]
AKA, L. Metaxis. Does collages, ink drawings, glyphs and illustrations.
as Russell Teapot | b. 2020
Digital artist. Uses Pixelmator, Paint.NET and anything else he can get his ceramic hand(le)s on.
as The I | 2006–2014
In the multiverse of all my childhood doodles, this was the version of me throughout them all. Was represented in various ways, but usually as a giant oval eye.

band

Gigs (Texture Texture)

Apollo Bar [142 Renfield St, G2 3AU], September 24th 2025 [with Colm Moore, Laurie Pitt; Electronic Experimentations night] {solo}

The Doublet Upstairs [74 Park Road, G4 9JF], September 14th 2025 [with various; SPAM x sincere corkscrew AFK night] {feat. Charlie McIlwain}

The Hug and Pint [171 Great Western Road, G4 9JF], June 21st 2025 [with fantasy of a broken heart] {solo}

SWG3 Poetry Club [100 Eastvale Place, G3 8QG], May 6th 2025 [with Baths] {feat. Alexander MacPhail}

The Hug and Pint [171 Great Western Road, G4 9JF], November 7th 2024 [with Man Man] {feat. Santiago Taberna}

The Doublet Upstairs [74 Park Road, G4 9JF], July 4th 2024 [with King Wine, Fuck This] {feat. Santiago Taberna, Stewart Lawson}

Ushi’s Coffee Corner [182 West Regent Street, G2 4RU], November 3rd 2023 [with nil00, Slide Cancel] {feat. Santiago Taberna}

Gigs (Other)

Hintenvelter: The Banshee Labyrinth [29-35 Niddry Street, EH1 1LG], March 25th 2023 [with Hammer, Oliver Wardell and Personnel, Brasser] {keys, synth}