On Thursday 13th February, join us for an evening of prints and poetry!
Edinburgh Printmakers is caring for the personal collection of woodcuts collected by artist poet David Burnett (1937-2023). Burnett collected over 3000 prints with a specific interest in woodblock technique from all over the world. This evening will be a chance to have a first look at some of these prints from his collection as well as hear some of his poetry.
We have invited writer, poet and scholar Dr. Rosa Campbell to bring to life some of David's poems and kick off an evening of open mic poetry.
This event is BYOB and will take place in our Cafe from 6pm to 8pm. EP will offer soft drinks and some light catering.
If you'd like to add your name to the open mic line up you can contact ilaria on ilaria.casini@edinburghprintmakers.co.uk but we will accept participants on the evening too!
Get inspired by this incredible and eclectic collection of woodblocks prints, their colours, textures and subjects!
David Burnett (1937-2023)
Alfred David Burnett was born in Edinburgh, but his childhood was spent near Hyderabad, India. He returned to Edinburgh with his mother and brother after the war and was educated at George Watson’s Collage before studying English Literature at Edinburgh University, where he was awarded the Patterson Bursary in Anglo-Saxon.
In 1959 Burnett began his career as a librarian at the University of Glasgow Library, winning the Kelso Memorial prize in bibliography in 1964. From then Burnett worked at the University of Durham until he retired in the 1990s. Whilst there he was awarded the Library Association Essay Prize in 1966, the Sevensma prize from the International Federation of Library Associations in 1971 and a Panizzi Medal by the British Library.
In 1975, he co-founded Colpitts Poetry, which brought Durham to be a hub for live poetry readings and helped foster a broad community for writing in the area. He published over 47 collections of poetry throughout his life.
Rosa Campbell
Rosa (she/her) is a poetry scholar specialising in the work of twentieth and twenty-first century American women and queer writers. Her primary research and teaching interests include ideas of marginalisation and the “canon,” the relationship between poetry and visual art, contemporary poetics, and feminist/queer theory.
Rosa completed her PhD in 2020 at St Andrews, with a thesis titled 'The So-Called New York School: A Feminist (Re)Vision in Six Poets,' which was awarded the 2021 Samuel Rutherford Prize for most distinguished thesis in English Literature, Scottish History, Church History or Theology. She is currently revising this for publication as a monograph. She received an MPhil in Literatures of the Americas from Trinity College Dublin in 2015, and prior to that an MA (Hons) in English from St Andrews in 2014.
She is also a poet, and the author of Pothos (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), a book-length lyric essay on grief and houseplants.
Between October 2024 – March 2025, Edinburgh Printmakers is hosting six events that focus on rarely seen treasures from our Permanent Collection in our Unwrapped series. The Unwrapped series is part of our heritage project Castle Mills: Then & Now supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, made possible by money raised by National Lottery players.
