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Emily’s UK tour of bookshops and Buddhist centres to celebrate the publication of her book ‘Meditation Mind’ came to end last night with a fabulous gig at the Sakya Buddhist Centre in Bristol.  You can read her new blog and see photos of the gig on Facebook.

Emily’s CDs and books are available to order from Amazon.co.uk up until Christmas, after which they will only be available to order through her website.  Emily and Christian are now packing up their flat in Bath ready for the move back to the Australian bush at the end of January.  You can keep in touch with Emily while she is away by joining her mailing list and follow her on Instagram.

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My ‘Meditation Mind’ poetry and song tour ended last night at the beautiful Sakya Buddhist Centre in Bristol, a gig that was possibly one of the highlights of my whole career. Thanks so much to everyone who came to see us play acoustic versions of my songs over the last month – we enjoyed it so much it may have changed the direction of my next album.

It is now 7 weeks until we get on a plane bound for Australia and move our lives back to the shack on a goat farm in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland where Shaktu Records began 15 years ago. After spending the last 10 years living in a first-floor, one-bedroom flat on an industrial main road in Bath, we can’t wait to be back in the Australian bush with space and sunshine, living in the beautiful wooden house that has replaced Shaktu (the tree trunks and potato sack walls were eaten by termites – only the roof remains).

We are going to make a new album there and then come back to the UK in 2020 to tour. I will keep you posted on dates and hopefully see you at a gig sometime then. In the meantime, if you would like any of my CDs and books, they are available from Amazon up until Christmas and afterwards, once we’re in Australia, will continue to be available to order through my website.

It’s been an incredible year. Thanks so much to all of you for supporting my music – we couldn’t do it without you. I will keep in touch and let you know how I’m getting on in Australia and whether I’ve managed to overcome my snake phobia :). You can follow me on Instagram and join my mailing list to receive the occasional email from me.

Wishing you all very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

xx

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Emily’s interview and live performance on ‘Front Row’ last Wednesday was featured again on Radio 4’s ‘Pick Of The Week’ today.  Said presenter Anna Foster, “There’s a lot to be said for radio so good that you’re desperate to hear it again.  This week’s ‘Front Row’ managed exactly that and the ‘Pick Of The Week’ inbox steadily filled with emails requesting a repeat appearance from the singer-songwriter Emily Maguire…” You can listen here (scroll to 13:45). The song Emily sang was ‘Start Over Again’ from her album ‘Believer‘.

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Emily and Christian are moving back to Australia to the goat farm in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland where they used to live.  Their shack of tree trunks and potato sacks is now a wooden house and they will be making Emily’s next album there before returning to tour the UK again in 2020.  If you want Emily to keep you in touch and let you know when she is coming back, please join her mailing list.

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I’m very much looking forward to the start of my poetry & song tour in Taunton tomorrow night, celebrating the publication of my new book ‘Meditation Mind’.

The venues are mainly bookshops where I’ll be playing acoustic guitar and my husband Christian will play double-bass and we’ll be performing some rarely-heard songs from my old albums plus a brand new song I played for the first time at Gaunts House the other night.  I’ll read some poems from ‘Meditation Mind’ and there will be a chance for questions at the end.

On Saturday we’re doing one of these poetry & song gigs in Oxford as a fundraiser for the wonderful mental health charity Restore, of which I’m a patron.  They are a fantastic charity helping people recover from mental illness and transform their lives.  All support very welcome.

I was so delighted to get the award for public service and advocacy from the International Society For Bipolar Disorder.  They do such good work raising awareness of this illness and supporting the people who have it.

Now I’m off to the BBC in London to perform on Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’ tonight…

Hope all’s well in your world.

xx

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The International Society For Bipolar Disorder (ISBD) has awarded Emily the 2019 Mogens Schou Award For Public Service and Advocacy for her work in mental health.  Since publishing her autobiographical book ‘Start Over Again’ back in 2010, Emily has done many gigs for mental health hospitals and groups across the UK and been interviewed many times on BBC Radio talking about her own lived experience in the hope of combating the stigma of mental illness.

The ISBD says, “The ISBD Awards committee seeks to identify candidates for the Mogens Schou Award whose contributions, commitment and passion honor the legacy of Prof. Schou. We first became aware of your music and background through Ms. Marylou Selo, a past recipient of this Award, and after visiting your website, learning more about how your lived experience of bipolar disorder informs your art, and how you have made a point to leverage that to provide hope for those living with mental illness, it is clear that you embody the spirit of the Mogens Schou Award for Public Service and Advocacy.”

Emily will travel to the ISBD annual conference in Sydney, Australia in March to collect her award.  For more information about Emily’s work in mental health and her campaign to promote music for mental health, please visit www.musicformentalhealth.net.

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One week to go until the start of Emily’s book tour to promote her new book of Buddhist poetry ‘Meditation Mind’.  These very intimate gigs in bookshops and Buddhist centres will be a mix of poetry readings and acoustic songs with Emily on guitar and her husband Christian Dunham on double-bass.  The hour-long set will include songs from Emily’s old albums that have rarely been performed plus a brand new song.  Emily will hold a short Q&A at the end of each performance.  She is touring Taunton, Oxford, Bridport, Cardiff, Manchester, Haslemere, Coventry, Frome, Bath, London and Bristol.  Book tickets

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You can now watch videos of me reading from my new book ‘Meditation Mind’ at https://emilymaguire.com/videos/.  I’ll post more videos of poetry readings on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) over the coming weeks.  All these poems were stream-of-consciousness compositions written after meditating, and completely unedited.  I have no memory of writing any of them.  ‘Meditation Mind’ is available to order from my website or from Amazon (or you can order it in all good UK bookshops).

I’m really looking forward to my ‘Meditation Mind’ book tour starting next month.  I’ll be performing a special set of acoustic songs and poetry readings in Taunton (8 Nov), Oxford (10 Nov), Bridport (12 Nov), Cardiff (16 Nov), Manchester (17 Nov), Haslemere (22 Nov), Coventry (24 Nov), Frome (29 Nov), Bath (30 Nov), London (6 Dec) and Bristol (8 Dec). Click here for details and tickets.

Hope all’s well in your world.

xx