her black door like an omen […] As the title implies, Buried Music resonates with losses, being filled with many kinds of grief. The collection addresses bereavement (especially that of his father) principally, but also it considers the poet’s own challenged and diminishing health. For all that, Buried Music mines the quirkiness of Read More
What strikes you immediately with Greetings from Grandpa is Jack Mapanje’s voice. The poems have a directness, as if the poet is speaking straight to the reader, plainly and conversationally. Poet and reader in the same room. Mapanje is a Malawian poet, linguist and human rights activist who was imprisoned from 1987 to 1991 by Read More
Philip Ruthen’s latest collection, Familial, is published by the Waterloo press. This is his third collection after Jetty View Holding and Apple Eye Feat. Familial explores a multitude of landscapes, both psychological and physical. The poems articulate strange realities, whether it is the voices of inmates of psychiatric hospitals (“Prelude (Cluster)”), the “curiously satisfied distress” Read More
This collection of poems and writings provides a little window into the mind of a thinker obsessed with writing. Amos Weisz, bilingual European – he worked, lived and thought in English and German – was a philosopher and mathematician by education. He wrote poetry, prose and drama, translated academic prose and the German culture in Read More
Scots literature lecturer and well-lauded poet Alan MacGillivray brings us his fifth collection inspired by Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, the Scotsman who rode with gauchos and was one of the SNP’s founding members. MacGillivray’s interest in Cunninghame Graham’s life was triggered in 2011, while he was co-editing his subject’s Collected Stories and Sketches. In this Read More
All I want now is my dignity back, To stand on my own unsteady feet […]. Testament is Robert Crawford’s seventh full length collection of poems, and here he writes about a myriad of themes in many different styles. Made up of forty-two poems, Testament is divided into five distinct sections; “Hard-Wearing Flowers”, “A Little Read More
Scottish poet and kenspeckle performer of his work, Stuart A Paterson has had a long and established career, publishing his first poetry collection Mulaney of Larne and other Poems in 1991. He has since released several other poetry collections, as well as received a prestigious Eric Gregory Award. Stuart hails from Robert Burns’ Ayrshire hometown, Read More
Daniel Sluman’s poems hold suffering. They cover uselessness, frailty and anger both resolved and unresolved. the terrible doesn’t pander or pussyfoot, it reverberates with the poet’s confessions and rings vividly. This, Sluman’s second collection, follows his 2012 debut Absence has a weight of its own which was released to critical acclaim. The poet has held Read More
It is a striking image – that of Jan Van Brock’s engraving “Woman in hunting dress” – which adorns the cover of Belfast-born poet Adam Crothers’ debut collection. Behind the elegant, shotgun-carrying woman, a pair of deer sits placidly on a moonlit night. Only on looking closer do you notice the folds etched into the Read More
Perhaps we all long for a more carefree period in our lives. Nostalgia for childhood is almost universal; however, this outwardly innocent melancholy is ultimately dangerous as by its very nature nostalgia romanticises and we forget the past’s real darkness. In Brother, award-winning American poets Matthew and Michael Dickman’s latest collaborative collection, the sibling poets Read More