For those, like me, who are unfamiliar with haibun, Colin Will’s The Book of Ways looks initially like dense prose poetry. At the start of the book, however, Will provides an illuminating explanation of the form without prescribing interpretations. The advantages of haibun seem to be its ability to balance conversational, observational and autobiographical prose Read More
Dark Matter is a poetry collection that may be problematic to get to grips with. This is in part due to the fact that Aase Berg was a member of the Surrealist Group of Stockholm in the 1980s. The problem, however, does not primarily rest with the collection’s surrealist undertones, but with the overall complexity Read More
The seventh poetry collection by poet, artist, curator and vanguardist SJ Fowler, {Enthusiasm} is raw, fast and ferocious in its delivery, taking on subjects such as war, modernity and the environment, mixing these with references to popular culture. Full of energy, sometimes aggressive, Fowler’s collection is aptly titled, as its pieces are thrust at the Read More
Bashabi Fraser
In the fairly recent publication, Hallaig and Other Poems, two of Sorley Maclean’s most devoted acolytes, Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul (Angus Peter Campbell) and Aonghas MacNeacail – both respected poets in their own right – have selected over seventy of what I assume are their personal favourites from the renowned, late Raasay poet’s work. Drawn mainly Read More
Pamphlets are a marvellous way into poetry publishing for many emergent poets; currently some very challenging, innovative work is appearing in that form. Scotland’s own HappenStance (which has also published Clare Best) has rightly won awards for its beautiful work in this area, and Frogmore Press also create some excellent examples. Generally, it’s a slightly Read More
Chris Powici is a champion of Scotland’s poetry scene, being a generous contributor to that community, not least through his free, and highly respected Northwords Now magazine. This Weight of Light is his latest work and second collection. Its concern for the natural world is not too dissimilar to that of a number of his Read More
The Weepers by Lindsay Macgregor, is a collection of poems which deals very eloquently with loss. Openly autobiographical if not always obviously confessional, these poems began to form in 2008 after Macgregor’s partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A short time after she was bereaved, the poet embarked on a creative writing course at the Read More
It becomes clear from the very first poem in this collection, that Crib is no light bedtime reading. This sub-sequence of forty poems is a selection from a larger collection of a hundred and eleven poems, written for the poet’s young son and completed on his first birthday. All of these one hundred and eleven Read More
Eleanor Rees’ latest collection, Blood Child, deals primarily with people and places, with Rees taking great care in establishing tone and atmosphere through skilfully painting romantic landscapes. To me, it seems that Rees’ poetry is much more concerned with creating images and aesthetic appeal rather than an exploration of subject matter or themes. Often the Read More