When The Whooper Swans Came

This is the poet’s first collection, Perthshire-based Picton Smith and it comes with considerable verse credentials, already having been long-listed in the National Poetry Competition, commended in the Hippocrates Prize, and placed second in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition; she also holds a PhD in Contemporary Scottish Poetry.  When The Whooper Swans Came demonstrates what a pamphlet can achieve. This is a taut beauty, flensed of flab, an example of less being more, with the promise of a great deal yet to come.