Ruth Aylett’s first solo pamphlet exemplifies just what thematic poetry collections make possible. Pretty in Pink examines facets of girl and womanhood, and the pressures to conform to, internalise and perform ideals of femininity, through different lenses of time, geography, class and culture.
“The loss of a mother must be something very strange…”. This epigraph from Sigmund Freud sets the scene for Emily Berry’s superb second collection, Stranger, Baby, which concerns the sense of dislocation, “dismantlement” and alterity brought about by intense grief. The suicide of her mother left the narrator/Berry all at sea from the age of Read More
Con-men, poker-players, poets put the solid world at risk and then enjoy the dance… (“The Water Magician of San Diego”) Elaine Feinstein — poet, novelist, playwright, biographer and translator—has selected poems for The Clinic, Memory from twelve collections written over five decades which, alongside newly-written poems; these do indeed “put the solid world at risk”. Read More
In Staunin Ma Lane, Holton has selected classical Chinese poems from the 11th century BC to the 14th century AD, some of them well-known to generations of Chinese schoolchildren, for improvisation and translation into Scots, with English “glosses”. Holton states in his useful Afterword: “if you expect to find dictionary definitions of Chinese words in Read More
Harry Giles, brought up tri-lingually with Orcadian, Scots and “English”, sets out his stall in “Brave”, the opening poem of his first full collection, Tonguit, which was short-listed for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award in 2015: Acause incomer will aywis be a clarty wird, acause this tongue A gabber wi will nivver be the real Read More
Laurna Robertson’s fourth publication, Praise Song, celebrates Shetland, the place of her birth and childhood, and reflects aspects of her early years there in poetic memoir. The pamphlet opens with “North”, in which Robertson sets out the experience of leaving home and family to live in unfamiliar and unsettling surroundings, only to return: your place Read More
The Sutherland Clearances continue to provoke controversy, particularly the notion of “Improvement” and the causes of migration, and there are inherent difficulties where most of the primary sources emanate from the Establishment. In Set Adrift Upon the World, Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History and former director of the Crofters’ Union, has delved into personal letters, Read More
John Lister-Kaye’s ninth book, Gods of the Morning: A Bird’s Eye View of the Highland Year, reflects on landscape and wildlife, particularly birds – Virgil’s “gods of the morning” – over four seasons at Aigas, the Highland field centre by the Beauly River, which he owns. The book opens with the death of a blackcap Read More
Christopher Reid is a big tease. The titles of all 73 poems in his latest collection, The Curiosities, begin with the letter “C”. There’s a wide range of subjects covered between The Contents and The Credits but you won’t actually find THAT c-word in amongst “The Calabash”, “The Collarbone”, “The Celibate”, “The Canoodling”, “The Cufflinks” Read More
