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.

BRIAR MOUTH

Briar Mouth is the first published collection of poems by Helen Nicholson. She has had poems published in Gutter, and Magma magazines and shortlisted in the Bridport Creative Writing Competition, 2015. She lived near Fort William as a child, spending time in Skye, and now lives in Fife. These locations are clearly reflected in her Read More

THIS, Tay Poems by Jim Stewart

The poet Jim Stewart (1952-2016) earned that rarest of writer’s accolades: of being well-loved by those who not only knew his work but knew him. He had a well-deserved reputation as a gifted and inspiring teacher who, in typical Dundonian fashion, seemed to hide his calling under a genuine sense of duty, so that his Read More

Killellen lime kiln by Beth McDonough

Find as far inland as Kintyre can allow, map back to an almost-anywhere dot. Out of seasight. Still, on clouded nights, watch Rathlin’s lit pattern censer past. A little industrial structure. One bog-footed cave built for burning. All rabbit shit, trotting-in lost sheep, broken curves open to host brackening rain. A dripped-on Alice, shrunk on Read More

Re-expression of the Orphic Myth: An interview with David Kinloch

In a mizzling rain that brings darkness to the red heartstone of the city, I set out to meet David Kinloch to interview him about his Ars Poetica in light of his recent publication In Search of Dustie-Fute, shortlisted only this morning for the Saltire Poetry Prize. We have arranged to meet in “Tinderbox”, Ingram Read More

Redomones and Eye to the Future

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

The Bonniest Companie

And the wild ways we think we walk Just bring us here again. In her latest poetry collection, The Bonniest Companie, Kathleen Jamie considers not only the Scotland of today, but the Scotland of the past, of her childhood and its timeless myth-shrouded wilderness. The poet presents the natural and political landscapes of her native Read More

maritime

It’s sad when a word is poisoned by history. The word I’m thinking of is “collaboration.” Is it possible to wash off the wartime smear of sleaze and shame that this perfectly good word has acquired? What it describes really is something to be proud of, requiring both a clear personal voice and a generosity Read More

SY StorY

I didn’t want to finish this book. Of course, all poetry should be savoured, not swallowed quickly in large chunks and this collection is indeed quite meaty. Before moving to specifics, I’ll start with some general points. It’s a perplexing title, is it not? These poems take the reader to Stornoway on the Isle of Read More