Looking for Mae West
‘More superb poetry from Donna Campbell. Looking for Mae West pulses with life. Her focus ranges from rural hardship to disappointments in love, from sensual exhortations to fierce castigation. This is what we expect from her now, after her wonderful first collection, Mongrel – in every word you see Donna’s smile, hear her confident assertion.
The thing about Donna Campbell is: she a truth-teller, as much about herself as other people. Her poems are always forceful but never brutal – it’s a good trick that, even when she’s telling brutal things.’
(Charlie Gracie, writer)
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UnshackledIn this fine first collection of lyric poetry, Goldie explores the contrast between the urban experience - the ravages of post-industrial economic decline, and the liberating, rugged landscapes of Scotland, with a range of precise imagery and deft phrasing that examines the complexities of both, and the relationship between them.
We also glimpse tender family vignettes, which are all the more moving for being set against this wider historical backdrop.
Rhythm is deployed with great skill, and underscores time’s relentless onward movement in Conachair (‘Saint Kilda’s screaming cliffs and stacks,’) and in Sligrachan (‘the screams of ghosts from empty yards/through the pulsing heart of that great city’)
A very impressive debut indeed.
(A Breckenridge, poet)
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Mongrel
Donna Campbell’s first collection may be called ‘Mongrel’ but it is purebred poetry. Her use of words, especially in the Glaswegian vernacular, combine with images to form brutally beautiful poems about aspects of life that less fearless poets might shun. (Lesley Benzie, poet)
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Jackdaws
In this superb collection, a pair of Jackdaws build a nest and hatch their young in a ‘gash in one of the window panels’. Fulton unfolds events with deadpan humour, some visceral descriptions, and an unerring eye for concrete detail in this series of short lyrics. He expertly weaves in detail from everyday life, and uncanny observations from the streets of Paisley (‘a sparkly unicorn in a high window’) and beyond (‘a flattened dragonfly/in the centre of a road’) and never once assumes the affection that emerges for ‘Jack and Jill’ is reciprocated. (‘they don’t give a toss/if I’m here or not’). Indeed, Jack’s voice is not one to be messed with. These poems explore the relationship between humankind and nature in an urban environment with wit, craft, profundity, and warmth in an immensely satisfying and positive evocation of nature and new life.
(Andy Breckenridge, poet)
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