Lesley O’Brien
On the Scent of the Honeyed Hive
Lesley O’Brien grew up in Glasgow’s East End with a family that loved to share stories, songs and the occasional poem. She combines her work as poet, singer and storyteller with her folk band Kittlin and as a creative writing facilitator in the field of mental health. Lesley also sings with The Carlton Jug Band, works for Glasgow Women’s Aid, and is the former chair of Lapidus Scotland. Her poetry has been widely published and is rooted in Scotland, its people, Lesley's feminism, her love of Mother Nature and the passionate belief that words can help us heal.
Available from June 28th 2024
Lesley's poetry is lyrical, insightful, and poignant with moments of deep memory. I love how her work can both be formally inventive and also rooted in the natural world, a seamless marriage of mood which makes this collection a wonderful experience from beginning to end.
(Beth Cochrane, writer)
Neil Young
The Song She Didn’t Sing
The past, as Neil Young declares, may be ‘no fit place to inhabit’ (too much poverty, too much war and its aftermath), but it is fertile ground for poetry for this son of Belfast. On show is a dry-eyed (and sometimes dewy-eyed) nostalgia for the (far from) ordinary lives that history overlooks, including a mantlepiece of family photographs and a mother’s collection of ‘buttons, badges, stubs/of dance-hall tickets’ stashed in a ‘childhood biscuit tin.’ Neil Young realises that we are all keepers of myths and in its way, this collection is a book of heroes – the famous and the (almost) forgotten who show us ‘what history looks like when it’s the last place to look’. By questioning the past there’s a chance we’ll forge a future worth the effort of making.
(Chris Powici)
Available from 30th July 2024
Neil Young hails from West Belfast (1964 batch) and now lives in north-east Scotland. He worked as a labourer, kitchen-porter and stage-hand before becoming a journalist.
Neil’s publications include: Lagan Voices (Scryfa, 2011), The Parting Glass – 14 Sonnets (Tapsalteerie, 2016), Jimmy Cagney’s Long-Lost Kid Half-Brother (Black Light Engine Room, 2017), Shrapnel (Poetry Salzburg, 2019), After the Riot (Nine Pens, 2021), and The Opposite of Grieving (Nine Pens Press, 2023), with Hugh McMillan and Jessamine O’Connor. Neil is also publisher of Drunk Muse Press (drunkmusepress.com), The Poets’ Republic magazine, and founder of The Wee Gaitherin Poetry Festival, which now operates as a charity with five trustees.
Linda Jackson
Siren Calling
Linda Jackson has given us a remarkable new collection of poems, a journey through time and space, beginning in childhood in Glenburn, Paisley, and reaching out to the far ends of the world via Italy, Ireland, Gran Canaria, North Berwick and many other places; weaving in search of the common bonds, the alignments of humour and sadness, hope and despair. It’s a mesmerising, economic and disciplined jigsaw of visions, dancing language and gorgeous turns of phrase (‘spiralling silence’ ‘shuffle dance in the dust of fire’) which stop you in your steps and lift the poems to a higher level of resonance and truth. The never-changing big themes of war, peace, injustice, the importance of family and the abuse of power are all here, as are the smaller, intimate lyrics for lost friends, artists, people; people on the edge of being lost. This book is a lament for us all, a celebration of us all. The light is everything
(Graham Fulton, poet)
Available from August 1st 2024
Linda Jackson, Paisley born, is the founding editor of Seahorse Publications and the originator of a myriad of regular literary, arts and musical events in Glasgow and further afield. Her own work includes The Siren Awakes (2020), The Cabinet, Red Squirrel Press, 2021, and she has appeared in various anthologies. The second memoir, Siren: Wild in Me will also be published in late 2024. Siren Calling is her second collection. She is one of the trio of poets in Wanderlust Women and Extra Baggage. The next Wanderlust collection, ‘She’s Some Wummin’ will be launched in 2025.
An academic in the past, her doctorate was a comparative study of Woolf and Nietzsche. She is a lecturer/writing tutor of many years and is a lifelong singer/musician with 6 albums released. www.lindajaxson.com