After this Rain
Mairi Jack
1953-2022
Mairi was born and raised in Motherwell.
She had a mostly unhappy school life, but attended Langside College after leaving school and gained a place in Glasgow University where she studied English Literature. She had been an avid reader as a child and at University she developed a lifelong love of literature and poetry. One of her lecturers was Edwin Morgan who she admired greatly and was delighted when one of her poems was included in ’The Centenary Collection’ to mark what would have been his 100th birthday.
Mairi had a career in Journalism becoming Women’s Editor at Paisley Daily Express. She went on to work as a teacher supporting children with special needs. Despite a long-term ambition to pursue creative writing, this did not materialise until later in life when she finally joined an inspirational class and workshop run by Dr. Linda Jackson. Much of the work contained in this collection is the result of a surge of creative energy unleashed by these classes and the friends which she made there.
She would have been proud of this book, and it is a wonderful legacy for her family and friends.
£9.00
Related Books
-
The Siren AwakensLinda Jackson’s ‘The Siren Awakes’ is a haunting, heartbreaking and often hilarious dissection of the author’s own childhood and early adulthood; a real world of monster masks, dark closes, dazzling sunlight, love, fear, and, particularly, music. Gentle innocence and sudden cruel violence exist side by side. (Graham Fulton, Poet)
£10.00£10.00Add to basket
-
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)
£10.00£10.00Add to basket
-
Love and Other Diseases
Allan's poetry never fails to surprise and delight. In Memory of Waves. he uses the imagery of the sea to invoke intense feelings about ' our eternal now'. He portrays compassion in a range of poetic forms. 'Cloth' is a favourite of mine as he asks 'weave me new' in an extended metaphor. In Lost 'you are the light on the other side of hope' is a beautifully evocative ending.
On the other hand, his prose poems on diseases show his dark humour as they are insinuatingly menacing as he takes on the personas of the diseases and warns us 'I'm not dead yet'.
This collection of poems shows his versatility and skill in the use of language as well as his humour and compassion.
(Ann McKinnon, poet)
£10.00£10.00Add to basket
-
Barga: Scottish Poets on Retreat
Dr Linda Jackson set up a Writing Retreat in Barga, Tuscany and the poetic outcomes have now been placed in this small book.
Barga: the town, the families and the artistic community.
It is all in here.
£7.00£7.00Add to basket
