Reaching the Light is a book for lovers of wonderfully crafted poetry. Eveline Pye’s enlightening, painful recollections of her childhood and her relationship with an abusive mother are told with dazzling skill. As a child, she despairs, no one is trying to save me. Later comes the realisation that her own loving part is immured in stone. We are also told that daughters…with courage and time to heal…can break free. This book is therapeutic and cathartic – it may ease pain and spread understanding, especially amongst those who have suffered parental abuse.
Reaching the Light is a survivor’s collection and should be read as widely as possible.
(Johnny Woods, retired Consultant Psychiatrist, Glasgow)
£9.00
The three poets in this collection have a lot in common. They’re gritty, tough, their observation is born of personal experience, not all of it pleasant. That is recommendation enough but there are many moments too of pure revelation. Donna Campbell’s pearls brimming with moonlight that are the bi-product of pain, the stark beauty of Lesley Benzie’s poem about a father’s death ‘Fan she an her sester met their faither’s unbent gaze…’ and Linda Jackson picking up ‘petals of words from smart-dressed lovers’. Such simple beauty is not easily achieved. At its best poetry can be both empathetic and transformative. This is it, at its best.
(Hugh McMillan, poet)
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Linda 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)
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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.
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Charles Bukowski is a master at writing in a similar fashion about the underclasses but Graham Fulton’s work is better by miles. Not a wasted word and each phrase as carefully balanced as a swaying drunk on a bus.
(Des Dillon, writer)
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