Tales of a Cosmic Crofter
This is an entrancing read. The story, told in a sequence of poems, of a diligent but burnt-out island crofter who buys a fourth-hand workaday tractor and discovers that, in his hands, it can convert to a space capsule. And he wastes no time in taking off on nightly joyrides of galactic exploration, ‘each whirl a defiance of his ancestry’.
Murray’s gift for storytelling is at full power here, the narrative a roller coaster of loops and bends and inversions; images so vivid they give you a jolt, like the one of the crofter ‘stealing red threads from a sunset’, for a weaver neighbour, ‘to lighten up the overwhelming gloom/of dark twill stretched before him.’
(Maggie Rabatski)
£10.00
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Barga: the town, the families and the artistic community.
It is all in here.
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A Kist of Treasure
A Kist of Treasure: John Maclean is surely that. Martin Goldie brings to life in verse one of Scotland’s greatest ‘Man o the People’. Here, a hundred years after Maclean’s death, Goldie’s reverence for a true hero comes across in his own fine penmanship.
There are just not enough books on Maclean and there are definitely far too few poems and songs about the man – Goldie has gone some way to putting this right.
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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.
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Remembering Myself
I want to hold Donna's words in my hands, swallow them, say them out loud. They are brutal and tender, passionate and nostalgic. They get you from the page right in the guts.
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