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 Powci)
£12.00
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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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Unshackled
In 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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Three Poets
New collection by three women poets, Linda Jackson, Donna Campbell and Lesley Benzie. The women are travelling in Europe this year with the book so have some of the poems translated. 18 new poems in this edition.
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