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
Related Books
-
Love and Other DiseasesAllan'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
-
Wanderlust Women: Extra Baggage
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)
£10.00£10.00Add to basket
-
Jackdaws
In this superb collection, a pair of Jackdaws build a nest and hatch their young in a ‘gash in one of the window panels’. Fulton unfolds events with deadpan humour, some visceral descriptions, and an unerring eye for concrete detail in this series of short lyrics. He expertly weaves in detail from everyday life, and uncanny observations from the streets of Paisley (‘a sparkly unicorn in a high window’) and beyond (‘a flattened dragonfly/in the centre of a road’) and never once assumes the affection that emerges for ‘Jack and Jill’ is reciprocated. (‘they don’t give a toss/if I’m here or not’). Indeed, Jack’s voice is not one to be messed with. These poems explore the relationship between humankind and nature in an urban environment with wit, craft, profundity, and warmth in an immensely satisfying and positive evocation of nature and new life.
(Andy Breckenridge, poet)
£10.00£10.00Add to basket
-
Wanderlust Women
‘This is a collection by four women poets: Linda Jackson, Donna Campbell, Tracy Patrick and Lesley Benzie writing about travel and dreams…Each journey is memorably significant to the speaker and evoked in sharp and striking detail.’
£12.00£12.00Add to basket
