‘Throughout ‘The Sounds That Men Make’ Allan Gaw, like a ethnographic cartographer, maps the difficult, often treacherous and at times absurd landscape of contemporary masculinities. Inhabiting diverse personae and positions, including alien observers, he navigates the sensitivities and conundrums, the bonds and the rivalries, contradictory role models, the inherited behaviours and prejudices, internal conflicts, the joys, desires, the fears, along with the silences and struggles to overcome expectations and stereotypes. Gaw presents a topography of masculine voices, asking which we identify with, which we recognise, which we react against, and in doing so opens up a much-needed discussion on what it means to be a man in the 21st Century.’
(Bob Beagrie, writer)
£12.00
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)
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This anthology has poetry that considers a Cause in its Time, the time of Covid 19 and what time itself may mean NOW.
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‘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.’
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There can be no doubt that Karen Macfarlane is a special talent. In All About the Surface, her closely observed, resonant poems convey the richness of the moments she explores. Whether it is open water swimming, walking a ridge, or running down the hill at Clachtoll, Macfarlane’s impressive command of her craft transports the reader into her world to live those experiences with her, to share their pleasures, to encounter their challenges and to be the wiser for having done so.
(Nigel Kent, poet and reviewer)
£9.00Add to basket