‘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
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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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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If you want your poetry as a lulled accompaniment to whatever you happen to be doing - don't read Jo Gilbert. If you like your Doric couthie and couth, paired with a wee sepia photo - don't read Jo Gilbert. But if you need poetry that makes you 'Get aff that fuckin horse. Now!' , and opens your 'kohl clarted eyes' to garr ye greet and laugh aloud...then read Jo Gilbert. And what a titular poem. Three lines, punching hard with every word. What a debut.
(Beth McDonough, writer)
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‘More superb poetry from Donna Campbell. Looking for Mae West pulses with life. Her focus ranges from rural hardship to disappointments in love, from sensual exhortations to fierce castigation. This is what we expect from her now, after her wonderful first collection, Mongrel - in every word you see Donna’s smile, hear her confident assertion.
The thing about Donna Campbell is: she a truth-teller, as much about herself as other people. Her poems are always forceful but never brutal – it’s a good trick that, even when she’s telling brutal things.'
(Charlie Gracie, writer)
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