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The Breakfast Room
New collection by Stewart Conn, one of Scotland's best-loved and best-known poets, who was Edinburgh's first Makar or Poet Laureate in 2002-05.
100 Favourite Scottish Poems
Scotland has a long history of producing outstanding poetry. From the humblest but-and-ben to the grandest castle, the nation had a great tradition of celebration and commemoration through poetry. 100 favourite Scottish poems - incorporating the nation's best-loved poems as selected in a BBC Scotland listeners poll - ranges from the ballads of Burns from Proud Maisie to The Queen of Sheba, and from Cuddle Doon to The Jeelie Piece Song.
Aspects of Edinburgh
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I Didn't Always Live Here
'Not as if I always lived here, mind you...I started off in Govan. Never dreamt in those days I'd end up this side of the river. Real step up in the world that was...I'm grateful for it. Despite everything, I'm grateful for it' Glasgow, the 1970s. Martha and Amie are old neighbours, trapped in their decaying tenement and cut off from family and friends. With the present closing in and the future uncertain, Martha and Amie's real companions are the past and their memories of ordinary lives peopled by extraordinary characters and their struggles and triumphs. I Didn't Always Live Here is a compassionate and heart-rending journey into the forgotten lives of the dispossessed and elderly, as well as an uplifting journey into the human spirit's capacity to cope with social exclusion and financial hardship. One of multi-award-winning playwright and poet Stewart Conn's earliest works, I Didn't Always Live Here now receives its first production since its world premiere at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre in 1967.
Autumn Voices
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Ghosts at Cockcrow
Stewart Conn is one of Scotland's leading poets. His Stolen Light: Selected Poems was widely praised for its evocations of the land, people and farms of his Ayrshire boyhood, and for his 'unnerving sense of the fragility of life' (douglas dunn). This new book includes many poems written during his three years as Edinburgh's first Poet Laureate. the transience of beauty and the vulner-ability of our lives. But whether revelling in landscape or cities, or marvelling at the durability of love, Stewart Conn's tone is always affirmative. He celebrates the affections, and observes the passage of time, often through works of art. And he conjures up - exhilaratingly and often with wry humour - settings as diverse as museums and stage sets, trout-lochs and mountain slopes, Barcelona's Ramblas and Edinburgh's Royal Mile.
The Rooftop Busker
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In the Kibble Palace
Selection of poems by a leading Scottish poet drawing on five previous collections plus new work - since superseded by two later retrospectives including the same and subsequent work, most recently The Touch of Time (2014).
Murdo
Murdo Macrae is one of the most extraordinary and fascinating of Iain Crichton Smith's literary creations. Dismissed from his job as a bank teller, Murdo tries to write, but cannot get beyond the first sentence. Murdo has a wild and fertile imagination, and, much to the incomprehension of his long-suffering wife, Janet, sets out to convert all he meets to his bizarre philosophy and unique vision of the world. Murdo's surreal and often hilarious antics, however, mask much deeper questions about his inadequacy in the face of social convention and his own spiritual turmoil. It is this juxtaposition of tragicomic elements, together with the fact that Murdo is in so many ways the alter ego of his creator, that brings real poignancy to these stories and confirms Iain Crichton Smith as one of Scotland's most versatile literary talents of modern times. This volume contains the two publications, "Murdo and Other Stories" and "Thoughts of Murdo." It also includes another substantial piece, the autobiographical "Life of Murdo," which is published in book form here for the first time.
Maiden Speech
Witty new Scottish poet writes powerfully of love, and hilariously of love's pitfalls. On display are wit, wordplay and an exhilarating flexibility of rhyme and rhythm. Alongside a barmaid's address to 'the Lads' is a succulent celebration of a wedding-cake. Jaundiced Sirens laconically slide closing couplets in, like rapiers. A subtly sustained and cunningly crafted sonnet sequence, assessing an affair, comprises the last rites it abjures.... Mistress of the telling phrase, Eleanor Brown seems as joyously drawn to her themes, and their expression, 'as music draws a dancer.' -- Stewart Conn.
