The ten poems in our revised and updated edition offer a taste of the poetry of Scotland. Some poems explore ideas around identity and change, exile and belonging. Others focus on landscape and place, or are principally about language itself. As Don Paterson writes in his vivid introduction, Scottish poets …excel, I think, at the anti-baroque: leaving words standing so sharp and stark and bold on the page that you can hear the wind whistle round them . There is plenty of warmth and humanity here too and a bittersweet longing for the places of childhood:
The Firth is miles and I have come Back to find Loch Thom maybe In this light does not recognise me. - from ‘Loch Thom’ by WS Graham Don Paterson is a poet, musician and academic. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews. Poems by Robert Burns, Douglas Dunn, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, John Glenday, WS Graham, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan and Jason Watts. Cover illustration by Iain McIntosh.