Poetry
I have several books and pamphlets of poetry that are still in print (as well as some that are sold out). Click on a book image to read more or buy a signed copy.
M
y first full collection, Castings, was published by Two Ravens Press in 2007.
My first pamphlet, letting light in, was published by Essencepress in 2005.
Both are available as ebooks on Amazon. They are otherwise not available.
For years I have been gathering poems about trees and the result was this beautiful anthology, published by Saraband in November 2013. The chapters follow the species linked to the letters of the Gaelic tree alphabet (for more about the alphabet see my project A-B-Tree), but the poetry is not limited to Scotland, with gems from California to Chile, Norway to Norfolk. The anthology was published in aid of Trees for Life with all my royalties donated to the charity to support the regeneration of native woodlands.
It is now, sadly, out of print. I regularly get asked if it is available, so I am hopeful that one day we will find a way to reprint it, in full, or at least in part.
Other poetry bits and pieces
To listen to me reading, check out my occasional poetry podcasts here.
I have had more than 200 poems published over the years in magazines and anthologies. Some of these are here: Easterly (Northwords Now), Bow-head Whale (Northwords Now), Ice floe (Northwords Now), You Wouldn't Want to Wrestle With a Walrus (Northwords Now, plus audio of me reading it on A Plague of Poetry), Away (The Phare), Little Auks and The Volume of 1kg of CO2 is Roughly The Same As That of a Coffin (Tears in the Fence, and video of an Environmental Poetry event when I read them), five poems in Toasted Cheese, Otter in Shadows (Ink, Sweat and Tears), three poems in Shearsman, five in Dreich, one in Dreamcatcher, and one in Beyond the Swelkie, the anthology for the centenary of George Mackay Brown.
Other places my poems have appeared include: Gutter, Poetry Scotland, Orbis, Message in a Bottle, the Scottish PEN magazine, Dreamcatcher, Obsessed with Pipework, Stravaig, Prole, Pank, Obsessed with Pipework, Equinox, Streetcake, New Linear Perspectives, The Rialto and Acumen, plus various anthologies.
In recent years I have started using poetry inquiry as a research methodology in my work at the University of the Highlands and Islands. There are summaries in various academic places, but this gives a flavour: I made this poem, 'The One Thing We Can Hug' from words contributed by participants in several online workshops during the COVID-19 lockdown, about what trees mean to them.
During 2019 I was poet in residence at Inverewe Garden, in Poolewe, near Gairloch, Wester Ross. As part of this I created two pieces of multi-media poetry, as wel as contributing poems to some of the art works by other artists, particularly Lynn Bennett-Mackenzie. With Dorje Khandro Dawid, I created a Songline, an improvised audio piece with refrains, intended to be listened to as you walk around the garden. You can download it and listen here. I also created a floor installation consisting of a non linear poem plus some poems made of words written on leaves by gardeners and visitors to the garden. It is called 'Listen Feel Wonder Under'.
In 2022 I was commissioned to write an elegy for the oldest elm tree in Europe, growing in Beauly, which was dying of Dutch elm disease. The poem was performed and published as part of the Circus Arts project, 'Guardian of the Gateway', organised by Isabel McLeish. Read more and find the publication on Isabel's website.
In 2017 I was commissioned to write Scotland's poem for the Tree Charter. The result was 'Resilience', and it is carved into a totem pole at Lang Craigs, the Woodland Trust site near Glasgow.
Back in summer 2013, I was poet in residence in the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh , as part of a project called 'Walking with Poets' run by the Scottish Poetry Library. You can find out more about this on the project blog or listen to this podcast.
In 2009 I was awarded a Scottish Arts Council writer's bursary, to do a 'literary dig' of Assynt, and among the results were many new poems delving back into the past or into the politics of land ownership, and many inspired by wildlife and nature. I'm also inspired by Norman MacCaig, who wrote a lot about Assynt, and in 2010 I ran the celebration of the centenary of his birth. I wrote a long poem, 'A Passion for Assynt', responding to Norman MacCaig's 'A Man in Assynt'. There's a filmpoem of it. Watch the youtube video of my long poem, A Passion for Assynt.