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Loch Fyne, Argyll: watercolour by my father.

Images Not Icons

Images not iconsI started writing poetry about 20 years ago. At that point in my life, it simply seemed the best way to explore and articulate my reactions to public events and more personal concerns.

The resulting pieces, many of which first appeared in The Herald (some indeed commissioned by it), have now been collected in book form.

Images Not Icons, published by Kennedy and Boyd in association with The Herald, is available through book shops at £9.99; through Amazon, Kennedy and Boyd or from Word Power Books, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB – telephone 0131 662 9112 or email books@word-power.co.uk.

Here are some snippets from it:

 

SCOTLAND THE NEW, NOW

(Commissioned for the front page of The Herald on National Poetry Day, 1998, after the previous year’s successful Devolution referendum)

Turning points can be a turn-off
So before a yawning gulf opens
Between politicians and electorate
Here’s a chance to plot
A Caledonian efflorescence.
In the new order of the devoluted day,
Chips will not be epaulettes
Of national insecurities,
Old prejudices will be subsumed in pride
English indifference will cease to rankle,
And Scots will be relaxedly themselves,
Though they may still embrace
That privileged dichotomy
Of being also North Brits.

 

THE YOUNG ONES

Hello, my young son
Shyly greets the foal,
Long lashes fluttering.
The Bambi creature
Nuzzles to his hand
As if in some conspiracy
Of young fresh things
That binds more closely
Than any ties
Of their own older,
Coarser kind.

 

MELLOW YELLOW

Fields of vulgar rape
Offend the eye
With their intensity.
Buttercup meadows, now,
There’s a different prospect.
Yellow with a
Pointillist’s art
And hints of dark green depths
Where beetles browse
And cattle cool their hooves
On the margin of leaf and mud.

 

SCOTCH TAG

In vino veritas

They say

I’d put it

Quite another way

In vino very crass.

Images Not Icons

Images Not Icons coverImages Not Icons, published by Kennedy and Boyd in association with The Herald, is available through book shops at £9.99; through Amazon, Kennedy and Boyd or from Word Power Books, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB – telephone 0131 662 9112 or e-mail
books@word-power.co.uk.


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