Interview with Mike Dillon Page 34—40 Reviews

LOCKDOWN INTERVIEW with legendary Edinburgh Poet, Singer Songwriter, Author Mike Dillon

1. Your poems and songs are rich in references and word play. What sort of poetry do you enjoy reading and what are your musical preferences? I prefer poems that roll, that establish their own rhythm with plenty of alliteration and the occasional sneaky half or full rhyme and that can be real aloud without the feeling that they're just cut-up prose. I also like comic verse - the more outrageous the rhyming the better. I mainly listen to Blues, Rock and Folk, both traditional and contemporary 2. In some of the writing biography and mythology, fact and fiction are fused. Do you think it’s important that a poem or a song operates on more than one level? It's a big plus if they do. Peppering a piece of work with mythological references seems a bit pointless unless they add flavour to something real 3. The poems and songs reflect your geographical history either past or present. Do you believe this acknowledgement of personal geography is something you do deliberately or is it naturally occurring? It's natural to link an experience to where it happened. One of the things I like about American and Irish songs is the frequent reference to actual places, so I suppose I'm just following those traditions. And it does add flavour. Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa just sounds better than Twenty Four Hours from Nowhere In Particular, even if you don't know where Tulsa is 4. What is your writing process? Do you work and rework your writing or is it down to a single point of inspiration or a mix of those things? It's great when something comes out, fully-formed. But even then I'll always make an effort to polish it up. This happens more with poems than songs which often start with a verse and a half and a tune then are left to simmer while I try and work out what they're really about. 5. When do you know when a poem or song is complete and ready to be made public? I don't. Unless they're really rough I try them out as soon as possible. I think the best way to find out what bits work and what doesn't is to read or sing them to an audience. If I'm stumbling over some parts I'll know there's a problem and mess around with the lines al ), Native North American history and literature, Family, Friends, Personal geography/ biography and musical influences. Do you ever reject poems or songs that don’t work? And when is it time to give up on a piece of writing? I've given birth to many stillborn poems and songs that just don't fly but I usually archive them rather than chuck them out in hopes I can use some of the lines or ideas in future to frankenstein them into a new monster 7. If you were to give a new poet one piece of advice on writing poetry what would it be? (you are not allowed to say

‘give up now before it’s too late’.) Commit any lines/rhymes/phrases/ideas to paper as soon as they drift into your head. Read as much as you can. Imitate or steal what really appeals to you. All poets are thieves 8. You won the Scottish Slam Championship in 2010? (was it?) Did you enjoy the experience and do you have any feeling one way or another about spoken word/ performance poetry or live readings in general (from the days when that sort of thing happened !) Yeh, it was great to take part and the win satisfied my competiveness for a few days. But though slams are good in providing a structure for folk to read, I think there's far too many now and there's always the danger that the poetry takes second place to the competition. Performance poetry in general is a different matter though. Poems were originally supposed to be declaimed in mead-halls. Scribbling them down on paper instead is a new-fangled idea dreamed up by guys in ruffs. Not sure I approve 9. From all your years of promoting, publishing, performing and writing do you have any highlights that stick in your memory and look back at with fondness? I have fond memories of the monthly First Friday Pomes & Pints nights that ran for years and years in the West End Hotel in Edinburgh. And the Yonkly, a Writers Workshop in Print that came out every yonk. Also the Hastings Poetry Festival and all the gigs in Germany and New York. But mainly all the good friends I made back then 10. Final Question : Five Favourite poets & Five favourite songwriters (or less). Fav Poets: it'll have to be the Big Three - WB Yeats, TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas. And there'll always have to be a place in my pantheon for Roger McGough because of the Mersey Sound, a book that was so influencial to the poets of my generation. And Roxy Gordon Fav Songwriters: PJ MacCall and Bob Dylan for the way they embraced traditional music and ran with it. Chuck Berry and Cole Porter. And, of course, Kate Bush. Everyone loves Kate.

Mike Dillon’s ARK :Selected Poems and songs is available now at www.hybriddreich.co.uk £10.00 plus postage (Book & CD)

Secondary Tracey S. Rosenberg (Red Squirrel Press) 72PP ISBN 978 1 91043787 2 £10.00

With Secondary as a title, Tracey S. Rosenberg’s poetry collection implies a primary, a primacy. While ‘firstly’ remains unidentified, Rosenberg’s poems scatter clues, instances of ‘secondaryness’. Opening the collection with ‘After Eden’, the poet revisits the narrative of Eve, second to Adam, and their Fall from Eden, second to Eden. In ‘After Eden’ an unnamed ‘I’ addresses another unnamed ‘ you’, but references to biblical symbols situate the poem within a Judeo-Christian lineage, identifying Eve as speaker, Adam as spoken to. Given a voice, Eve is still made to plead to be listened to –‘Please, I’m not done yet’. Rosenberg’s opening poem, like the following poems in the collection, challenges woman’s discarded position as secondary and claims instead the primacy of woman ’s experience. Contesting women’s present subordination, Secondary also questions a future, an after. What comes after age sets in, after health starts to falter, after illness, after. Secondary is a powerful poetry collection about womanhood, depicting women’s pain and pleasure without compromises, with raw sincerity and vulnerability. Reading the female body manipulated by lovers, partners and doctors alike, women in Rosenberg’ s poems are poked and pierced, penetrated, caressed and cut apart. Writing the female soul, Rosenberg starts conversations from ‘I’s to ‘You’s, from ‘she’ to ‘he’. Her poems are sharp and short. Her style is clear, concise, using spoken words rather than alienating lexis found in dictionaries and encyclopaedias only. Rosenberg proposes in Secondary a particularly poignant testimony of womanhood. A compelling poetry collection which should be first on to-read piles, never second. MGG

Anonymous Bosch : Mike Jenkins with images by Dave Lewis. (Culture Matters) 84pp, ISBN 9781912710355 £10. www.culturematters.org.uk.

When you read this book you hear the distinctive voices of the working classes Welsh. The dialect, the language, the austerity impaired, yet verbose, witty and defiant in the face of overwhelming decline and decades of underfunded services, governmental neglect and economic depression. That doesn’t mean that this book is a dirty realist monologue on muck and deprivation. It is a glimpse into the dark comedy of neglect. The honest way that people deal with their lives when ennui becomes a way of life and there is nothing left to do but just get on with it. Jenkin’s as always doesn’t deal in simple polemic, he leads us through this richly human experience with deft poetic touches, irony and a radar for the tricky subjects that a lot of poetry never deals with. Poets sometimes spend so much time catering to the trendy subjects that they fail to address issues that are long standing, unresolved and not going away anytime soon. In this book, racism, nationalism, colonialism and austerity are tackled not with lip service or liberal zeitgeist but recorded as history in the ordinary folk given a platform to be heard above the bleating of social media sheep and twitter trolls. Who think that opinions are facts . Refreshingly candid and unafraid to show what is actually happening rather than tell us what we should do. This collection continues Jenkin’s strong left of centre voice .Dave Lewis’ photographs that accompany the poems are recognisable to any area of decline, not just Merthyr Tydfil where these poems hail from.; graffiti strewn, urban vignettes of chained charity boxes and abandoned pop up tents, derelict churches, people trying to live in this ‘backdrop of pandemic., pound shop and food bank’. This level of modern hell. Jenkins reminds us not to forget, shows us what we’d prefer to not think about with a sensibility that survives and should make us pause for thought and action. GOR

BUY 2 get one free on any Dreich Themes or Magazines www.hybriddreich.co.uk

TEN MINUTES OF WEATHER AWAY Leonie Charlton (Cinnamon Press) 2021 36pp £4.99 ISBN 9781788640749

Nature at its harshest and most uncompromising dominates Leonie Charlton’s poems, which test the boundaries between our emotional inner weather and the wild landscapes of Scotland. Those who have read her book, Marram, (an account of a pony trek though the Outer Hebrides which doubles as a journey through grief for the author’s late mother), will recognise similar themes, the search for emotional release, the vagaries of time passing, the extremities of love, loss and death. In these poems, the natural world is challenging, visceral and raw. In ‘Heavy Weather’, the scent of juniper berry evokes the memory of a past opportunity lost, “through inbetween worlds of juniper and anemone” this is bound up with the sight of a dead hare on the road, whose “whiskers moved/still looking for meaning in the whickering wind”. A poem about writing a poem is given its own come-uppance by the stark imagery nature provides. A sequence set on Iona, still a place of Christian pilgrimage, moves skywards, to find connection with a hen harrier, “harrying the sandy threshold between machair and marram” and, later, lapwings, “scooping me clean with rounded wings.” Acute natural observation is also the basis for almost shamanic identifications, with a bear in The Weight of Bees and the “gathering of earthy deposits” in ‘To My Body’. Alongside the grief and rage, at lovers, parents, life’ s disappointments, are more poignant moments. Illness and death are also treated with compassion and acceptance: the intimation of a man’s death in ‘Winter Birchwoods’ and the lyrical letting go in ‘A Time of No Hugs’, about the putting down of two beloved horses. The poet’s relationship with this world of rain, rock, water and tree, is both deeply personal and romantic but also rooted in the direct observation of a naturalist. Alongside the anthropomorphism, Nature is viewed in geological time, weathering away, indifferent to the fragility of human life and preoccupations.

SB

REHEARSALS FOR THE REAL WORLD Robin Lindsay Walton (Leaf by Leaf an imprint of cinnamon press) 2020. 316pp. £10.99 ISBN 9781788649087

Five hundred and fifty seven first person monologues in this vast collection of ‘micro’ fictions. Written for drama students tp ‘present specific textual challenges to a performer in training’. The whole world and its ‘attitudes, difficulties and relationships’ is the all consuming aim. I’m not a drama student so I can’t speak for the efficacy of these for performers. I can only read them in terms of how they read as a reader. The number of monologues is rather overwhelming it’s hard to read it like a novel. As with most micro fiction it has to be dipped into much in the way you might read a poetry collection. When you do that you find a varied and interesting range but sometimes they fall a little short of satisfying and because of the form limitations no real development of story other than a snapshot of life is evident. Not really as poetic as say ‘ prose poems’ and not quite as long as flash fiction. (Most of these are circa a hundred or so words long). It feels like a course text book and reads like one, because it is one. The attraction for a reader is lessened but the craft of the writer in shaping these pieces for actors in training is evident and in that way I could see it would be very useful as an aid to developing the skills of script reading to the students in its careful use of punctuation to teach the right way to deliver a writer’s lines and to utilise that in ‘ lifting language off the page and giving it spontaneous expression. The book clearly goes beyond just being a teaching aid but it falls between the stools of poetry and prose occasionally but as it is neither (Robin Lindsay Wilson is an accomplished poet ) then the enjoyment of it becomes muted. However it is such a marvellous accomplishment to have produced this dictionary of the human condition that I commend it and encourage you to read it and discover a very different take on writing and what it can be used for. PB

THERE WILL BE DANCING Kemal Houghton (Red Squirrel Press) 2020 32pp £6 (18 poems)

One of the many books in 2020 that got a bit side-lined. Kemal Houghton is one of those tireless promoters of poetry from grassroots to everything else and his experience and sure footed poetry is accessible , optimistic and tinged with melancholy , nostalgic regret and less dancing than expected but still the promise of the future including the prospect of dancing seems attractive even to a non-dancer like myself. An effortless debut that many will find the ideal companion to read with cocoa or even a wee dram in the cosy twilight hours where quiet is a blessing and ‘ like shadows can never be caught’ except in memory.

GOR

ARK / MIKE DILLON / HYBRID PRESS / 84pp / ISBN 978 1 873412 01 5 / £11.99 (with CD)

If you take a random person off the street, and ask them what they think of Shakespeare ’s plays, there is a strong chance that they will voice a degree of respect for his work. However, there is an equally strong chance that they will voice a strong and venomous distaste for anything bearing his name, and they will usually cite their experience with Shakespeare in school as a basis. This is quite forgivable. In school, students read Shakespearean dramas, a medium which are meant to be experienced live. These people did not experience his works the way that he intended, and as a result, perhaps none of the works that he produced will ever appeal to their tastes. Mike Dillon appears to be taking no such chance. Ark, his collection of poetry and songs, comes coupled with a CD, so that one can hear the poet’s words spoken and recited exactly as he intended. While I am no music critic, I found it to be a charming companion, and a fitting accompaniment to poetry of thoughtful lyricism. Cleverly, the poems on the CD do not appear in the same order as they do in the book itself. One can listen to the poems as read, but it will involve much pausing and searching for the coming poem’ s place in the book. In this sense, Dillon seems to suggest that these two are best enjoyed in their own right, a suggestion that is bolstered by the presence of several poems in the book itself that are not featured on the CD. The strength that this lends to the overall artistry is immeasurable. The usual concerns regarding the speaker’s voice, or whether a poem would be more suitable to be experienced live are now moot, because we are now given a choice about how we should experience them. As the title would suggest, Ark is full of references to both religion and the animal kingdom. From page to page, the collection acts as a journey, and much like the story of Noah, themes of religion and nature accompany the speaker on this voyage. Through these poems, we travel through memory, where old relationships and childhood memories are both visited. Poems such as Mick Turition and Guinness with a Chingachgook explore what it means to be Irish, or even of Irish descent. Memories of childhood are explored and revisited through poems such as Please Miss, in which we hear of various misdeeds committed by the poet’s younger self through the words of a classmate, relaying the details of these misdemeanours to a teacher. In poems such as Succubus, an old romantic relationship is revisited, as Dillon ponders who exactly this person was to him. The idea of the voyages, or travel in general, is examined through poems like Here Be Dragons and Here Be D-Trains. Attentive readers will also take delight in the repeated usage of animals in both metaphors and similes, a technique which serves to strengthen the idea of The Ark. One stellar example of this technique? “Girl, I’ m shitting like a kitten on the Isle of Dogs”, from Heal Me. Somehow, while exploring themes of identity through both religious and natural imagery, Dillon also gives an insight into what it means to be a poet. He writes “Poets aren’t those who make poetry/ they are those who need to”, from the poem And Finally…. Such an insight is not only written here but is also deftly demonstrated in the composition of this collection. Many poets make the mistake of having their collection be little more than a grouping of the most recent poems that they have written, and of which they are proud. Dillon has instead opted to construct and select poems and songs that convey the idea of The Ark, an ark that travels through his own mind, and to the depth of his identity. Unsurprisingly, reading this collection feels like listening to a well-made album. It takes you where it means to, beguiling you with a unique sense of voice and whip-smart technique. Before you know it, you’re starting from the start just one more time.. DM

MUCH LEFT UNSAID Finola Scott RED SQUIRREL PRESS ISBN 9781910437865 £6.00 32pp

Scott is a stalwart of the Scottish Poetry scene writing in Scots and English although this collection has no poems in Scots at all (except for the odd word) which is a shame as she writes so powerfully in Scots. However the poems here are vivid and vital and that sense of Joie de Vivre comes through in the poems selected here albeit with a pragmatic sense that life isn’t always as happy or as fair as might be expected. There is an underlying sense of regret , a sense that it is ‘too late for cavalcades or queens’ . That not everything can be judged by appearances; friends turn out to be foes and love can be treacherous. Yet amidst this landscape of bruises and almost losing control, walks a poet who is resilient though ‘I teeter downhill nearly head over heels’ they are willing to ‘let love steady our way’. The tenderness of poems about a Mother and a pregnant daughter ‘Matryoshka Dolls’ is beautifully crafted as are all the poems where family past and present are evoked. I look forward to a full collection by this poet as she masters the accumulation of poetic wings. Recommended without reservation. GOR

REVIEWS

The Kolkata Cadence (Hawakal )Editors : Jagari Mukherjee, Inam Hussain Mullick & Anindita Bose. ISBN 9788194853893 . Price £12-13 Available https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kolkata-CadenceContemporary-Poets/ dp/8194853893

Kolkata has historically been draped in poetic habiliments. Thankfully, this continues during these existent times. As a Mumbai-based practitioner of this art form, I can state with surety that Kolkata is currently one of the most vibrant cities in prosodic explorations. The troika of editors, Jagari Mukherjee, Inam Hussain Mullick, Anindita Bose, wellheeled in the rigorsof metrical compositions have culled for you, dear reader, a panoply of poets. From the seasoned to the sprouting-- these and many more inhabit the pages of The Kolkata Cadence. Even as I celebrate this, do remember imparity is the essence of any mélange. In this cornucopia of creativity, a slew of themes parade their artistry. From the stream of consciousness poetry to love and its lure, along with the enigma of the elements, metaphysical marvels, to social and political audits, among others. Let us take a gander at the anthology, starting with Sanjukta Dasgupta’ s Dhoti Dance where her energized diction offers another look at the Father of the Nation. The youthful old man had choreographed The freedom dance A nation danced to his tune A nation danced towards freedom As Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi The frail brown man in a capri-dhoti, Led the dhoti dance.

Gopal Lahiri’s fluent stanza in Thirst singes the page with: On The Richter Scale by Kiriti Sengupta is sui generis. It is an apt example of his poetic persona. It warrants a quote:

A seven-year-old canvas invites dust bunnies. Mopping whitens it; gray patches lurk in the brightness. It looks at the artist, Desolation, who paints fresh watercolors. The cloth blushes. It absorbs all the cuddles. The elbow hits and makes it pale. The veil dissolves. The Kolkata Cadence carries crisp poetry by Bina Sarkar Ellias, a style she has mastered. Aneek Chatterjee’s pansophic verse, Joie Bose’s colourful phrasing, Sonnet Mondal’s fast-paced inflections, Ananya Chatterjee’s tender etchings, and Nileen Putatunda’ s devotional fluency, cast their iridescence on the compilation. Sharmila Ray’s consummate lines in Distance score with the reader. Distances are blurred horizons and carry smell of ruined hills. Raja Chakraborty’s approbative weave, Flowers In My City gladdens the aesthete. Amidst the mayhem of motor cars and multitude of faceless on-goers, fighting the belching smoke and putrid air, heavy with broken promises, behind the ribbed iron gates, somewhere in a corner flower always blooms.

Linda Ashok’s exceptional prose poem, You Ask

If This Is Love ends with the poignant: I am making love, I insist, only your face is missing! It will be apt to conclude with Amit Shankar Saha’ s luminous creation, A Poem for Dark Times: Let us plagiarize a chunk of verse from a Hindu poem and profane it with the lines of a Muslim poem. Let us put out the light and sing the words of that poem and see if the words kill each other and cease to be.

Padlocked shacks, windowless tin boxes, Excrement on the road. The homeless, Naked, slum children are there on the road, Waiting for the clouds to drain the last drop of rain. Rain ushers us to Lopamudra Banerjee’s evocative self-examination in Kolkata Rains: I slide from one burst of orgasmic rain to the next, the bed of grass Softened with ancient tears, never wiped away, the puddles And the potholes, remnants of grey waters, de-fleshed, De-veined, waiting for me at the end of surrender. The Kolkata Cadence is a polyphonic soirée. Soak in it. Make your own mixtape. SS

Dangerous Pursuit of Yellow ANNIE WRIGHT (Smokestack Books) 82PP 978-1-9996742-3-6 £7.99

In her inventive poetry collection Dangerous Pursuit of Yellow, Annie Wright takes the reader on an adventure navigating across eras and around the globe. Wright’s poetic journey uses its eponymous colour as a compass and arranges poems according to the colour’s six cardinal points: Indian Yellow, Ochre, Saffron, Gamboge Genuine, Orpiment, Cadmium Yellow. Yellow’s evocative yet equivocal connotations enable Wright’s wide-ranging exploration of themes and forms. Either the shade of ‘fiery couplings under fizzing stars’ in ‘Saffron’, or the pigment of ‘canvas after brilliant canvas’ colouring ‘Monets, Matisses, Warhols, Koons and Picassos’ in ‘Cadmium Yellow’, yellow tints most lines of Wright’ s poems. Dangerous Pursuit of Yellow is a bold and bright poetic composition where Wright skilfully brushes poetry out of a palette of yellows. MGG

The Stuff of the Earth WILLIAM BONAR (Red Squirrel Press) 74pp 9781913632 £10.00

A first collection following on from the well received pamphlets ‘ Offerings’ (RSP)2015 & ‘Frostburn Steel (Dreadful Night Press) 2004. A sparsely punctuated (if at all) selection full of observational, descriptive passages of life passing in all of its fragility, pathos and ultimately futile decline. The poems are both an elegy and a eulogy, a mourning and a celebration of the chaos of life we endure as it unravels around us. Full of recognisable characters and situations with which we can relate, all considered with an affectionate unsentimental precision. The long poem that ends the book (The Stuff of Life) charts the passing of a way of life, in shipyards and in families. This intertwing of political and personal decline is documented with clarity though often

‘we stumble forward, making choices, we hope for the best, invent stories that lend shape, if not meaning, to our lives’ From ‘The Stuff of Life’ So a book with life as a rite of passage, all delivered with Bonar’s deft touches and through his experience. Bonar to use his metaphor from football is a season ticket holder in Team Poetry who knows that ‘one mad flourish’ may lead to moments of glory. The poet who has faith in his team in defeat or in triumph. ‘The Stuff of the Earth’ is a triumph and deserves to be read widely. GOR

POETRY publications YOU SHOULD READ 2020-21

in no particular order

1. Eat or we both Starve VICTORIA KENNEFICK ( Caracanet) 2. The Book of Tides ANGELA READMAN (Nine Arches Press) 3. Anonymous Bosch MIKE JENKINS ( Culture Matters ) 4. Map of a Plantation JENNY MITCHELL (Indigo Dreams) 5. As Blind as Rain ALISTAIR ROBINSON (Red Squirrel Press) 6. Hand to Mouth Music JANETTE AYACHI (Liverpool University Press) 7. The Night Jar LOUISE PETERKIN (Salt) 8. Vertigo to Go BRENDON BOOTH-JONES (Hedgehog Press) 9. It Says Here SEAN O’BRIEN (Picador) 10. The Air Year CAROLINE BIRD (Carcanet) 11. Clyack SHEILA TEMPLETON (Red Squirrel Press) 12. The Machineries of Joy PETER FINCH (Seren) 13. The Well of the Moon ELIZABETH RIMMER (Red Squirrel Press) 14. Backstage in Paradise ROBIN LINDSAY WILSON (Cinnamon Press) 15. Why the Sky is Far Away MANDY HAGGITH (Red Squirrel Press) 16. Ten Minutes of Weather Away LEONIE CHARLTON (Cinnamon Press) 17. The Stuff of the Earth WILLIAM BONAR (Red Squirrel Press) 18. ARK Mike Dillon (Hybrid) 19. FAINT Lucy Dixcart (Wild Pressed Books) 20. DANGEROUS PURSUIT OF YELLOW Annie Wright ( Smokestack Books)

Eat or We Both Starve VICTORIA KENNEFICK ISBN 978 1 80017 0 70 4 £10.99 78pp. (Carcanet)

The seemingly over explored concepts of family, place and history Are once again approached in this collection. Kennefick’s eye is skewiff, surprising in its approach and offers us new versions of life to contemplate. From the opening poem where the influence of her Mother is eaten as body parts, as the Mother comments and the eating of everything the Mother is, is consumed in visceral, gory detail even. Yet the act of eating is also an acknowledgement of love. This is the great wonder of these poems. It is an uncomfortable book, exploring the edges of what it is to be alive and the frailty of that life. The poem ‘In Heptonstall’ at Sylvia Plath’s grave is one of the best written on that subject and in Kennefick there are flashes of that dark brilliance which Plath displayed. However to label her just, as influenced by Plath ,would be a disservice to Kennefick. Her poems range across what it is to be a woman, now, use popular culture as a means to explore the History of the subjugation of women on TV , in history, in life , celebrate the part played by women in all things and celebrate life whilst examining death. I could quote so much from this book that I would end up in breach of copyright. So, I’ll say this , consume this book at your leisure and then when you are full, leave for a few days and consume it again, you will be full both times and every time onward. A powerful first full collection. If you buy contemporary poetry books buy this. GOR

Backstage In Paradise/Robin Lindsay Wilson/ Cinnamon Press, 77pp/ISBN:978-1-78864-070-1/ £9.99 BM

A wide-ranging collection in subject matter, but also circling around a theme: the difficulty of finding love, being happy and being authentic in a world where we feel we must, and sometimes must, wear masks and perform. It is no accident that so many of the poems feature stage and performance references. We have a dissipated Pinocchio in “ a yachtsman's club tie and Armani melancholy”, an opera singer who is a “scream behind a curtain”, entertainers cursed by the “clicks of chewing gum”. We have an arthritic acrobat, an actor who has been “touring too long as a king who forgets his lines”, people in a theatre of fear, strippers, story tellers, ghost writers, even painters. There is someone dedicated to their art, at the cost of missing family life, who gets a final critical assessment. “...my family painted a bull's eye, pinned it secretly to my back. I was oblivious to the verdict until I heard the first gun shot.” The burdens and miseries of performance faced by the entire cast of characters, and perhaps by implication many of us, are wittily and enthusiastically explored. “the ringmaster has lost his whip, the lion tamer was mauled, the sword swallower choked...”

We have a garden for”Wagner to dream of total theatre”, people wielding papier-mache swords behind cardboard shields, “desire in cheap seats”. All the world is a stage, though you get the impression that most of the characters wish it wasn't.

Even when the subject matter seems to move elsewhere, the subject of performance is not far away. There are slaves who go to a place where they can finally sing “without a lie”. There is “an invented girl” who copied her friend's habit of sucking her teeth and spying under a fringe until “indifferent parents discussed a sudden beauty”.

The final poem, on a folk singer, seems like a final defence of performance, despite the catalogue of burdens and bad consequences. “...stories do not sleep stories never sleep they find us in the dark and make our hurt sing”.

My favourite poem was the penultimate and, perhaps not coincidentally, one of the happiest. The skating vicar in the famous painting by Raeburn is showing off on the loch and contemplating skating analogies for a forthcoming sermon. Again there is performance, but here we have someone who does seem to be themselves “joyful on a single flying skate”, a surprisingly touching scene: a poem that deserves to be known by lovers of the painting. A wry, entertaining and sometimes perceptive collection. BM

DREICH

Umbrellas of Edinburgh: Poetry and Prose Inspired by Scotland’ s Capital City, ed. by Russell Jones and Claire Askew, Shoreline of Infinity, 260 pp., 978-18381268-2-7, £9.95

Imagine, Edinburgh had been destroyed by some terrible disaster. The labyrinth of the Old Town and the pristine layout of the New, everything surrounding them – all gone. What would you do? Especially if you had spent your life there, had lost much more than a home when it disappeared? Maybe you would try to recreate the city as a virtual reality, complete with the right sounds and smells, the varying dialects of its roads, the vagaries of light at different times of day, and, of course, the rain –from incessant drizzle to merciless flood. Umbrellas of Edinburgh, surprisingly, doesn’t mention the rain that much. In all other respects, however, this anthology would be a more than suitable blueprint for an undertaking such as that outlined above. The latter forms, in fact, the premise of ‘Candlemaker Row’, a moving dystopic short story by Jane Alexander, one of more than 80 authors who contributed to this book. The editors deliberately invited a range of writers, with roots in Auld Reekie and elsewhere, to ‘reflect the diversity of Edinburgh and its people, and to shift the existing (dead white men) focus through a more contemporary lens’. The result is an impressive collection that offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the different parts –North, West, Central, South, and East as well as Ways in(to) the city. Each text takes a particular location as its starting point and runs with it into whichever direction the author chooses: the past, the present, the future, myth, space. Included are touristy places, such as the Castle or the Royal Mile (which features in Tracey S. Rosenberg’s delightfully grumpy poem ‘At the Fringe’), as well as lesser-known spots, such as the exclusive-to-certain-post codes Dean Street Gardens (see Janette Ayachi’s cleverly and subtly subversive ‘Secret Garden’). Despite the polyphony which in the best possible way characterizes this book, common themes emerge: e.g. the layers of historical change that become visible when looking hard at one particular place (Peter Mackay’ s ‘Soliton’ is a fantastic example) or the lasting significance of specific personalities or events that shaped the city’s life (as in Alice Tarbuck’ s ‘Exceptional Knowledge’ on the Witches Memorial, which contains the memorable lines ‘Burnt girls don’t need live men’s words / to speculate their good intentions’). There is, also the process of one’ s life being shaped by its urban surroundings (which ‘The Queen of Portobello’ by Hannah McCooke thematizes), or by particular socio-economic circumstances (highlighted by Douglas Bruton’ s ‘A Man’ s a Man for A’That’ told from the perspective of a homeless person). More subjects are covered, e.g. encounters in pubs, enjoying sports, arrival and departure (Waverley features in several contributions). Overall, the quality of the pieces is consistently strong, yet it is interesting to note that those which broadly fall into the genres of the fantastic/dystopic/ mythical particularly stand out. In addition to the already mentioned ‘Candlemaker Row’ that includes Jane Yolen’ s ‘Dwam’ (an enchanting take on Dean Village), ‘A Beltane Prayer’ by AJ Clay (whose protagonist seems able to discern life beyond the limits of what is commonly considered ‘real’), Keith Dumble’ s ‘Redrawing The Lines’ (with its cartomancers travelling back in time with the help of historical maps), and ‘Kelpie’ by Rachel Plummer (which turns a panorama of Oxgangs into a magical experience). One small criticism concerns the fact that a few spurious spaces have made their way into some of the pieces, and there is the odd mistake, e.g. in the author biographies attached at the end. Both are minor irritations in a book that is so well presented and lovingly illustrated by Nick Askew with black-and-white line drawings of maps showing different parts of Edinburgh as well as architectural details, and a cover with the iconic Scott Monument before a mother-ofpearl-blueish sky. To sum up: whether you are already in love with Edinburgh, or whether you are looking to discover the nooks and crannies of this old lady courted by the Firth of Forth, you will most definitely enjoy Umbrellas of Edinburgh. MIMS