Following the Luath 100 Favourite Scottish Poems format, 100 Favourite Scottish Love Poems specialises and triumphs. This anthology confronts the nature of love across Scotland, with a generous memory for old favourites and a winning embrace
of new finds. From love making in St Kilda to heartbreak in Holland, editor Stewart Conn does away with bald themes; with the lovelorn and loved up sharing close quarters, love's wonderful grimness is never underestimated.
Also try: 100 Favourite Scottish Poems ed Stewart Conn
STATIONS OF THE HEART
Raymond Friel
Salt, £12.99This is an able follow-up to Friel's first and last collection, Seeing The River (Polygon, 1995), and is predicated upon the same "stupendous monotony of the mystery". Broadly concerning the search for home, his poems find their muse in small gestures and familiar moments. Family is the key station en route to contentment – his son's birth, his parents' thermos, gently and nostalgically rendered – but Friel's finest moments come with the less monumental – the sighting of "masses of bruised clouds" can bring pause for pleasure.
Also try: Drives by Leontia Flynn
A LITTLE BOOK OF HOURS
John F Deane
Carcanet, £9.95Starting with John Donne's 'No man Is An Island' and St Paul's letter to the Corinthians, Deane sets out to create "space for the study of the metaphysics of humanness". Wearing its faith and intellect earnestly, A Little Book Of Hours conveys impassioned expression in a mellifluous voice, creating a fusion of spirituality and mundanity. By rounding up a Noah's Ark of all things bright and beautiful, and many things bleak and wan, Deane's poetry has the integrity and musicality to let it speak to us as we wish it to.
Also try: The Half-Healed by Michael Symmons Roberts
The full article contains 319 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
