A woman sunbathing on a demolition site in Bridgeton. Two women in a punch up in Glasgow's West End. A young mother breast-feeding in an art gallery. A working man stepping off a tenement roof on a snowy morning. City streets. Country lanes. Not to mention Hugh MacDiarmid's dirty socks. Or that poem with the intriguing title, 'V****A'.
A woman sunbathing on a demolition site in Bridgeton. Two women in a punch up in Glasgow's West End. A young mother breast-feeding in an art gallery. A working man stepping off a tenement roof on a snowy morning. City streets. Country lanes. A letter to Sappho. A ticking off for Nietszche. Not to mention Hugh MacDiarmid's dirty socks. Or that poem with the intriguing title, 'V****A'.
It catches all the qualities of Gibson's best writing. Metaphorically juxtaposing the skeletons in her cupboard with the ghosts in her attic Gibson is a joy to read. - HAYDEN MURPHY, THE NATIONAL
Magi Gibson grew up in a small town near Glasgow. As the coal pits closed down her horizons expanded, and she eventually realized it was okay for the local slater's daughter to write as well as read poetry. She was joint winner of the Scotland on Sunday/Women 2000 Poetry Prize. Her first collection was nominated for a Saltire Best First Book Award. Her poems have been widely published including in Modern Scottish Women Poets (Canongate), Scottish Love Poems (Canongate), The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, (Edinburgh University Press), New Writing Scotland, and other anthologies. She has held several Scottish Arts Council Fellowships and one Royal Literary Fund Fellowship. She held a writing residency with the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, working on the much-praised Rebelland exhibition, and was Reader in Residence with Glasgow Women's Library. She was the first Makar of the City of Stirling in 500 years. Several poetry collections, children's novels, and a couple of plays later, she still dreams of new horizons. And no way would she ever wash Hugh MacDiarmid's Socks.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Author's Preface
V****A
African Slave Girl in Glasgow
Woman Sunbathing in Bridgeton
Swansong
The Women's Rural Talk
Cleaning Woman
Miners' Daughters
Dear Sappho
Mother and Child
Timepiece
Under the silken sky
Hilda Goldwag's Mirth
That Night...
Visiting Arran with my mother
My Mother's Funeral
Metamorphic
My Father, Dreaming
Golden Daffodils
Hospice Rules
Recovery Room
Reflections on the River Loing
Early Morning Train to Inverness
The art of fishing
Intruder
Danse Macabre
creative writing
Onceuponadream
An Education
Why I do not take your advice
Song of the Anglerfish
Strange Fish
`You all die at fifteen,' said Diderot
Peckin Order
The Boy with the Gun
City Surprise
West End, Friday Night
Barflower
Gift
Lipstick
Liberation of Belsen
loose woman song
My Neighbour
`Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius' Nietzsche
the poem he wrote last night
Och Scotland!
Who will mourn the black crows?
Beast
I would like to make this poem
Washing Hugh MacDiarmid's Socks
Off Balance