Bones & Breath

Bones & Breath by Alexander Hutchison

People want pleasure from poetry, and in Bones & Breath - this masterly collection from Alexander Hutchison - they will find it in many forms and registers. Power and beauty, mischief and humour. Longer poems mix satire with tender affection. Others offer everything from solar loops to red-throated divers. The opening section of the book provides a scattering of poems in shorter forms, characteristically elegant, humourous and deft by turns as David Kinloch described elements of earlier work, and it contains several striking pieces, such as Gavia Stellata (smallest/and brightest/and speckled/with stars), a sharp catalogue of uncustomary characters in Tabouleh - and the informative and affecting Parable of the Willow. A longer piece in several short parts - Camp Four - is picked out next, where satire and wry speculation are combined, and in a typical positive twist at the end we get not only a hint to sort out what has gone before, but the possibility of something reverberant/resounding. Section 3 opens with Out of Magma: the Moon, a Witness a beautiful and startling account of something that happened on the slopes of Etna one winter recently - never to be forgotten by the observer, and surely affecting us all. There are, too, here several poems in Scots: building on a welcome extended in Aye, Plenty, an Mair in the opening section of the book. These are riddling, droll, foul, inventive and hilarious by turns, and the mix of native, demotic speech and sophisticated fancy takes us up and down some strange wynds and byways. There is also a longer sequence, Matter and Moisture, which sets out a view of the world - even proffering advice - in a fashion that is mischievous, focussed and beguiling all at once. Rounding things out in Section 3 are Tod - where a fox heads with real purpose into one of the Galleries off the Mound in Edinburgh - and Everything - a poem given a broad and popular endorsement from audiences of all sorts since its creation early in 2013. Section 4 is made up of a long poem Setting the Time Aside which is a tribute to and engagement with the shade of a great poet from the last century: encountered on his home patch, quizzed and reckoned with, sounded out and given tribute, before a memorable and moving rapprochement. One of the features of Bones & Breath as a collection is the range of personae - voices of birds, creatures, a tree, for example, as well as a mixed choir of accents and registers - and the oddest, and certainly the tiniest is saved for last. In Section 5, Tardigrade a real (oh, aye) microscopic animal sets out a description of itself in illuminating, if not always pleasant, detail, and in addition provides an appraisal of us: wondering, not unreasonably, how we compare and what we might become. Since it turns out the beastie has more than an edge on us in terms of its capacity to survive, what it recommends should not, perhaps, be lightly dismissed. In any event, Tardigrade offers scope - even vision - beyond our current perspectives.

Charms, incantations, classic satire, contemplation, bawdiness - rumbustious here, elegiac there - Hutchison is a poet of depth, range and magic

-- Richard Price

Has the ferocity, indignation and bite of the old flytings, even the mad word-hoard of the Admirable Urquhart of Cromarty; a Scots Martial, but with the unabashed tenderness and exactitude of John Clare describing water lilies or Gerhard in his Herbal, on the subject of the Wild Chervil. A mentor, a bristling master, and a total original.

-- August Kleinzahler

I have long been an admirer of the work of Alexander Hutchison in whose company it is always a pleasure and a privilege to spend a few hours. In his latest collection, Bones & Breath, he moves adeptly and inventively between Scots and English. His interests are wide-ranging and at times he can have you scurrying to the dictionary as in 24 and 26 to Be Precise (Polycyclic aromatics/ (like diesel engine fug)/ are hydrocarbon ancestry/ for bird and boar and bug). But you never feel he is a mere clever dick. On the contrary, one senses he is restlessly curious and views the world with the wonder of a child.

-- John Burnside * The Herald *

Alexander Hutchison brought out Scales Dog: Poems New and Selected from Salt in 2007, and earlier books include The Moon-Calf and Carbon Atom. His first collection, Deep-Tap Tree - which Richard Ellmann said was `compounded of wit and mystery' - remains in print. Born in Buckie, Hutchison lived in Glasgow, and latterly took to singing. He liked to turn up for a kickabout on a red ash pitch on Sundays. He died in November 2015.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781907773617
ISBN 10	1907773614
Title	Bones & Breath
Author	Alexander Hutchison
Series	Salt Modern Poets
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Salt Publishing
Year published	2013-10-15
Number of pages	96
Prizes	Winner of The Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award 2014 (UK)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable