Art Angel : Strapline

The first publication of new work produced by the writing group facilitated by renowned Scots poet Harvey Holton as part of Dundee’s Art Angel project. On this showing a number of significant new voices are about to be heard.

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Jim Strachan was born in Dundee quite some time ago though the last twenty years or so have been spent in the artistic boiler house that is Forfar. He sings, paints, acts on stage and drives a car. He knows all there is to know about gas. He can take twelve steps in any direction and give an informed opinion of each new land; its subtleties; the very chemistry of the place. His sixty nine years on this earth have not been wasted.

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Matthew Gray’s writing is as fresh as the summer rain that drifts down from the skies over his native Dundee. He sees things in the only way he can – that of his own, Matthew Gray. His prose poems long to be heard, to be shared in comfort and warmth; kept safe beneath a Christmas tree these last forty or so years. Yet always tread warily; expect the shocks and you might find them.

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A collection of work by one of Scotland’s newest poets. Quite simply Cathy writes what she sees, a style that she has made all her own in coming to terms with modern life in the ageing land of her native Western Isles.

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Kevin McCabe lives in Dundee where he writes and performs poetry, makes films, teaches and occasionally dances; he no longer plays football. Says he – Ev dun menay hingz n meh life, sum rite, sum rang but thi best hing eh evir did wiz gitin ti ken me.

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These poems are written by a group of people with a love of the outdoors who sought to express their feelings in poetry. They meet once a month in various natural places around Broughty Ferry near Dundee, preferably in the open, but with handy bolt-holes if the weather is unkind. With an ever increasing advance of the concrete jungle they wish to raise concern about this and give a voice to local people ignored by those with power, money but little sense of beauty.

The second collection of work to come from the Friday afternoon writing workshop facilitated by renowned Scots poet Harvey Holton for the Art Angel project in Dundee. It contains new voices, voices thankfully heard once again and just as importantly, voices in transition, undergoing change. A sense of the old and the new sit comfortably side by side. This anthology is designed to give an impression of thoughts and feelings over a twenty four hour period –
Dusk
Darkness/Night
Dawn
Daylight

All profits to be donated to SANE- line.

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This, Karen Adam’s first collection, details the journey from her north east Fife home, across country to Ullapool sailing over to Stornoway and down through the Isles from Lewis to Barra returning home through Skye. The pages rejoice in friends old and new, sights seen and unseen.

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Rhona Hoggan has been writing since childhood but only now have we been given the chance to realise and wonder at the sheer power of her voice, its variety; her determination to confront all aspects of life with fairness and curiosity, to experience joy in the smallest of pleasures, to rage against the greatest of injustices. Though her name be new, her writing will endure.

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This booklet is about sand martins, but also much more.  It has been written in response to the considerable interest from local people in these little birds who fly thousands of miles to breed in Scotland each year.  It highlights that  even though we have created a safe breeding space for them on the sand dunes close to the Esplanade in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, this provides only a small part of what is necessary for them to survive each year.

Cathy Macleod was born in Singapore and brought up in the Hebrides for the most part. Having lived in various parts of Scotland she has settled in her partially ancestral home of Lewis. Her poems deal with joy, terror, hope, survival against incomprehensible odds, a random selection of therapeutic and recreational drugs, difficult lovers and loveable children.

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Poems and stories by people who lived in Royal Dundee Liff Hospital, a Victorian asylum near Dundee opened in 1884, closed in the new millennium.

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Dougald Mennie is a writer of unsurpassed restraint, deeply interested in the world around him. I was impressed by how finely researched and carefully crafted his writing is. Mennie is a master of minutiae and detail – he describes the world from a viewpoint so completely individual that it cannot help but enrich our own. His writing is imaginative and darkly optimistic; sometimes sad, often humorous, but always moving.  Now read on…

Introduction: John Glenday – February 2008
Cover art by Rosie Summerton.

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Take twenty three artists, a pregnant cat, the Westside of the Isle of Lewis and a disused school overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, mix around in a thirteen day arts residential, singing, dancing (this is true), cooking for an army of starving painters, photographers and writers on a two-ringed cooker.…now lie back and read, take time, the sound of the crashing waves on white sands, your feet caressed by the starry machair, the turquoise blue luring you under..

Twenty Three in a Bed is an anthology of poetry, short story and illustration created at the first Art Angel/Luna/W.I.A.M.H. arts residency on the Western Isles in 2004.

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Valtos is the place inside you, the warm, pink centre where you feel safe. There turquoise and green waves sometimes caress, sometimes pound a moon-white shore; where a carpet of shell sand flowers in reds, pinks, blues and gold; where skies are seemingly endless, sometimes raging in storm, sometimes delicate with the lace of cirrus cloud on high; where sea eagles soar and cry above you; where you have friends and their understanding and their love…..Valtos is the place where we dream…

Valtos Dreaming is an anthology of poetry, illustration and photography, collected throughout two long summers in the Western Isles.

Cover art by Rosie Summerton

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