The sun is out in Glasgow; an occurrence that shocks me back into noticing. I love this rain-soaked city best when its sandstone warms into the vapour of summer. Daffodils are behind us (something I welcome) and our small garden has overnight erupted into flashes of yellow and white and purple. Cherry blossom hurricanes down our street.
I’ve been thinking about fragments again. I work part-time as a bookseller and spend my days trying to persuade people away from doorstop tomes towards things a little looser. Books that tug at the formal boundaries between prose and poetry; between novel and novella. I’ve been convincing my regulars towards
and Max Porter. Convincing my historical novel lovers that might just work for them.Probably because of this, and after many a chat with
about hybridity and a rumination on the threads between forms that exist in my writing, I’ve been drawn back to writing verse and fragments. Factor in a little writerly burnout and little flashes of text are all I can muster.So here I’m introducing a new series of literary reflections on the sensory stories and material ecologies that shape my writing and sense of place. They are material coordinates from the forests, parklands and urban hinterlands of Scotland; gathered together in a loose navigation of the materials that inspire my work. They are unpolished and presented with very little context or hint at how they appear in larger works.
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