Printed on Water
New and Selected Poems
Published on 15. March 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
148 pages
978-1-905700-07-3 (ISBN)
Description
This collection of Gerry Loose's poetry selects from thirty years of work. As Peter Manson says in his introduction to the book: "Almost uniquely, Loose unites a Linnaean intoxication with names with a poet's critical sense of the limits of Language and of naming as a process of setting limits, whether on boundary-stones marked in Ogham or in the restrictions placed on human potential by military euphemism. That Loose can combine his sense of the particular with an equally clear-eyed view of the larger dimensions of landscape, history and ethics makes him a valued, wise and above all useful friend (I can barely see further than my own nose), and makes these poems - detailed on every scale - a varifocal lens for twenty-first century eyes." Gerry Loose is a poet and playwright based in Glasgow.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Exeter
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
196 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-905700-07-3 (9781905700073)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Gerry Loose was born in Ireland in 1953 and lives in Glasgow. His background is in horticulture and agriculture, and has farmed in Kerry and market-gardened both in Ireland and in Scotland, where he trained in conservation and ecology. His writing began to coincide with his other interests in the 1990s, when he was made Poet-in-Residence at Glasgow's Botanic Gardens, and he created a Poetry Garden. In 2004, as part of Entente Cordiale 100, he was sent to Montpellier, France, to fulfill a similar role in France's oldest botanic garden. In 2006 he was Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow, living at Stevenson's old house, where he was to complete a manusctript dealing with his travels in "nuclear" landscapes: the New Mexican deserts, the Mojave, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Faslane in Scotland, although entry into the latter landscape is impossible. This particular task led from a project, and the poet's own inclinations, where he brought a persimmon tree from Japan to Glasgow Botanics. The tree was grown from the seed of persimmon tree that survived the Nagasaki A-bomb. He is currently (2006-7) engaged on a project to write and respond to the geology, history, birds, plants, folklore and language of Sunart Oakwoods in Ardnamurchan (West of Scotland) for which he received a Creative Scotland award from the Scottish Arts Council. The woods were once home to communities producing charcoal, bark tan and timber, and are now the subject of a major conservation effort.