::Arc Poetry::Great Scots::

The first virtual poetry exchange between Scotland and Canada.

From April 2006 until April 2007, you’ll be treated to 12 monthly installments featuring Scottish poets introducing the work of their favourite Canadians, and Canadian poets presenting the work of their chosen Scots.

This exchange is in partnership with the Scottish Poetry Library. Explore their website at www.spl.org.uk.

Arc editor Anita Lahey introduces the series. Scottish Poetry Library director Robyn Marsack's complementary essay will complete the exchange in April 2007.

CBC article: Haggis meets bacon over poetry

April 2007 : Feature

John Burnside

John Burnside was born in 1955 and now lives in Fife. He has published ten collections of poetry, most recently The Good Neighbour (Jonathan Cape, 2005) and Selected Poems (Jonathan Cape, 2006). His seventh collection, The Asylum Dance, won the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for both the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prize. He has also published five works of fiction, including, most recently, Living Nowhere (2004), and the memoir A Lie About My Father (2006).

John Burnside at the Scottish Poetry Library

...introducing Aislinn Hunter

There is a poem of Aislinn Hunter’s entitled “Everything Lost is Found Again” that is both short enough, and deceptively simple enough for me to quote here in its entirety:

the ring that lay for months behind the dresser,
the book finally returned by a friend,

apples reborn in the boughs of an old tree
and the years appearing suddenly

ripe fruit in the open hand.

The brevity of this poem is important, because it highlights Aislinn Hunter’s gift for poetic economy (which is not to say that her poems are always short; rather, that she is one of those poets who has an uncanny ability to say exactly as much as she wants with the most economical of means). What matters more, however, is the deceptive simplicity: Hunter is forever taking us into what we think of as familiar territory—whether it be familiar images, familiar ideas, seemingly well-worn philosophical notions—and revealing what was missed, in all that supposed familiarity: what we took for granted, what we didn’t want to acknowledge, or even—as in this poem—what we gave up on too soon.

Read feature

Great Scots home

Poets introducing poets! The Scotland-Canada exchange

April 2007 : Feature

John Burnside

...introducing Aislinn Hunter

Scotland-Canada

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