Poems – Tim Steer

Review by Brian Murray

Wilson of Garson, Manson of Quoys, Seatter of Sandside, Skinner of Gorn, Lyon of Clett, Towers of Fillets, The Mowats of Ramray and Western Horn…

That litany of names and holdings was compiled from order-books and labels, on articles for customers on Graemsay, when a youthful ‘bike and barrow boy’, son of the proprietor, Cecil Steer, speculated about the inhabitants of that island, seemingly remote from Stromness’ North End.

It was a summer holiday on Graemsay that gave form and identity to the farms, and put a face on owners whose names had been so resonant in Tim Steer’s mind for a considerable time. Forty-odd years on, the people who made him welcome are paid tribute to in a book, by the lad who worked hard for his Saturday ten bob.

Brian Murray

Brian Murray read English at Glasgow University, and was a teacher in the west of Scotland, Adviser in English for Ayrshire and a Head Teacher. With Archie Bevan he has been editing the unpublished and uncollected work of Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown – twelve volumes to date, with others projected. He is the co-author of Interrogation of Silence: The Writings of George Mackay Brown.

Andrew Greig

Andrew Greig was born in Bannockburn and brought up in Anstruther. He studied philosophy at Edinburgh University. He has written six books of poetry and five novels, including In Another Light, set in Orkney and Penang, which won the 2004 Saltire Society Book of the Year Prize. He has also written non-fiction, including climbing books and At the Loch on the Green Corrie, a book inspired by fellow-poet Norman MacCaig.

Thongs

Review by Andrew Murray Scott

‘Eroticism is, I believe, the approval of life even to the point of death,’ wrote Glasgow-born novelist Alexander Trocchi in an early student essay at Glasgow University and this statement neatly sums up the half-dozen erotic novels he wrote in Paris between 1954 and 1956.

The theme of Thongs is masochism and brutality, and how they feed off each other. Like much of Trocchi’s fiction, including his better-known novels, Cain’s Book and Young Adam, there is a central character isolated from the mores of normal society.

Andrew Murray Scott

Born in Aberdeen, Andrew Murray Scott is the author of many books of non-fiction and four novels: the prizewinning Tumulus, Estuary Blue, The Mushroom Club and, his latest, The Big J. From 1974 to 1987 he worked in scores of mainly menial jobs throughout the UK to sustain his writing, including five years working in an acute psychiatric unit in central London, and during this period built up an extensive record of publication in magazines, anthologies and newspapers. Between 1978 and 1982 he edited the literary magazine Logos. After 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist and nonfiction writer. From 1998 he was media lecturer at Dundee College and evening class tutor in Creative Writing. Since 2007, he has been a fulltime press officer, working for three SNP politicians in Dundee.

His nonfiction includes Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster, an influential biography of the postwar avant-garde writer, and he also edited a collection of Trocchi’s unpublished writings. His books on the life and times of Dundee include a popular and much-reprinted concise historical guide, a biography of 17th century Jacobite leader ‘Bonnie Dundee’ (whose letters he has collected and edited for the Scottish History Society), a post-war social history, and Dundee’s Literary Lives, a two-volume cultural history of the city, as well as a quirky ‘wee book’ of Dundee.

Andrew’s most recent venture has been the publication of a slim volume of poetry, Dancing Underwater, which appeared in September 2009.

But Andrew’s main interest is contemporary literary fiction particularly with some Scottish connection. He is a writer who likes to experiment with ways of telling stories. ‘Unless I can convince myself that each new novel is better than the last, then I won’t be able to finish it,’ he says.

His website is at www.andrewmurrayscott.com