Suitcase

Suitcase is Kevin’s most recent pamphlet published by 4word. Order via 4word

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Thanks to Mark Connors for his encouraging review, which can be read here

Thanks to Joe Williams and Linda Marshall for their insightful reviews. They can be read here

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Kevin Reid’s poems view the world from an angle which renews and revitalizes the everyday. Here pigeons have ‘tones of stone’ and ‘the devil in your feet’. These are tender poems alert to the way the objects that surround us can summon our greatest losses. ‘the twitch of twigged words / woven into chicken wire’ one speaker notes before turning to ‘Your easel: a girl in a white dress, / her unfinished wave’. Careful and evocative, Reid’s lines shimmer with the unspoken.

– John McCullough

John’s latest award winning collection Reckless Paper Birds can be purchased here

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These poems are the real thing. gritty, honest, vernacular, funny but also at times startlingly moving. Reid writes equally movingly about a mother’s deathbed (he wasn’t there. He was away ‘being a fuckin’ artist’) or a daughter’s move to Glasgow. The loss which he carries with him to a new life in Athens is so skilfully evoked you can taste it long after you close this lovely collection.

– Carole Bromley

Purchase Carole’s latest pamphlet Sodium 136 and pre-order her new collection The Peregrine Falcons of York Minster from here

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How long has it been since a Scottish poet wrote at any length about Greece? By my reckoning it was Alexander Scott in 1971 with his pamphlet Greek Fire. Even then, he wrote as a tourist and many of the poems were damp squibs about retsina tasting worse than hemlock. Here, Kevin Reid tackles the lot of the self-imposed exile, trying to outrun grief and the grim legacy of the past with all its bigotries and religious baggage, only to have to confront it finally in poetry. Reid shows us that little worthwhile is come by easily, that it is the struggle to live a truthful and meaningful life that is worth all the hardship.

– Richie McCaffery

Purchase Richie’s latest pamphlet First Hare here

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What I’m loving is how the poems start of seemingly simple, beautifully set out on the page, and as you read, the emotional intensity mounts. So many of them have bowled me over –– by their beauty and their profundity. But the poet somehow takes care of the reader, there’s no bashing us over the head –– Reid gets to the truth of things while wrapping us in a warm shawl. And the poems leave their mark. These poems are tender, honest and importantly, unafraid.

– Ali Whitelock

Read about and purchase Ali’s latest poetry collection the lactic acid in the calves of your despair here