Other Worlds: An Anthology of Scottish Island Poems

An island can be a source of escape or return, of solace or threat.

In Other Worlds, editor Stewart Conn has sought poems to set the readers' heart racing, through a sharpening of memory or in opening new vistas and evoking new worlds and states of mind, from Barra and Eriskay to Luing, Mingulay and the Isle of May
Inchcape and the Torren rocks to Taransay and Tiree.

In this anthology rich depictions of island flora and fauna sit alongside sightings of croft dwellers and ferry-lowpers. Expressions of affection and accounts of imprisonment and bereavement sit cheek-by-jowl with evocations of drowned sailors, corporeal and ghostly. Praise poems alternate with diary entries and holiday postcards. Others cover stretches of water: Corrievrecken, say, or the Minch. And while there is a recurring sense of island heritage, and of belonging, the poet's feet need not be actively on island soil or on the deck of a fishing-boat.