In the Blood

Plot

In this new collection Stewart Conn returns to his Ayrshire roots, and to the upper Clyde, not just geographically but to encompass history, social change and shifts of identity. He goes on to explore other locations and preoccupations in the blood, extending his horizons but never losing touch with Scotland or his own Scottishness.Formally his poems 'have a rhythmic and metrical poise which makes them almost therapeutically pleasing to read, his command of his craft all the more impressive for being unobtrusive' (Brian McCabe, Scotland on Sunday). And his work is suffused with what Douglas Dunn in the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry calls 'his unnerving sense of the fragility of life'.