The Chagall Winnocks: with other Scots poems and ballads of Europe - Softcover

Críticas

'At stake is not just parity of poetic esteem for Scots but the status of the spoken and written word in general.' MICHAEL KERRIGAN, The Scotsman The Chagall at wrocht the winnocks in the sang at gies the haill buik its teitle wes a Jewish limner at wes born in Belarus, bade whiles in Russia, whiles in France an whiles in America, shapit the winnocks for a kirk in Germany, an nou inspeirit a braw sang frae a Scottish makar. Is thon no cosmopolitanism? Here we hae as bonnie a pruif as ye coud wiss tae finn o hou the Scottish speirit is maist national whan maist international. Scottish cultuir in its best times tuik whit it hed need o frae ither airts, an paid back the debt wi interest. Scotland mairches shouther tae shouther wi fowerteen ither kintras in Tam Hubbard's winnersome ingetherin.' J. DERRICK McCLURE, Lallans

Reseña del editor

The Chagall Winnocks [with other Scots poems and ballads of Europe.

From the forests of Finland to the plain of Lombardy, from a Scottish beach to a river island in Hungary,Tom Hubbard deploys the riches of the Scots language to explore that tragicomic space we call Europe. The poems are variously tender and mischievous in their reatment of our all-too-human foibles ...

Hubbard believes that an international outlook and a parochial one (centred, in his case, on his native Fife) can be mutually enriching. The poems in THE CHAGALL WINNOCKS draw on the folklore of many European countries, not least that of Scotland - and indeed it is a retelling of a Fife legend, which opens this collection of poems, which have grown out of his travels in, and study of, the continent as a whole.

Many of these poems tell stories, in the form of ballads or the reworking of traditional tales; conversely, this collection of poems could be seen as a series of short stories, albeit in verse form.

Hubbard's new collection is a bold statement of faith in the Scots language, and echoes Hugh MacDiarmid's remarks on 'the unique blend of the lyrical and the ludicrous' which is possible in Scots, 'its Dostoevskian debris of ideas - an inexhaustible quarry of subtle and significant sound' ('A Theory of Scots Letters').