Bale Fire

Description

Bale Fire is a book in three cycles. The first explores the darker side of communities in decline. The middle is a transposition of elements and characters of the Odyssey to a Scottish hill farm and its neighbours. The final part looks at the idea of harvest and loss. Jim Carruth offers here both a celebration and an elegy. The poems in this collection address the themes of our time: war, friendship, honesty, violence, humanity and love. 'These are poems that will last as long as the land and the people they grew from' - John Glenday

Jim Carruth was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, and grew up on his family's farm near Kilbarchan. His first chapbook collection Bovine Pastoral was published in 2004. Since then he has brought out a further five chapbooks and an illustrated fable. He has won both the James McCash poetry competition and the McLellan Poetry Prize and was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2009. He was chosen as one of the poets showcased in Oxford Poets 2010. In 2014 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Glasgow.

'Carruth writes with ever increasing depth about the rural way of life - its many trials and drawbacks but also its lyricism' -- Lesley Duncan * Herald * 'These are poems that will last as long as the land and the people they grew from' -- John Glenday 'This is a book of lucid and visionary power' -- Bernard O'Donoghue