Vagabond Poets – serie

'Fault line: 1) a line on a rock surface or the ground that traces a geological fault. 2) a divisive issue or difference of opinion that is likely to have serious consequences.' Poet Gerry Loose's fifth collection maps the 'fault line' dividing man from his environment, centring in this instance on the Faslane submarine base on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute, home of the UK's nuclear arsenal. The incongruity of the area's natural beauty coupled with weapons that could reduce it to dust at the push of a button has inspired a book-length poem that probes the delusions of the political and military classes. Loose explores the landscape surrounding Faslane, his hymns to its beauty only throwing into sharper focus its fragility. He describes a land poisoned by the 'deterrent' meant to protect it. In so doing, Loose has reinvented nature poetry for the 21st century, reconnecting with a radical tradition Burns, Byron and Shelley would have recognised and celebrated.

Throw a stone in Edinburgh or Glasgow today and you'll hit a poet. The Scottish spoken word scene has exploded, reaching a level of popularity last seen in the late 1970s, another era, coincidentally, when the issue of Scottish self-determination was in the air. A generation of poets has emerged who have grown up in an age of change, political and technological, with the internet providing them not only with new ways of sharing writing - through their websites, podcasts, Twitter - but also in some cases with a subject too. The Sound of Youngish Scotland is the first attempt to capture the spirit of a diverse scene where every poet is their own movement - from McGuire's hilarious, Beat-inflected deconstructions of sexuality to MacGillivray's mystic tales of Scottish cowboys, equal parts MacDiarmid and McCarthy; from William Letford's building-site tales to Russell Jones' sci-fi poetry. It's a scene where you are just as liable to encounter ancient gods as you are video game characters. The Sound of Youngish Scotland features forty poets, mostly under-forty who have made Scotland their home. It's a survey, a yearbook, a celebration and a promise of things to come.