Blood Salt Spring
The Debut Collection from Edinburgh's New Makar
From Hannah Lavery, soon to be appointed Edinburgh’s new Makar.
In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers?
Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are – exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020 but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars.
Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined.
In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring – into hope.
Hannah Lavery is a published poet and award-winning playwright and performer, andsoon to be appointed Edinburgh’s new Makar. Her poetry has been published by Gutter, the Scotsman and others. Her first pamphlet of short fiction, Rocket Girls, was published by Postbox Press (2018) and her poetry pamphlet, Finding Seaglass: Poems from The Drift was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press (2019). She has also been a featured poet at many spoken word and poetry nights including Neu! Reekie!, Sonnet Youth, Rally and Broad, Flint and Pitch and Loud Poets, and festivals including, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Stanza, Solas, Kelburn Garden Party, and Electric Fields.
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