Tuesday 27th May 2014; 7pm to 8.30pm,
CCA Club Room, Glasgow:
‘The Fields of War’ with Chrys Salt & Brian Johnstone
This event marks the centenary of the First World War; its broad sweep of contemporary poetry, with counterpointing prose, ranges across the century (from 1914 to the present day) as two award-winning poets combine to commemorate the conflicts of the past one hundred years.
Chrys Salt reads from her collection, Home Front/Front Line (Roncadora, 2013). A dialogue with her son (a Territorial Army paratrooper who was mobilised to Iraq in 2003, and spent five months in action), the poems are interposed with extracts of his letters from the front. Published to mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion, “it is a brave, beautiful, and deeply unsettling way of [looking] again at long familiar events, as though the mother of Wilfred Owen or Edward Thomas had kept a verse diary during the First World War” (Andy Croft, Morning Star).
Reciting from The Book of Belongings (Arc, 2009) and Dry Stone Work (Arc, forthcoming 2014), Brian Johnstone examines aspects of both world wars and touches on the campaigns in Vietnam, Cyprus, the Falklands, and Yugoslavia. His poetry has been described as “a revelation” (Stephen Lackaye, Edinburgh Review), as an “eloquent mapping of personal and social terrain” (Sarah Corbett, Hebden Bridge Books of the Month), and as “practising a taut economy that gives every word weight” (Edmund Prestwich, Manchester Review). A highly evocative reader of his work, Brian brings his poetic eye to bear on war’s consequences in this centenary year.
Tickets: £6 (£3 for concessions). Free to SWC members.
