Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
Thu 29 Oct · 18:30
Join SOAS Library for a poetry reading and conversation with award-winning Scottish poet and SOAS graduate Stewart Sanderson. Sanderson will read poems from his latest collection, Weathershaker , as well as sharing new work. ‘Weathershaker, of unknown meaning’ (Scottish National Dictionary) Weathershaker begins with meanings lost, recovered and imagined. Digging into the material and textual record through place names, fictional histories, translations and fragmentary texts, Sanderson’s second full-length collection speaks of the past from an unsteady present. In a small country of big winds and shifting light, where the weather itself is shaken by our actions as a species, these poems turn towards a contingent future while seeking meaning gone astray. Testimonials 'In this playful, engaging collection, Sanderson displays his natural gift for bringing the life back into words and the words back into life. His poems seethe with a mischievous intelligence – whether it’s a poem generator, a handful of secrets from the God of Silence, or the nine mysterious definitions of the eponymous Weathershaker, he fuses skill, imagination and a ruthless intelligence into something quite unforgettable.' – John Glenday 'Stewart Sanderson is one of the best younger poets writing in Scotland today and this brilliant new book demonstrates an enviable fluency across poems that deploy both formal and experimental approaches with great aplomb. Here, a firmness of utterance meets a syntactic delicacy that gives voice to the traces left by the ancient peoples who have worked and curated the land before us. In Sanderson’s hands the beauty of carefully observed natural worlds both ghosts and is ghosted by human scripts that the poet ingeniously translates and pieces together for us in acts of fine, lyrical reclamation. A stunning collection.' – David Kinloch
Not the same tradition as the lineage above — a genuinely different thread to pull, if you want one.