Book description
Though John Glenday has long been admired for his lyrically delicate
and emotionally powerful poetry, he has remained something of a
well-kept secret. His third collection,
Grain
, makes his singular talent available to a wider audience. Sometimes
Glenday’s poems are forcefully direct; sometimes they are so quiet they
feel as if they were composed within a capacious listening, as a form of
secular prayer. Glenday’s seamless lyric can also disguise some wild and
surreal tales: the Beauty and the Beast told in reverse, a bizarre list
of new saints, or a can of peaches waiting for the invention of the
tin-opener. However, the lasting impression is of a genuinely spiritual
poet, one with the ability to turn every earthly detail towards the same
clear light. Grain
announces Glenday as an essential voice in contemporary poetry. John
Glenday was born in Broughty Ferry in 1952. His first collection, The
Apple Ghost
, won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second, Undark
, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He lives in Cawdor, and
works for NHS Highland as an addictions counsellor.
