NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 IAN BLAKE & JUNE MILLER: BOAT SONGS A Gairloch Calendar Three Cats Press Aultgrishan IV21 2DZ UK ISBN 0 9547630 4 1 £5.55 read a review of another book by Ian Blake        Web design by  This page last updated: 10th December 2007. |
IAN BLAKE & JUNE MILLER: BOAT SONGS | |
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BOAT SONGS with drawings by June Miller and words by Ian Blake is also A GAIRLOCH CALENDAR for 2007. The calendar itself gives the months and days of the week in Gaelic but everything else is in English, including the highlighted dates
The drawings are gentle pen and ink sketches of cliffs, seagulls, mackerel and of course a little sailboat. The poem for January sets the tone: Little brown boat I call you Phedag Golden Plover in your tongue. Only by accident I found the small brass plaque beneath your thwart the day I sailed you first: Walkers, Essex. Sasunnach, from that most Saxon shore, these friendly waters never resented your invasion, little brown boat.The twelve poems carry within them some sense of the parallel life of boat and owner(s). Ring-bound, the production is such that at the end of the year, you can fold it up and keep the collection as an A4 booklet. And so the boat will live on, floating beyond the year's end past another Hogmanay! | ||
| reviewer: Mandy Smith. |