Fire-Penny

Snapshot reconstructions of life on Scotland's remote St Kilda island - ancestral home of the McQueens - open this tenth collection of poetry from Cilla McQueen. The spare life in this place of birds and sea and weather leads into a new set of poems from the poet's Bluff home, quiet observations on friends and animals, memories and dreams, and weather. Many of the reflective poems are conversational in style; one poem is written in the form of a play, and another appears at first to be a dictionary definition. Even the simplest of topics, such as eating cake or meeting a newborn baby, are taken by McQueen and transformed into thoughtful works. The collection closes with a section entitled A Widow's Songs, in which the poet mourns her late partner.