DWAMS: A poetry Night with Shane Strachan

In a spectrum of voices across Scots and English, the poems in DWAMS concern themselves with the climate emergency and just transition, rising xenophobia, and with queer romance and sex, in a groundbreaking debut collection from North East Scottish writer and poet Shane Strachan.

The collection looks anew at the city of Aberdeen and the wider North East region’s industrial heritage, moving across time and place, from mountains and farmland to city and sea.

Michael Pedersen has effused "A lustrous bonfire of lexical delight, where sensual shimmers flank blazing political vigour and trenchant tenderness. DWAMS is dazzling, gritty, louche, lilted and gooey — as is true of the writer himself. Full beam fantastic."

Alan Warner has waxed lyrical about it too: I loved it: moving, angry, funny. DWAMS drills down into the profundities. While we are going to adore any collection where ‘oil squirtin,’ is rhymed with ‘Halliburton,’ here also are sudden, tender, ballad-like visions of North-East farm-life, contrasted with melancholy night-life encounters, atomised with cheeky and crafty wit. Strachan seems unique in being willing to stare into the eye of the ‘oil boom,’ and to cleverly question Mother Capitalism, in a way most others have now forgotten how to – or are too scared to. Compassionate, funny and fully encompassing his own language, it’s wonderful to have this book among us.'

All of which is to say it is VERY VERY GOOD and we can't wait to celebrate the collection in the bookshop - join us!