Autumn 2019

JACKIE KAY and KATE SWAN on the work of MARGARET TAIT, DONALD S. MURRAY at Achanalt, IAN TALLACH gets on his bike, LEONIE CHARLTON pursues salmon, SANDSTONE PRESS and its road to the International Man-Booker, SHANE STRACHAN in a Doric dystopia, HELEN ALLISON and others review new poetry collections, PLUS details of our amazing new website.

Pronn-fhicsean le FEARGHAS MacFHIONNLAIGH; villanelle le NIALL O’GALLAGHER agus sgrìobhadh ùr eile le Maoilios Caimbeul, Liam Alastair Crouse, Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain, Deborah Moffatt agus Lisa NicDhòmhnaill

Front cover image
Detail from Blaven and Loch Slapin by Jenny McLaren, painted in acrylic ink and watercolour on an old Geological Survey map. Currently on display at the Castle Gallery, Inverness, which will host an exhibition of new work by Jenny in May 2020.  

Editorial

I’ll admit it: I’m hooked on the look, smell and feel of newsprint. It’s been that way since I was a boy, taken by my father – a journalist at Glasgow’s Evening Times – to visit the old Mitchell Lane offices at night. The film-noir lighting seemed to heighten the senses, make the mystery of words made print even greater.

I hope that’s part of the pleasure of Northwords Now for readers: the heft of a new edition. But I’m also aware of the power of online presence and the usefulness of digital archives. That’s why, with the backing of the Northwords Now board and extra support from Creative Scotland and Bòrd na Gaidhlig, we’re launching a new-look website. Constructed by the tech wizards of Plexus in deepest Cromarty (thank you, in particular, Garve, Dave and Colin) this – as before – has the current issue online, but with a much-expanded back catalogue of back issues as .pdfs.

For the contents of recent issues, you can now search on author name to point you to all the Northwords Now work by that person in the last few years. We’ll also expand online audio-visual content as resources allow. As we continue to add to this archive, we hope it will become an increasingly useful resource for readers, writers, teachers and researchers interested in contemporary writing in all of Scotland’s languages.     All this – and newsprint too. Enjoy.

Kenny Taylor, Editor