The Rooftop Busker

New Writing Scotland #33

by Gerry Cambridge (Editor), Diana Hendry (Editor), Kate Tough (Contributor)

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 is the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, and includes new work from fifty-two authors - some award-winning and internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

182 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

About the author

Gerry Cambridge lives in Ayr, Scotland. He co-edits Spectrum. His six books of poetry include Notes for Lighting a Fire (2012) and The Light Acknowledgers & Other Poems (2019), both from HappenStance Press. He founded The Dark Horse, Scotland’s leading poetry journal, in 1995. He is also an essayist, print designer, typographer, and former nature photographer. He continued to live in a caravan in Ayrshire, adjacent to the one mentioned in this account, from 1977–1997, then left to become Brownsbank Fellow in MacDiarmid’s former home for 1997–1999. As a critic he contributed ten essays to the four-volume Oxford Encyclopaedia of American Literature (2004) and wrote nine 12,000-word monograph essays for the Gale/Charles Scribner’s Sons textbook series British Writers and American Writers between 2000 and 2006. In his mid-twenties he was, as far as he knows, one of the youngest-ever regular freelancers—specialising in nature articles—for the UK edition of The Reader’s Digest magazine, which at the time (the 1980s) had a monthly circulation of 1.5 million copies. An Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature, he received a Cholmondeley Award for his poetry, administered by the Society of Authors in London, in June 2024. The Ayrshire Nestling is his first book of creative prose.

Reviews

[Ali George]

I can't fairly give this a star rating - it's a collection of poetry and short stories, some of which I really liked and some of which left me cold. Stand out stories for me included The Tooth by Brian Hamill which is quite bleak and has some visceral imagery, The Mutable Light by Vicki Jarrett, Hurrying Handbags to Kyleakin by Ian Madden, The Ghost at Helly's Wake by Rose Ruane which had an interesting take on school friendships, Homer by Karen Thirkell which is just a well put together story, and The Order of Things by Lynnda Wardle. There is also a lot of poetry in there, of which The Missus by Kate Tough was the only poem in there that made me stop and think.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some gems of current Scottish writing in here, including: Dan Spencer's deceptively affecting 'Stream', Eunice Buchanan's absurdly smart and funny 'Eric' and the incredible poem from Christopher Whyte about memory and conflicted mother-love, 'At a Grave That Isna Thare'. A long poem has to be absolutely cracking to justify its length and i didn't want this one to end... some feat.