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Sushi & Chips
60 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Colin Will
20 books1 followerColin Will (b. 1942) is a widely-published Scottish poet with a scientific background. He worked as Librarian at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, and lives in Dunbar. He runs workshops and writers' groups, chairs Tyne & Esk Writers and is webmaster for Poetry Scotland amd the StAnza Poetry Festival. He was Scottish Makar in 2011.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 13, 2009
Colin Will is a Board member of the Stanza Poetry Festival and web-master for Poetry Scotland. He’s also a well-known poet in Scotland and this is his fourth collection. Sushi and Chips is most notable for its close observations of nature, birds, landscapes, weather and skies. The poem SEVEN MOONS contains this wonderful description:
The fourth moon is a round of butter
in a hot harvest night, stifled by desire.
There is humour too, as in this stanza from the poem UNSEASONAL:
A resigned young gull paddles
through the shallows,
pecks without interest, wishing
it was migratory, having seen
pictures of the Maldives
in a discarded tour brochure.
This stanza not only captures the gull accurately and comically, but also makes a comment about litter, in a lyrical way that doesn’t disturb the flow of the poem, so the reader absorbs the message along with the words.
Not all the poems are specifically environmental in theme, there are poems in memoriam (FLOWERS FOR MICHAEL) and about Carstairs prison (SECURE MENTAL INSTITUTION) but all the poems are aware of their place in nature – the flowers in FLOWERS FOR MICHAEL, the cows in SECURE MENTAL INSTITUTION. Even the entertaining poem about older men’s habit of wearing beige clothes (NONDESCRIPT) is rooted in nature:
Beige would be camouflage
in a dull desert, say the Gobi
in October, where the wind from the steppes
blows beige sand over the endless plains.
Colin Will’s poetry certainly can’t be described as nondescript!
The fourth moon is a round of butter
in a hot harvest night, stifled by desire.
There is humour too, as in this stanza from the poem UNSEASONAL:
A resigned young gull paddles
through the shallows,
pecks without interest, wishing
it was migratory, having seen
pictures of the Maldives
in a discarded tour brochure.
This stanza not only captures the gull accurately and comically, but also makes a comment about litter, in a lyrical way that doesn’t disturb the flow of the poem, so the reader absorbs the message along with the words.
Not all the poems are specifically environmental in theme, there are poems in memoriam (FLOWERS FOR MICHAEL) and about Carstairs prison (SECURE MENTAL INSTITUTION) but all the poems are aware of their place in nature – the flowers in FLOWERS FOR MICHAEL, the cows in SECURE MENTAL INSTITUTION. Even the entertaining poem about older men’s habit of wearing beige clothes (NONDESCRIPT) is rooted in nature:
Beige would be camouflage
in a dull desert, say the Gobi
in October, where the wind from the steppes
blows beige sand over the endless plains.
Colin Will’s poetry certainly can’t be described as nondescript!
Displaying 1 of 1 review