Description
Book SynopsisIn her mid-20s, Heidi Williamson was part of a Scottish community that suffered an inconceivable tragedy, the Dunblane Primary School shooting. Those years living in the town form the focus of her third poetry collection. Through rivers, rain, wildlife and landscape, she revisits where ‘the occasional endures’ and discovers the healing properties of a beloved place: 'These small movements towards the bracken are to be reckoned with.'
Trade ReviewThrough poems of meticulous clarity and precision, Williamson charts the lives and landscapes of a tragedy and its aftermath. These are poems which honestly and respectfully explore the two worlds of humanity: the world we inhabit, its towns, fields and rivers; and, equally importantly, the emotional and spiritual context - the world which inhabits us. What binds the two together? In this powerful and moving collection, it is surely love. -- John Glenday * [on Return by Minor Road] *
Heidi Williamson’s Return by Minor Road is a wonder. Almost unbearably moving at times, these poems evoke the elemental nature of memory, our animal striving for survival, and the horror that human beings so often inflict upon each other. In three sections, the haunting of trauma, the returning in memory, and the return in actuality to honour the dead, Williamson reminds us that our most sacred responsibility is to remember. -- Dan O'Brien
A subtle, moving collection that embraces and explores the landscape cut into the heart. With profound moments and a cumulative power, the collection encapsulates how place and the past are a continuing emotional reality. -- Esther Morgan * [on Return by Minor Road] *
It is these moments of stillness in Williamson’s writing, of stasis and contemplation, of sadness and such beauty, that make her poems unforgettable. They make you return to them, to find what made you stop in that silence.... A sense of extreme loss pervades her writing, but it is counterbalanced with a lightness of touch, a fluidity and a simplicity that keeps you reading. -- Tilly Nevin * The Oxford Culture Review [on The Print Museum] *
At their heart is human tenderness and a sense of human friability... The poems display an incisive mind, a powerful imagination and an equally impressive purchase on language. -- Moniza Alvi & Paul Farley * PBS Bulletin [on Electric Shadow] *
Table of ContentsI What the river leaves behind 12 The wall 13 In a schoolroom, the woodcutter 14 Thrawn 16 Cormorant 17 Weir 18 Loch Occasional 20 What the river leaves behind 21 It’s twenty-two years ago and it’s today 22 Bracklinn Falls 23 Watching the past in the waters of Loch Earn 24 The rain in the night 25 Fugitive dust 26 Lepus timidus 27 Tharn 28 Hare II Cold spring 30 From 31 Scottish spring 32 Monochrome 33 Cold spring I 37 Calls 38 After 39 Describe 40 Flowers 41 And 42 Dumyat 43 Balquhidder 44 Aubade 45 Sheriffmuir 46 Cold spring II 49 Elegy 50 Snowdrop III The wild rain 52 When we were stone 53 Culvert 54 With a rootless lily held in front of him 56 Tonight my heart is open so hard it could shatter 57 Every day 58 Allan Water bridge 60 Facing north 61 Disappearance at six o’clock 62 Return by minor road 63 Dunblane 64 The weight of news 66 Historical markers 67 Wet morning in the cathedral square 68 A language learned abroad 69 The trees of the Trossachs 70 Self 72 Smoke 73 Dust, at intervals 74 The wild rain 75 Winter river 76 Place 79 Acknowledgements
