Search results for ""Taproot Press""

Hope Never Knew Horizon fictionalises the origins of three cultural objects associated with hope - the blue whale skeleton hung in London's Natural History Museum, Emily Dickinson's poem 'Hope is the thing with feathers', and G. F. Watts' painting 'Hope' - telling their stories from the perspective of someone marginalised from history.

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The latest book by the Sarah Maguire Prize-winning poet and translator Brian Holton, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds is a collection of Scots translations of poetry by Li Bai and Du Fu, two of the most renowned poets of Ancient China. By bringing two of the world’s great poets – from the oldest continuous literary tradition in the world – into the library of Scots writing, Brian Holton creates a text as valuable in its own way to the literary tradition as Lorimer’s wonderful ‘New Testament in Scots’. Published in stunning hardback with calligraphy by Chinese artist Chi Zhang, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds was the beneficiary of a Scottish Book Trust Scots Publication Grant.

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Relativism, the second poetry collection by Mary Ford Neal, a writer and academic from the West of Scotland, deals with themes of attachment, belonging, certainty, doubt, and our relationships to places, times, people, and ideas. Using different voices, and the lens of intimate relationships, the collection explores various stages of life (from youth to adulthood to older age) and states of self-knowledge (from confusion to enlightenment to doubt).

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Nearly 10,000 young people in Scotland are homeless. Some we see on the streets, thousands more are 'hidden' - sofa surfing, in B&Bs and living in unsafe homes. Every one of them has their own story to tell. For 30 years Rock Trust has been listening to their stories and helping them find a home. In All the Way Home, some of Scotland's leading authors have come together with young people to mark this anniversary of Rock Trust's urgent, ongoing work. Across first-hand accounts, poetry and fiction, this anthology brings to life the visible and invisible realities of home and homelessness, of family and belonging.

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Even as he grew up on the edge of Lewis, the vastness of Russia never felt too distant for Donald S Murray. Its great literary traditions were often discussed in his home village, while the political unrest and religious fervour that marked its past and present were occassionally reflected in his life on the island. Inspired by the Russian canon, the songs, verse and stories contained within these pages draw upon the experiences of his youth, shifting continually between myth and history, the absurd and moving, the satirical and everyday. Its extraordinary and diverse narratives underline the truth of its opening line: 'I can see these islands mirror Russia.'

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South-West Scotland, 2010. Air-traffic controller Helena's baby is born with unexplained paralysis. Faced with an unforgiving medical establishment, she turns to the Jewish grandmother she never knew, unfolding the past in search of answers. Berlin, 1937. Single mother and kitchen hand Dora struggles in a city growing increasingly hostile, with questions being asked of bloodlines and identity. Will she always be alone? And how long will she and her daughter be able to call this home? Based on extensive research into Eleanor Thom's lost family history, Connective Tissue is a story of migration, motherhood, and our need to know the people and places that make us.

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Originally written as a series of Facebook status updates during the recovery from Covid-19, Robert Alan Jamieson's Plague Clothes is an immediate and intimate account of one person's battle with the virus that emphasises the universality of our struggle during the pandemic. Moving seamlessly between sharp satire, confessional and philosophical enquiry, Jamieson takes aim at Western government, laments the current ecological crisis, and challenges our treatment of the so-called 'old and vulnerable', carried all the way by a rare voice of wisdom and protest at a time when ageism in society risks reducing an entire generation to statistics. Published in beautiful hardback with seventeen black and white photographs. Longlisted for the 2020 Highland Book Prize.

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A family memoir and a memorial to a short life, Joshua in the Sky tells the story of one man's attempt to come to make sense of the death of his baby nephew from a rare blood condition both share, asking the questions: whose life deserves to be remembered? And how?

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The paperback edition of The Other Side of Stone, a novella which centres around a Perthshire woollen mill, revisiting it over three centuries through characters as diverse as a 19th century stonemason and modern-day architect. The primary timeline follows Catharine, a cotton spinner from Paisley and fierce suffragette, who has followed her husband home to the village where he's taken on a job at the local mill. Both militant members of the Labour Movement, it is through her developing connection to the mill that the intricate interweaving of the other stories is revealed. While fictional, the novella draws on many real histories of local mills, and offers a fascinating insight into the long-term impact of industrialisation upon rural Scotland, as well as the struggle for women's rights.

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Walking turn-of-the-century Amsterdam with her loyal dog Bibi, Femke is many things: a drifter who spends much of her time in a drug-ridden park; a daughter of the colonial Dutch; a magnetic personality prone to petit mal seizures and destructive relationships; a liar. This is her story. After being drawn into the unsettling world of a British filmmaker and his wife, she meets and befriends an ageing poet, Michiel de Koning, and tries to nurse him back to health. As their friendship develops, De Koning's mysterious past - involving the poet and murderer Gerrit Achterberg - leads Femke on a journey to discover the identity of De Koning's great love and inspiration, 'M'. This pursuit of the truth reveals the uncertainties of her own past in a world of unreliable listeners. Written with a clear poetic sensibility and strong echoes of European Modernism, Femke is a celebration of the stories we tell ourselves and one another, the elusiveness of our fleeting connections, and the complex power dynamics between poet and muse.

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Isobel Wylie Hutchison was many things: a botanist, traveller, poet and artist. She travelled solo throughout the arctic collecting plant samples, wrote and published extensive volumes of essays and poetry, and was - in short - one of the most remarkable Scottish figures of her time. However, since her death in 1982 her legacy has been forgotten compared with her male counterparts. Now Isobel can speak for herself again. While better known for her solo journeys across the Arctic, these essays detail Isobel's journeys across Scotland, including visits to Skye, John O' Groats and the various literary shrines across the country. Written with characteristic wit and a keen interest in both science and myth and folklore, the essays serve as important cultural markers not just of Scotland as it was and has developed, but of a woman's experience of travelling alone and a testament to the importance of cultural connection, exploration and communication.

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