Combining pressing geopolitical urgency with a subtle and gentle lyricism, as we have come to expect from Gerry Loose, his new book ranges wide, broad and deep, to settle back at home in the Scotland reinhabited by Sweeney the king, deranged and fleeing humanity, and a lilting nine-day walk from coast to coast across Scotland’s heartland.
With narratives from Nuremberg, setting city and individual citizens against a long and terrible past, and with stories of an island life – not as insular as might be imagined – in a Finland where anything or nothing may happen, with or without a Luger pistol, this book has a quiet insistence on personal experience. A unique take on the naming of endangered species here could be seen as a metaphor for what the ordinary people in these pages – and their would-be leaders – might in turn become.
Expressive and formally inventive, Loose’s seventh full collection night exposures lives right into its title: shining light into murky and overlooked corners which some might wish to be kept in the dark.
 | Gerry LooseGerry Loose is a poet whose work is found inscribed in galleries, hospitals, Botanic Gardens and wild places, as well as in his many books. He is the recipient of a Creative Scotland Award, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, a Kone Foundation Award and a Hermann Kesten Stipendium, among others |
