tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post2063356523823602709..comments2024-01-23T18:21:17.066+00:00Comments on Surroundings: Best Scottish Poems 2007Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046788730174617923noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-84766543224099919942007-12-06T14:33:00.000+00:002007-12-06T14:33:00.000+00:00I thought 'Lookout' was OK, but I agree with you t...I thought 'Lookout' was OK, but I agree with you that last year's 'Atheist Lighting a Candle' was far superior - "spot on," as 2006 editor Janice Galloway puts it.Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17046788730174617923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-12604455497356367132007-12-06T10:12:00.000+00:002007-12-06T10:12:00.000+00:00Ah... this features, as last year, a poem by Franc...Ah... this features, as last year, a poem by Frances Leviston... although I'm not so sure about 'Lookout' (as compared with the brilliant 'Atheist Lighting a Candle'). <BR/><BR/>The poem interests me personally, however, as I sent some poems to Frances a while before this appeared, and one of these was 'Filter', which later appeared in Poetry Review. It featured the line 'its forty-one million square miles of swallowing depression', which whether consciously or not, reforms itself in 'Lookout' as 'its million-galloned grief'. Added to this is the fact that the poem I coincidentally published in the same issue of The Red Wheelbarrow as 'Lookout' was 'S.O.S': 'There's something in the waves rise and fall / that makes me sure I've been here before. // Perhaps in others ink as poets tend to borrow it...'<BR/>How did I know? Well, that would be telling... ;)<BR/><BR/>Observations aside, though, and I very much like John Burnside's 'Afterlife' snippet.Ben Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11077824416777371117noreply@blogger.com