Laura T. Fyfe and Friends

Charged with sensuality, spirituality and sass, Endless Blue is a vivid exploration of the space between sky and water, the horizon line between the ephemeral and the eternal. These expansive poems encapsulate Laura Fyfe’s term as Stirling Makar, considerably broadening her poetic range while remaining firmly grounded in her working-class roots.

Laura T. Fyfe is a poet and writer who lives in river deep, mountain high Stirlingshire. She facilitates writing workshops and communities across Scotland, and supports writers worldwide.

“Endless Blue takes us from the moment a fossil footprint is formed, through the very different but almost complementary constructions of female and male identities, then oot into the endlessnesses hinted at in its title. These are poems open equally to deep time and spatial vastness. However, the key sense throughout is of a freedom beyond the limits of those identities we impose on ourselves. The pamphlet positions its ain freedoms in particularities of place, perception, and memory: those points at which the world sees us as much as we see it, and sees us whole.”
– W.N. Herbert

“Laura Fyfe’s language spurs and soars into a tender blue, sometimes as ‘gentle / as a moth wing / holds air’, and sometimes with biting scars, like ‘watermark lines around our bruises’. In her poetry, textured blue-grey memory glides between form and formlessness: ‘seagulls drift above the memory of endless summer’ and ‘memories like pipe-smoke’ are inhaled in their powdery, heavy, black materiality. As one scales and crests this pamphlet, one finds in it audacious hope, soft wisdom, and stunning Scottish landscapes come to life. Her ‘Slow-Beating Heart’ is a fitting tribute to Stirlingshire from its wonderful Makar, and poems like In Concert and Taps Aff will sound stunningly incantatory to global readers reading Scots poetry. From the blue of the innermost eye of a fire to that of slowly healing bruises, Endless Blue is a fantastic read for the diverse shades of blue it has to offer.”
– Nikita Parik, Charles Wallace Fellow, Author

“Laura Fyfe is a writer alert to twenty-first century challenges and the power of the environment, language and human connection to answer them. Against ‘the tyranny of proper nouns’ and ‘the weight of hope’, Endless Blue finds healing in earthiness and community, ‘Nourishment / in dancing with tides.’ Its vernacular grit and playfulness with form create a lively, absorbing experience.”
– John McCullough

Helen Boden is a poet, literature professional and socially engaged artist based on the edge of Edinburgh. Her debut collection A Landscape To Figure In was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2021. Widely published in poetry magazines and anthologies, and a well-known collaborator with visual artists, she featured in the SPL’s Best Scottish Poems last year. She has recently completed a new sequence about the course of the Braid Burn for ArtWalkPorty.

CD Boyland is a [d]eaf poet, visual poet and editor who lives in Cumbernauld near Glasgow. His first, full-length collection of poems ('Mephistopheles') was recently published by Blue Diode in December, 2023. He has also published pamphlets ('User Stories'; Stewed Rhubarb, 2020 and 'Vessel'; Red Squirrel, 2022) alongside collections of visual/experimental work. Together with artist/poet, Julie Laing, he curates 'Off-page', an ongoing series of anthology/exhibitions centering visual poetry and the poetic visual (@offpagevispo). He curates 'Off-page', an ongoing series of anthology/exhibitions centering visual poetry and the poetic visual (@offpagevispo). He is a Trustee of the Edwin Morgan Trust and also co-edits The Glasgow Review of Books.

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