Poetry collection launch of 'What the Sea Gives' by Alan Riach at Typewronger Books.
Alan Riach is launching his new poetry collection, What the Sea Gives, at Typewronger Books on Wednesday 4 November. It's a book launch in the truest sense: the author there in person, the new work on the table, and a chance to hear some of it read aloud.
Riach describes What the Sea Gives as a collection written against a world where fake news and AI fill the airwaves. It's a premise that feels particularly current, and the poems respond by looking elsewhere for answers: in the work of art itself, and in the people closest to us — lovers, family and friends. It's a turn towards the personal and the tangible when the wider noise gets too loud.
If you're not already familiar with his work, there's a fair bit of ground to cover. Born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, in 1957, Riach studied at Cambridge and Glasgow, and spent fourteen years — from 1986 to 2000 — working at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He's as much a critic and scholar as he is a poet; he wrote Hugh MacDiarmid's Epic Poetry and Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography. These days he's Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and critics have called him a major Scottish poet.
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The launch is organised by Typewronger Books, and it runs from 7 pm to 9 pm on the night. You'll find them at 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN.
