FOREWORD by Sheena Blackhall

I always think a magazine is like Noah’s Ark. When the best contributions have trotted up the gangplank, off they go to berth on the final page. As ever with Pushing Out the Boat the layout and design are of a very high standard, covering a wide range of issues. The artwork, too, features high quality work, and up and coming talent. Particularly stunning is ‘Red Robe Nu shi’ by Juno Kovaleva-Torres, a 16-year-old artist. Also noteworthy are ‘Beach Combing’ a photograph by Jacqueline Tweddle, featuring a tenacious crow, and ‘Showing off ’, an acrylic painting of 3 peacocks by Andrew Hunter. Others will have their own favourites, from the representational to the abstract.

‘Hellfire Corner’, a story by Donna Ewen, is a gripping read, in strong Scots, set in war- time Aberdeen in a fish house… incorporating tragedy shot through with comedy, a stunning contribution. She describes the North East psyche as “a strain of stoicism, which shaded into fatalism.” ‘Flight’ by Carol McKay, in English, describes with sensitivity the return of a young gay doctor to his family home with its conflicted memories. ‘Oh what a pickle’ by Alan Donaldson introduces us to a football playing rat, a delight to read and imagine. It certainly tickled my funnybone. Other short stories deal with the serious aspects of single parenthood, alcoholism, dementia and the disintegration of relationships.

Different varieties of Scots, English, and Gaelic are represented in this issue. ‘Little Stargazer’ by Sandra Millar is a vivid description of a clinically cold Caesarean section procedure, “I shed fat tears for the roughness of your birth”. In ‘States of Mind’, Andrew Barnes captures exactly the nuances and shifts of depression. Seventeen-year-old Lucy Sutherland gives us ‘I’m a poet (if nothing else)’, describing poetry as “the one thing that brings me peace”. A quirky poem is ‘Dundee Law is not a volcano’ by Karen Macfarlane. Gaelic is represented by among others Pàdraig MacAoidh in ‘The door (An doras)’, and Anne McClure in ‘Half Doric’ tackles the effect of a mixed linguistic heritage.

Open up the magazine and you’ll encounter work tackling the topics of war, bereavement, and nature. There are memories of the lost. There is the theme of impermanence, as well as the exuberant ‘Prince of Sligo’ by Ian McDonough. To quote Allen Ginsberg, “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”

Read and enjoy. You won’t regret it.

Sheena Blackhall is a writer, illustrator, traditional ballad singer and storyteller in North East Scotland. From 1998-2003 she was Creative Writing Fellow in Scots at the Elphinstone Institute. She has published four Scots novellas, fifteen short story collections and over 200 poetry collections. In 2009 she became Makar (poet laureate) for Aberdeen and the North East, and Makar for the Doric Board in 2019.