Page 3 - POTB Issue 11

PUSHING OUT THE BOAT 11

FOREWORD

Having run a festival for over ten years, the selection of a balanced and diverse
programme of writers is never something I would underestimate. It is almost an
art in itself, as vital as the selection of images in a poem or the paring down of
narrative in a short story. Get it wrong and the whole will fall with the parts; get it
right and the selection will enhance the contents, each resonating with the other.

Enhanced by beautiful artwork, this excellent collection takes the reader through
a positive festival of forms – from poems to short stories, prose poems to found
poems – through haunting images, intriguing stories and allusive narratives –
looking intently at families, relationships and domestic life, at the natural world and
the cultivated world.

The journey takes us from an Indian cremation, past neighbours calling the
social worker, to the old Botanic Gardens Station in Glasgow. Along the way we
encounter Moebius strips, flying bananas, the daily alien, aphid sex, a night ritual
and a gentleman spider. We take in unbaked dough, zeppelins, spaces-ships and
submarines, even a really strong glue that fixes chairs to walls! We pass peacefully
by the River Don, roll place names round our tongues and study maps of the
Angus coast. All set for Pushing Out the Boat where we surely get the widest view
of great new writing and the visual arts from the North East and beyond. Anchors
aweigh!

Brian Johnstone

Brian Johnstone is Festival Consultant, StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival (Co-founder
1998; Festival Director 2001-2010).

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