We’re thrilled to be publishing Deerlands by the wonderful Leonie Charlton next year (spring 2027). Leonie is a poet and writer based on Scotland’s west coast, whose book Marram was published several years ago by Sandstone Press, and it’s a real joy to now welcome her to the Tapsalteerie stable. Excitingly she’s just appeared on the BBC World Service’s programme In The Studio (available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct8l5v) so do head over to BBC sounds and give it a listen. The poem from the programme, and from the forthcoming collection too, is reproduced below. Thanks to the producers for inviting her on, and keep an eye out on our newsletter and socials for more details on Leonie’s book in the coming months!
Wild Fire
Here too are under-tangles of gorse, forgotten forests, wolf sex.
Here too are cubs dragged into the slaughtering light.
Here too the fleeting cool cast by clouds.
Here too the flames that burn bluest.
Here too councils of butterflies on hot summits.
Here too a woman flanked by horseflies at the Cailleach’s well,
here too wishes witnessed by Schiehallion and Beinn Dorain.
Here too heat haze dripping down skylines.
Here too evaporation and spilt rock.
Here too lightning strikes and scars.
Here too starved sphagnum and shrinking conversation,
a landscape howling questions of dominion:
what of drought, flood, fire; what of the bees;
what of turning all purpose to the future.
Here too all that lives on imagination’s tongue
meaning the textures of loss,
love that lands with ashes after rain.
Meaning moths returning to the black,
all that their antennae grasp.
Meaning the unnumbered paths deer remake,
the holes of light things disappear into,
the embers of lack and missing missing missing,
meaning all that the flames have consumed.
Meaning desires kindling in the aftermath,
transforming deaths into these coming days,
impalpable futures,
meaning birds seeking their way home,
meaning trusting that what needs to rise will rise,
meaning that to simplify and purify are hymns
to goddesses and gods, to adders and roots and seeds salvaged
from the yellow melancholy of smoke,
meaning the song of blue widening out and up
into whatever the night already knows
of the heart’s capacity
to absorb its own dark weight in flames.