Envy the Seasons by Hamish Whyte, Iain Maloney & James McGonigal

Description

Envy the Seasons brings together haiku from three acclaimed Scottish writers – Hamish Whyte, Iain Maloney and James McGonigal. These affirming poems of everyday life and nature are variously
caught through the lens of the French poet Paul Bergèse (Hamish Whyte), on a pilgrimage to the snows of Bennachie from Japan (Iain Maloney), and in Scots via the Spanish surrealist Ramón Gómez de la Serna (James McGonigal).

Moving, illuminating, and approachable, these haiku are best enjoyed “like you drink / your coffee / one sip / no more – / then you get it.”

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Hamish Whyte is an Edinburgh-based poet, editor and publisher. Paper Cut (2020) is his fourth collection from Shoestring Press. He runs the award-winning Mariscat Press and has edited many anthologies of
Scottish literature, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow Poems1630-1990, An Arran Anthology, Kin: Scottish Poems about Family and Scottish Cats. In 2020 he edited Edwin Morgan’s Centenary Selected Poems for Carcanet Press. Also in 2020 HappenStance Press published a memoir, Morgan and Me, and have just brought out his Testimonies (Scotland 1623-1965), poems based on reports of Scottish trials.

Originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, Iain Maloney has published three novels, First Time Solo, Silma Hill, and In The Shadow of Piper Alpha; a novella, Life is Elsewhere/Burn Your Flags; the memoir The Only Gaijin in the Village, as well as Fractures, his poetry collection on Tapsalteerie. In 2023 he will publish The Lights of Japan, a travelogue around the lighthouses of Japan built by Scottish engineer Richard Henry Brunton. He also edited the art/fiction collection In the Empty Places. He lives in Japan where he lectures on literature and creative writing. He has been shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize and the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and can be found at www.iainmaloney.substack.com and @iainmaloney

James McGonigal is a poet and editor from Dumfries, with ancestral connections to Aberdeenshire and Ulster. Mariscat Press published four pamphlets of his work, including the award-winning Passage/An
Pasaíste (2004) and Cloud Pibroch (2010). Red Squirrel Press published The Camphill Wren (2016) and In Good Time (2020). His biography Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan (Sandstone Press, 2012)
was followed by co-edited selections of the poet’s letters (The Midnight Letterbox, Carcanet Press, 2015) and uncollected prose: In Touch With Language (Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2020).