Other worlds

An island can be a source of escape or return, of solace or threat. In this anthology rich depictions of island flora and fauna sit alongside sightings of croft dwellers and ferry-lowpers. Expressions of affection and accounts of imprisonment and bereavement sit cheek-by-jowl with evocations of drowned sailors, corporeal and ghostly. Praise poems alternate with diary entries and holiday postcards. Others cover stretches of water: Corrievreckan, say, or the Minch. And while there is a recurring sense of island heritage, and of belonging, the poet's feet need not be actively on island soil or on the deck of a fishing-boat. In Other Worlds editor Stewart Conn has sought poems to set readers' hearts racing through a sharpening of memory or in opening new vistas and evoking new worlds and states of mind from Orkney and Shetland to the Hebrides, to Mull and Iona, Arran and Ailsa Craig; from St Kilda and Luing to Inchcape, the Torren rocks and the Isle of May.