Gerda Stevenson Collection

I’m relieved to find such things are there, 
in spite of hunger and carnage
under the same moon, and my place 
in their terrible chain; 
glad that my mother’s hands, 
after long years of sustaining us all, 
will place on her table, once again, 
her annual offerings at tomorrow’s feast. 

From Late Night Christmas Shopping

Tomorrow’s Feast is Stevenson’s third poetry collection and reflects the challenges of today’s world. At the forefront of the poet’s consciousness here is the legacy faced by the next generation. In many ways, as the title implies, the book is a tribute to youth. Its scope is wide and deep, profoundly personal as well as political, employing a range of poetic forms, including a virtuosic libretto in verse, a contemporary retelling of Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner set during the refugee crisis. 

Reviews: 

A collection by Gerda Stevenson is always a literary event of significance. Her poems are vigilant, prudent, and lucid, full of lyricism and wit. Her Mariner, included here, is a brilliant libretto. There is both intimacy and intricacy in equal measure, with her vast sweep of vision. She is a visionary who sings the world alive. Between grace and grit, Scots and Gaelic echoes, there is breathless brio as we bear witness to her stirring souls with awe and awakening. She is indeed a ‘remembrancer’ (unlike the Westminster sort), of the highest order – of poets worldwide. MENNA ELFYN

A beautiful collection – moving, thoughtful, challenging (and occasionally funny!), altogether so powerful DR MICHEL BRYNE, University of Glasgow.

Tomorrow’s Feast is a collection of striking compassion. Stevenson’s previous collection, Quines, had a particular agenda in celebrating the women of Scotland; this collection by contrast shows what moves her to poetry in her own times. While recognising our place in the ‘terrible chain’ of atrocities enacted on humanity and nature, Tomorrow’s Feast, as the title implies, is entirely life-affirming, finding grace in the most extreme situations. Stevenson uses a range of different voices, always pitch-perfect. A tight weaving of scenes lets images take on symbolic weight. There is also a delight in words, and a streak of black humour. The libretto Mariner, based on Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, held me spellbound in the way it echoes that great poem in narrative, rhythm and vocabulary while giving it a new reading as a plea for justice, for humanity and nature in the face of our current refugee and ecological crisis. It is a tour de force. MEG BATEMAN.

I was mesmerized by the depth and breadth of Tomorrow’s Feast. Reading this poignant commentary on life in today’s world, Stevenson’s third collection, I was yet again enthralled by how she links seamlessly our past with our present, employing different poetic formats such as Haiku to sprechgesang in various languages from English, Scots and Gaelic in striking poetry. Although her poems face head on many challenges of life in today’s world – from Covid 19 to climate change or the war in Syria – the collection leaves the reader with an infinitely hopeful note. The poems subtly do something else as well – they educate the reader in art and literary history, brilliantly executed in the verse libretto retelling Samuel Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. DR SYLVIA WARNECKE, The Open University.

This volume of poetry is fabulous. It is rich with language, compassion, love and joy, sadness and grief. It is all life. Written by writer actress and director Gerda Stevenson who's voice can be heard as you read it. Thoroughly recommended! SCOTTIE ANDERSON

The twelve stories in Letting Go take us on a journey through landscape, language and turbulent times, from the mid-19th century to the present day, and into the future. Stevenson’s array of characters from many walks of life and nationalities – including a traveller, a wood carver, chicken farm workers, a nurse, an architect and a magician – meet and part, some becoming reacquainted.

Themes exploring identity, creativity and the environment, echo and connect throughout the different narratives, sometimes carried in snatches of song. The author leads us outward from her native Scottish Borders to Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Gàidhealtachd, south to England, across the Atlantic to Apartheid South Africa and, finally, to the melting Arctic.

Reviews:

What is instantly striking – apart from the breathtaking, page-turning fluency with which Stevenson writes both in English, and in a powerful and lyrical Border Scots – is how many of the stories are explicitly about love; both the radical, life-changing force of romantic and sexual love, and the equal weight of love that binds a woman to a grown child with special needs, and special insights. JOYCE MCMILLAN, THE SCOTSMAN

It’s an entertaining read […] Short and sweet! SCOTTISH FIELD

Letting Go is a fine collection of stories that deserve to be widely read. Stevenson has previously shown how good a poet she is and this collection shows how equally good she is at writing prose.  CULTURE MATTERS

An inspiring and thought-provoking book. DR SYLVIA WARNECKE, THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

Quines: Poems in tribute to women of Scotland gives voice to 57 women from BC to the 21st century. The ‘voices’ of the poems range from those of the women featured, to inanimate objects – queens, politicians, a ship, a fish gutter, scientists, a mountain, sportswomen (including a whole football team) and many more.  QUINES celebrates the richly diverse contribution women have made to Scottish history and society.

Reviews:

Quines is a vivid explosion of thought, description and bold opinion, clothing Scots history at last with the myriad contribution of its women. Gerda Stevenson personifies figures often left as dry as dust and reinstates the dignity and complexity of female characters who have helped shape society and reach across the centuries to modern women today. Her use of Scots language and Gaelic phrasing adds authenticity and smeddum. This is a wonderful, life-affirming book. LESLEY RIDDOCH

Clutch this book of wondrous odes to your bosom – it will gladden your heart, sadden it but also fill you with pride. What women they were that birthed our Scottish nation and here they are, exquisitely brought to vibrant life, by that contemporary cultural quine, Gerda Stevenson. BARONESS HELENA KENNEDY QC

There’s a telling verse about Jesus in Mark’s gospel: ‘Where did this man get all this? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ The italics tell the story. The sisters are not named! And rarely have been in a history written by men. In this piercingly challenging and beautiful collection by Gerda Stevenson they are being named at last. And reading it bites the heart. RICHARD HOLLOWAY