Not Just Moonshine

About the Book: 

When I returned from India to Scotland, first as a child and again as an adult after eight years working in Pakistan during my twenties, the juxtaposition of these complementary emotional force-fields precipitated in me the writing, or making, of poetry. - Tessa Ransford

This book celebrates Tessa's work over the last four decades. The selection draws attention to the authenticity and emotional integrity in her writing, her lightness of touch and openness to ideas and the world around her. The development of Tessa's style and technique becomes clear through the recurrent themes of her poetry; motherhood, destiny, nature and love.

Either as an introduction to Tessa's poetry or as a culmination of years of reading her poems, Not Just Moonshine represents a substantial body of work from one of Scotland's most accomplished and engaging poets.

Reviews: 

What is striking about her development as a poet is not only the unity of her work - the 'unusual purity of vision' early identified by Alan Bold - but its continuing openness to the influences of the world around her. A. C. CLARKE

The enlightened mind at work, at both art and the problems of the world, rich with native wit, keen to connect and transform. ALI SMITH

Unshamedly intellectual in its approach, Ransford's work acknowledges no limitations of gender and is about as far as one could get from conventional expectations of 'women's poetry'. CHRISTOPHER WHYTE

About the Author:

TESSA RANSFORD was born in India, educated in Scotland and has lived all her adult life in Scotland apart from eight years working in Pakistan in the 1960s. She has published many books of poetry since the mid-70s and has been translated and published in Germany, Austria, France, Denmark and Japan.

Tessa founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984 and was director there until its establishment in new premises in 1999. She has an honorary degree for services to Scottish literature from the University of Paisley (now the University of the West of Scotland) and in 2000 she was awarded an OBE for her services to the SPL. Tessa was also founder/organiser of the School of Poets poetry workshop (1981-99) and editor of Lines Review poetry magazine for ten years. Founder of Scottish pamphlet poetry and active in Scottish PEN, she is also now the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Queen Margaret University.