Washing Hugh McDiarmid's Socks

About the Book: 

Magi Gibson, a prize-winning poet, explores what it is to be a fully engaged human in today’s confusing world. These poems are insightful, joyful, witty, tender and yes, at times, rude.

A woman sunbathing on a demolition site in Bridgeton. Two women in a punch up in Glasgow’s West End. A young mother breast-feeding in an art gallery. A working man stepping off a tenement roof on a snowy morning. City streets. Country lanes. A letter to Sappho. A ticking off for Nietszche. Not to mention Hugh MacDiarmid’s dirty socks. Or that poem with the intriguing title, 'V****A'.

Reviews: 

It catches all the qualities of Gibson’s best writing. Metaphorically juxtaposing the skeletons in her cupboard with the ghosts in her attic Gibson is a joy to read. HAYDEN MURPHY, THE NATIONAL

About the Author:

MAGI GIBSON grew up in a small town near Glasgow. As the coal pits closed down her horizons expanded, and she eventually realized it was okay for the local slater’s daughter to write as well as read poetry. She was joint winner of the Scotland on Sunday/Women 2000 Poetry Prize. Her first collection was nominated for a Saltire Best First Book Award. Her poems have been widely published including in Modern Scottish Women Poets (Canongate), Scottish Love Poems (Canongate), The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, (Edinburgh University Press), New Writing Scotland, and other anthologies. She has held several Scottish Arts Council Fellowships and one Royal Literary Fund Fellowship. She held a writing residency with the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, working on the much-praised Rebelland exhibition, and was Reader in Residence with Glasgow Women’s Library. She was the first Makar of the City of Stirling in 500 years. Several poetry collections, children’s novels, and a couple of plays later, she still dreams of new horizons. And no way would she ever wash Hugh MacDiarmid’s Socks.