Brae Editions The Tiny Talent: selected poems by Joan Ure A Centenary book launch

The Tiny Talent: selected poems by Joan Ure, co-edited by Richie McCaffery and Alistair Peebles, with a foreword by Alasdair Gray, was published in November by Brae Editions of Orkney.

The launch in her home city of this new selection of her poetry features readings by Jan McDonald and Richie McCaffery, and takes place in her centenary year. Unfairly neglected since her death in 1978, playwright and poet Joan Ure is the fourth and certainly the least well-known of the remarkable and varied group of Scottish literary centenarians celebrated in 2018—the others being WS Graham of Greenock, Muriel Spark of Edinburgh and Margaret Tait of Kirkwall. Ure's two collections of plays are out of print, and this is the first occasion on which her poetry has appeared between its own covers. Alasdair Gray, a friend and long-standing supporter is expected to attend the event, as are several others who knew her well. Courageous, beautiful, delicate and determined, 'there was nobody like her'. Her poetry reads today with its vigour, wit and irony—and to an extent, for good or ill, its subject matter—still intact. Publication has been supported with a grant from Creative Scotland.