Scottish Writers' Centre Book Launch: An Oakwoods Almanac by Gerry Loose

The launch of An Oakwoods Almanac by Gerry Loose, with Photographs by Morven Gregor.

Deliberately and quietly, Gerry Loose has spent years walking the woodlands to observe the poetry of clouds and winds; to cheer the dance of gnats and moths, to listen intently to the musical compositions of wrens and ravens.

An Almanac of two different woodlands, one in the Scottish west Highlands and one on Finland’s Baltic coast, it celebrates those woodlands and their human lives. With shipping and fishing reports of monks and witches landed, sea eagles and night walking, the voice of the stars and weather forecasts: the beauty and profundity of oakwoods are revealed in a shifting, precise prose.

Rooted in place through habitation and close observation; an exploration of Sunart and Saari through the languages: Gaelic, Finnish, English, birdsong and world news; heaping language onto landscape and excavating what’s been before, An Oakwoods Almanac reinvents a classic form.

Gerry Loose is a poet and writer who works primarily with subjects from the natural world, as well as the world of geopolitics. His work is often to be found inscribed on wood and stone in Parks and Botanic Gardens as well as on the page.

Among his most recent publications are Printed on Water, New and Selected Poems (Shearsman Books), that person himself (Shearsman Books) and fault line (Vagabond Voices).

His awards include a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, a Creative Scotland Award, Kone Foundation Award and a Hermann Kesten Fellowship.