SWC Launch | The Fusslin Thrang - Alexander Hutchison (Blue Diode Press)

We are thrilled to support the launch of The Fusslin Thrang: Collected Poems in Scots by Alexander Hutchison. Published by Blue Diode Press (2024).

The Fusslin Thrang brings together the Scots poems of Alexander Hutchison (born in Buckie, 1943; died in Glasgow, 2015). Edited by Scottish poet A.B. Jackson, and with an introduction by J. Derrick McClure, the full range of Hutchison's work in his distinct North-East Scots can now be appreciated by readers and researchers alike.

Hutchison began his working life in the English Department at the University of Victoria, B.C., in 1966. On his return to Scotland in 1984 he began making Scots translations of Catullus and Pierre de Ronsard which were published in his 1990 collection The Moon Calf.

This focus on translation is reflected in The Fusslin Thrang: François Villon, Ernesto Cardenal, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin all feature here, among others.

Hutchison's own original work embraces the postmodern lyric, satirical swipes and Rabelaisian extravaganzas.

Poems from Bones & Breath (winner of the Saltire Award for Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2014) are also included here but the majority of poems in The Fusslin Thrang are previously uncollected or unpublished, and, significantly for Scots language studies, include full glossaries by Hutchison himself.

As J. Derrick McClure says in his introduction, 'Hutchison's output is an essential addition to the scintillating mosaic of contemporary poetry in Scots.'

The Fusslin Thrang is a recipient of the Scots Language Publication Grant.