Blood Salt Spring

The Debut Collection from Edinburgh's Makar

Hannah Lavery

• Publisher: Polygon
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788854900
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

From Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh's Makar.

'Speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland ... with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' – The Scotsman

In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers?

Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are – exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020 but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars.

Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined.

In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring – into hope. 

The National Theatre of Scotland has launched a new digital visual album, Blood, Salt, Spring - a digital accompaniment to Hannah Lavery's collection. You can view the visual album here.

SALT

Now only the supervised showing of skin

FAKE NEWS

I want to lie in wait for you

kick you in the shins.

Trap you in a basement

feed you your eyeballs

through the gap in the door.

I want you to howl

until you’re hoarse.

Resurrect your demons.

Kill your angels.

Hack your profile.

I want to drink cheap Prosecco

from the skulls of your children.

Piss on your perspective

let it mix. Brew

a craft beer. Distil

a boutique gin.

I want to laugh at you

in your underwear.

Lose you in a maze.

Chase you with a shotgun.

Bring on the zombie apocalypse.

Ride the four horsemen

through your living room

feed them your pets.

I want to bring you cups

of tar with seagull wings

tell you it’s your morning coffee.

Feed you your neighbours’ food waste.

Take you out and shoot you

burn your libraries

shred your history

pull you from your grave

make you dance for me.

UNTITLED

Smile, like you were taught

it will be done, in minutes

then you can go home.

BLACK CAT

4 November 2015

Did you know it would rain today?

Light flashes, KRAVE, light flashes, KRAVE

and you all gather in a smokers’ huddle.

Worship here

you are wonderfully made.

Here, they don’t seem to walk alone

in gaggles, pairings, in matching black .

Bald head to the rain, with his heavy bag

walks different now, from that lost peacock walk of his youth

and as another preening teen walks by, he stops in the middle of the road

to let him pass. Sighs and then walks on, his bag lopsiding him.

Worship here

you are wonderfully made.

It is her job to open the church but she has to go back

for change for the parking meter. Her church has now diversified

to eclectic accommodation round the back, gym, office space, flat to rent.

And in another city they hide . . .

But here, it’s the rain that bows heads and clears the streets.

Here, my East Coast ear must re-tune to a storm is coming

with the coming, going high up over my head.

And here, a red car follows a taxi with a sign

illuminating tropical beach with the words

Get out of here

follows bus to

Knightswood

follows bus to

Paisley

bus to

Drumchapel

bus to

Eastwood.

Worship here

you are wonderfully made.

A woman smokes a joint whilst she waits.

And in another city they hide

behind their wooden shutters

their cat prowling abandoned

outside on the ledge.

Cutting in surreal

on rolling news footage

moving with grace, above

the banner tape screaming

Terror in Paris

looping, repeating, looping back . . .

Staring out on a Glasgow street, thinking

about a wee black cat on a Paris balcony.

SPILT MILK

That night we’d gone to bed.

We’d had enough of waiting up for history

and we knew how this would play out . . .

They’d been up already, stuffed their bowls with chocolate hoops

and I was too tired to tell them to watch the milk

so I was on my knees when

I registered something was off

a shift in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Blood: I have rubies sewn in . . .
• Salt: Now only the supervised showing of skin
• Spring: I would be powered by only you
• Acknowledgements
• A note on the author