Blood Salt Spring: The Debut Collection from Edinburgh’s New Makar

From Hannah Lavery, soon to be appointed Edinburgh’s new Makar.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.

Reviews of Blood Salt Spring: The Debut Collection from Edinburgh’s New Makar

'hers is a voice which speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland around issues of identity, race, justice and belonging with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' — Malcolm Jack * The Scotsman * 'moves from poignant lyricism to Informationist-style interrogation of language' — Stuart Kelly