Poetry from the Backroom 46: Lesley Glaister

I have a great fondness for Lesley Glaister for two reasons. One is that her novel 'Little Egypt' is one of the favourite books in Park View, and the other is that when, unbeknown to them, I was once at a low ebb she and Andrew Greig said nice things about my poetry in the press one Christmas, thus ensuring their everlasting presence in the McMillan Hall of Fame, and on the back cover of every piece of mediocre writing I churn out from now on.

Lesley Glaister is an incredibly talented fiction writer, poet, and playwright and teaches creative writing at the University of St Andrews. Her first novel was published in 1990 and since then she’s published 14 further adult novels. She received both a Somerset Maugham and a Betty Trask award for 'Honour Thy Father', won the Yorkshire Post Author of the Year Award in 1993 for 'Limestone and Clay'; the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered for 'Little Egypt' and has been short- and long-listed for literary prizes for her other work. Several of her plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and her first stage play, 'Bird Calls', was performed at Sheffield’s Crucible Studio Theatre in 2004. She teaches creative writing at the University of St Andrews.

However, literary success apart, everybody knows that poetry is best, and Lesley has published two collections with Mariscat Press, the first, 'Visiting The Animal' in 2015 and the second 'The Nub' in December 2019, which features a long poem sequence written during, or inspired by, Lesley's residence at the Pah Homestead in Auckland New Zealand, as part of the Scottish Writers' New Zealand Fellowship. 'The Nub' includes a sequence called 'Moreton Bay Fig', an account of a love affair with a tree in New Zealand, which I copy, courtesy of her website, below.

Here Lesley reads the title poem from her latest collection:

Meeting

Do you know the Moreton Bay Fig?
Have you been introduced?
The one that spreads hall-sized
the one with buttress roots
that stretch like walls, head high or more
the one with little beads of figs
inedible, with patent leather leaves
the one that’s deeply littered underneath
in rustling clefts?

A human can press her lips
against that vegetable hulk
can eye the O’s and eyes
that stretch the bark
rear back her head to gasp
at massive boughs
(how do they branch so far, bear all that weight?)
the complex bulk:
in wonderment, in worship
– or in want?


Tons more info here on her website:

http://lesleyglaister.weebly.com/

A few more poems on the SPL site here:

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/lesley-glaister/

You can order 'The Nub' here:

https://mariscatpress.com/publications-in-print/