Caal Cries by Alistair Lawrie

I am reading Caal Cries by Alistair Lawrie, an erudite, surprising, emotional collection that is written in both English and Doric Scots, almost alternately revelling in each, but in my view favouring the latter for its fun and cadence, and its ability to grab most of all the virtues of the natural world, its comedy, its tumult and its infinitely complected tissues of idiom ,emotion and memory.

Let me not be unjust to this memorable man. In the spirt of review I would only want to talk about the poems in Caal Cries that I did like the most. Mithers demonstrates the unobstructed use of the conversational Doric to make a universal point, and is in language set to charm and please Doric speakers, and nobody beyond, who will head-scratch and ask for more. Switherin is one of Alistair Lawrie's best, and one of many sea poems, proving the marine power of the language of the North east coast:

far fankelt water sweels an smacks

its duntin wrack tae faem at sclytes

owre near, as near as maks ye winner

is't iss een comin or the neist?

It's Doric poetry at its most finest, as off the page of a weel-tutored apostle of Charles Murray.

Oddly intersperese, and most unlike the Doric of Charles Murray, people poems populate the pages, as in the moving and amusing A Bar-L Prisoner Receives a Postcard from Amnesty - it would be nice to know what inspired this high-risk poetic monologue, both melancholy in its hurt and brutal in its delivery at times.

Again the poem Fog seems to itertate what Alistair Lawrie and his Doric love the best which is the sea, and the wtery atmosphere of Scotland, with its dribblet slithert rivulets, powerful descriptions in these poems sometimes stand proud and rocky like the coast itself, sometimes in bathos, as here: Men deeit on nichts like iss.

The publisher's home page for Caal Cries by Alistair Lawrie is here.