Blood Salt Spring by Hannah Lavery

Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh’s Makar, has long been lauded for her ability to interrogate Scotland’s past and present through poetic and theatrical forms (she is the author of The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh). Her debut collection Blood Salt Spring builds on this work through its powerful meditation on race, nationhood and belonging.

In the section Blood, Lavery explores both race and ancestry through memories of growing up in Scotland. She skilfully employs conflict and contradiction throughout to highlight the damage 'Scottish exceptionalism' can have on marginalised people. This is particularly evocative in poems such as Questions of Percentage, Halfling and Remix for the Brown Girl.

In Salt, the collection drills further into its interrogation of racism and the current socio-political landscape where terms like equality and diversity are thrown around as fodder on both sides of the political spectrum. Poems like Scotland, You’re No Mine and Hush Now (Shitty Brown) tell of the daily racism and microaggression many Black and POC deal with. 

However, some of the most affecting moments in this collection come when Lavery writes of love, particularly a mother’s love. In her poem I Sang You Rainbow Songs she offers thoughts on watching a child deal with bullying and homophobia, 'Mothering you my love/ is knowing before you do/ but still not knowing.' There is so much story in this brief poem, and yet, its power comes from Lavery’s deft ability to marry the personal with the political.