Andrew Greig @EIBF

 

A fishing trip in honour of Norman MacCaig is the backbone of Greig’s At the Loch of the Green Corrie and MacCaig’s voice was present through the reading of two of his poems (After His Death and Rich Day), and through Greig’s amusing impressions of him (which, according to an audience member who had been taught by him, were very accurate). Yet, MacCaig’s greatest advice to Greig had been to ‘write like himself’ and not echo the voices of his heroes. Greig obviously now has no problem with this, and his reading from his book, with his wonderfully lilting accent, was a real treat. Poetry begs to be read aloud, and Greig’s prose is infused with the voice of a poet. The book is divided into casts and retrieves, as the narrative looks both forward and back, and in a month where the last of that generation of poetic colossuses has died, it is easy to fall into an elegy of the past. The future is more difficult, and when asked about his comment that they don’t make poets like that anymore, Greig explained that the rise of prose and the competition between poets has broken the sense of community that MacCaig’s generation had, and that inspired writers like Greig. [Libby Cooklin]