Western Swing

Western Swing is an adventurous long poem conjured around a displaced Scotland. Driven by rare energy, dark humour and glee, as well as a wonderful sense of what is strange and what is possible, Andrew Greig’s new book is also an exploration of Desire, Loss and Renewal in our lives. Combining quest narrative, shaggy-dog story, lyricism, meditations and eclectic ‘sampling’, the poem propels us from Glencoe to Katmundu, by flying carpet to Cambridge, into the High Atlas Mountains, on to Marrakech, returning to the Celtic kingdom of Dalriada for a show-down on a pier in East Fife. Western Swing is the natural sequel to Andrew Greig’s acclaimed novel Electric Brae, as well as to his earlier long poem Men On Ice. It’s years on, the Company have scattered. An empty ‘I’ drives across Rannoch Moor in an old 2CV, in search of Brock, Ken and Stella, and a lost Healing Blade, accompanied only by a shadowy, jovial figure with a brolly, a Panama hat and a few wise-cracks – the Heretical Buddha. The High Atlas section of the book was a prizewinner in the 1993 Observer/Arvon International Poetry Competion.