Glass Slippers is now out of print (2011)
Anna Dickie and Irene Brown launch their new joint collection Imprint in Haddington
Library on 6th October (7 for 7:30) and Edinburgh (Adele's Cafe) on 21st October,
7 for 7:30.
Irene Brown writes in Scots and English and has been widely published. She is well known in Edinburgh for her lively readings of her poetry. This is her first collection. Her themes are the wonderful moments of life that arrive through friendship and love, through childhood and its memories, through travel abroad and through the sights and sounds of nature. She observes well - be it staircleaning or an old mildewed cookbook. There are intriguing miniatures of activity as in the Threepenny Waltz . Indeed dancing is an important image in this collection reflecting Brown’s vital engagement with the joy of the everyday. This is however balanced with a mature tristesse as in La Cour des Femmes where the courtyard cobbles speak of the human tragedy of Revolution ‘the sound of tumbrel wheels... carrying each shorn batch....’ Particularly appealing also is her tender cradling within some poems of lost female selves - such as the bride or the young woman. Ultimately though her poetry is about faith in folk and in the future. Optimistic, confident and sparky Glass Slippers will delight especially with its evocations of places abroad and the glorious humour of poems such as Dennistoun Baths in Brown’s native Glasgow . Maureen Sangster |
Sample poem:
Snowdrops
Each February you appear
your sheltering petals white and fresh
like teardrops shedding modestly
your slim new stalks all fresh and green
so full of promise; full of hope
a sign that winter’s nearly done.
Your coming minds me of a girl
I never really got to know
who once strolled past you, young and fresh
a chill wind blowing in her hair
to step the hills, crunch diamond snow
and breathe in freedom’s cold, bright air.
She knew the joy of starry skies
of tented shelters, warming stoves,
two sets of footprints stepping out
all full of promise, full of hope,
another’s hand around her waist
playful, carefree, intimate.
One February she went away
to breath in freedom’s air again.
One set of footprints tottered on,
my teardrops fell immodestly
minding the quiet, slender girl
whose winter was already done.
Reviews:
Irene Brown is a very good reader of her poetry. Lilt with a gentle lyricism and if they
don’t make you laugh out loud they do make you smile.
They sparkle like fizzy pop and you can’t help but get a sense of wellbeing and optimism.
Kevin Cadwallender MARCH 09
http://cadwallenderk.blogspot.com/
Her poems...have a conversational immediacy and a cheerful good-humour
that beg for live performance.
D A Prince
Irene Brown focuses on moments in life, showing human relationships through activity,
often dancing, as the title suggests [and] uses Scots to energetic effect...
Emma Lee
Irene Brown is good at sharing experiences which expose our common humanity.
For them to work fully, I suspect you need the poet herself in performance, but even
on the cold page, she is whimsical and entertaining. She can turn a nifty epigram, too.
Her last piece is titled ‘Faith’, and here it is in full:
outside the Christmas market
a Communist Party stall
Helena Nelson
http://happenstancepress.co.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=260&Itemid=47