POEMS

1984 saw the publication of the controversial first novel by Iain Banks The Wasp Factory and he since became a celebrated novelist and science fiction writer. What is less well known is that his first published work was the poem 041 in New Writing Scotland in 1983. Like the poems that appeared within his novels, this was selected from the many he had written between 1973 and 1981. He took poetry seriously and worked on in assiduously but showed it mostly to friends. He first thought of publishing his poetry late in 2012, provided that it appeared in a joint collection with works by his lifelong friend Ken MacLeod. The two were working on this project when Banks learned of his terminal diagnosis and he made his final revisions just days before his death. MacLeod edits and introduces this collection. 'We are nothing, who crawl upon the surface, unseen from these heights, diffused by distance baffled by, frustrated by our little, little scale.' 'There is a skull beneath the skin alright, but beneath the bone a brain. And though the hard outlives the soft in the reckonings of decay that hardness too in dust's betrayed while that other can, and can choose to Leave Changes - and one of those isn't discarding the grain and milling the chaff.' Skull, May 1973. 'Days unstrung by us and spent, slattern's litter, wrenched necklace; fallen beads, three calm hearts in a fevered corpse, and history an old man sweeping up...' Two thirds of the collection are by Banks. 162pp, pagemarker.