Spanning 16 years, ‘Darling’ is a fitting, eponymous tribute to the late Julia Darling, Kay’s close friend and fellow poet. Whether we need reminding of Kay’s skill in creating glimpses of lost and found identities or are drawn to view early and recent material through the prism of today’s overtly accepting world, this layered collection demonstrates Kay’s robust, abundant skill in transcending tick-boxes.

"I still have Scottish people asking me where I'm from. They won't actually hear my voice, because they're too busy seeing my face," she observes.

Difference and indifference recur, underpinned by Kay’s artistry in revealing gut responses concealed by everyday masks:

“How they strut about, people in love,
….they don’t remember who they have been…
How dull the lot that are not in love,
…how clueless they are, hair a mess;”

Far from polemical, Kay peers round the corners of our consciousness. From the early complex echoes of ‘The Adoption Papers’ to adult emergence from shattered love in ‘Life Mask’ and beyond, she lights our shared and individual journeys with succinct emotional dexterity.

“All writers draw on their own experience and a lot of my experience has been heightened,” she says.

In the 1960s Helen Kay trudged from Glasgow to an Edinburgh adoption agency, only to be told repeatedly that "no babies" were available. Assuming racist complicity, the agency worker rendered the infant Jackie temporarily invisible. But the Kays were communist peace activists, opposed to racist rhetoric:

"The fourth agency was full up.
The fifth said yes but again no babies.
Just as we were going out the door
I said oh you know we don't mind the colour.
Just like that, the waiting was over."

Black Bottom powerfully recalls Kay’s identification with black civil rights campaigners such as Angela Davis, the only person in Kay’s world who also had Afro hair. A young voice edged with isolation reverberates through the years:

“So sometimes when I look in the mirror
I give myself a bit of a shock
And say to myself do you really look like this?
As if I'm somebody else. I wonder if she does that.”

A friend and profound admirer of American poet Audre Lorde, whose politically passionate influence resonates particularly in Kay’s later poems, her work has evolved from chiaroscuro, as Kay’s first play was called, to embrace an increasingly textured palette of characters and landscapes. Even perennially-pinnied Maw Broon is forced to recognise the inevitability of change, faced with Paw’s shocking affair:

“I’d been the mug. I didnae want tae face
whit was staring me in the face.”

Alison Lumsden, co-editor of ‘Contemporary Scottish Women Writers’, values Kay’s approach: "Kay's work…reminds us that there can be no single agenda for women's writing. It is an important voice in the new Scotland, which must include such diversity within its own definition of itself."

Scottish author Carl MacDougall, narrator of a recent BBC Scotland series featuring Kay, agrees: "The range and variety of contemporary Scottish women's writing is extraordinary, reflecting the confidence found in Scottish writing itself.”

In this vibrant collection, Kay’s laser capacity to explore multi-faceted identity slices through the everyday, mirroring life’s challenges with her fresh, incisive gaze.

As she says: "Our own pasts constantly rejuvenate themselves. It's not something that has happened and that was it. It's open to interpretation."

Sheila McWattie is a Brighton-based freelance journalist, fiction writer, creative writing tutor and event organiser from Paisley. She will celebrate 2008 by graduating from Sussex University with an MA degree in creative writing and personal development, and hopes to find a publisher for her novel, Hooked.

© 2008 Laura Hird All rights reserved.