The collection is divided into five sections, and these often act as mini-collections. The first focuses on domestic life. ‘Realm of Possibility’ sees the poet’s study covered in dustsheets in preparation for the plasterers. The white sheets become a winter landscape, conjuring up Russian troikas and dachas. Imagery shifts to spring, with its possibilities and the chance to “discover the spoor of some elusive creature” which may in fact be a poem.

In ‘Visitation’ a black quill pen takes pride of place on a desk, and every so often a crow comes to sit on the sill and fix its bloodshot eye on the narrator, “a gap in one wing where the primary / feather is missing.” The narrator recognises it as the “beast / of conscience come home to roost.”

‘Young Huntsman with Falcon’ meditates on the painting of the same title which also appears on the collection’s cover. The poem’s focus shifts in the last third to the more personal dimension, and the transience of life. ‘Ministrations’ is one of the best works in section one. Here the ghosts who haunt us lie not in superstition or “childhood fancy” but instead in our futures: “they are the apparitions / who will rise ahead of us / bearing pills and bedpans…” They will hold our hands, “then when the day comes / drawing the sheet finally / over our flaccid faces.” It is “we who will dissolve, not they.”

The bombing of Clydebank and Glasgow’s regeneration are the subject of ‘The Holy City.’ A community is united during the bombing, “distinctions of religion and politics / forgotten…”Later, long after the war is over, there will be “spacemen landing / on what had been a ‘bomber’s moon.’” ‘Girl in a Picture (1927)’ too addresses the War. This time in the image of an eleven year old girl on a stair-well who will be killed as a young woman when her ship is sunk. The “Kosovo” sequence continues the theme of conflict and its repercussions.

‘The Emigrants’ brilliantly captures the displacement of people to a new land where they continue traditions, the telling of old stories, and in the process unwittingly reinvent their own roots as richer than they actually were, only to have a genealogist cause havoc with the truth. There’s a nice wry twist at the end.

Section two continues with poems on modern life, before the past creeps in. Edinburgh’s past in particular. ‘Footage of RLS’ is particularly worth a read. Robert Louis Stevenson’s life is presented cinematically. “The publicity stills / no longer have him coughing up blood (bad for business) / but gazing enigmatically out of frame…”

Rhyme appears in Conn’s work in a subtle form. Iain Crichton Smith is quoted on the back cover of the collection as saying: “About his poems there hover ghosts of rhymes, as if the world is held together by a certain frailty…” ‘Autumn Walk,’ ‘The Dragon’s Cave’ and others have these faint hidden rhymes that register almost in the subconscious and cause the reader to go back and read again, to see if they did indeed hear a faint and mysterious echo in the lines.

Section three is titled ‘Ghosts at Cockcrow’ and follows the narrator through France. The poem themselves give the clues: ‘Notre Dame, Dijon’ and ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ deal with Cathedrals, museums and tombs. The last poem of part three, ‘Ghosts’ is the most memorable, again addressing the darker aspects of the past, the ghosts of those people who lived before us, and the erroneous notion of a Golden Age where landowners looked after tenants. Old France can be found in the landscape here.

‘Roull of Corstorphin’ is the title of section four, and it’s particularly suited to Stewart Conn’s position as Edinburgh’s first Makar. Because this section opens with some quotes, one of which mentions Roull as “the capital’s earliest recorded poet” in Dunbar’s ‘Lament for the Makar’s.’ ‘Roull of Corstorphin’ is a historical sequence that brings the past to life with colour and humour. The mystery of Roull’s life is dealt with in the first poem, ‘Roull Posited’: “No way of telling if he was a plague victim / or survived into old age…” This doesn’t stop Conn from having some fun with the character, following him at Court, watching debates, writing to his “cousin” in Aberdeen, playing football. There are some wonderful poems in this section: ‘Insomnia,’ ‘Time of Plague,’ ‘To His Wife,’ ‘Ghost of Roull.’ ‘Roull on Death’ is one of the best of all, set at the court of King James where the king is in thrall to an alchemist who also tries to fly off the walls of Stirling Castle. ‘The Barber-Surgeons to King James IV’ is possibly best, full of history and cheek, deriding Makars and “fute-ball.”

The final collection returns to the present day. As elsewhere in the book, love poems appear here, ‘In the Museum of Scotland’ being a particularly good example. ‘Free Fall’ is built on the image of two people leaping from one of the Twin Towers, hand in hand, to their deaths. ‘Piazza del Campidoglio’ is another one to look out for. There’s also ‘Prologue to Hecuba’ in which the dead son of Queen Hecuba of Troy address his mother and relates the city’s capture by the Greeks. This poem looks back to one in the first section of the book which refers to the sacrificed Polyxena, daughter of Hecuba. Like the faint echo of rhymes that can appear in Conn’s work, there’s a similar echo here of reference, even though the first poem deals with the myth obliquely and only in passing.

‘Ghosts at Cockcrow’ is a wonderful collection, and there are a large number of poems here to enjoy. Their beauty lies in the way they are grounded in the real world, of the past and present, addressing love, the passing of time, the transience of life, with humour, rich language and memorable imagery.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.