Today would have been Iain Banks’ 61st birthday and to mark the day a new joint collection of poetry by Banks and his friend and fellow author, Ken MacLeod has been published.
Best known as a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction and science fiction (as Iain M Banks) Iain had written poetry since high school and his first published work was, in fact, a poem called 041 in New Writing Scotland in 1983.
Iain was working on the Poems project with Ken when he learned of his terminal diagnosis but continued, making final revisions just days before his death.
The publishers Little, Brown tell us that readers of Iain’s novels will find in these poems many aspects of his writing with which they’re already familiar.
A humane and materialist sensibility, an unflinching stare at the damage people can do to each other, a warm appreciation of the joy they can give to each other, a revel in language, a geologically informed gaze on land and sea, a continued meditation on what it means for us to be mortal embodied minds with a fleeting but consequent existence between abysses of deep time.
Ken MacLeod, Iain’s long-time friend and collaborator, has collected his poems according to his wishes, and they are published here – most for the first time – alongside a selection of Ken’s own poetry.
Buy the book from the publisher direct here.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
