The Colour of Black & White

by Liz Lochhead, Willie Rodger (Illustrator)

The poems within this remarkable collection are often poems of love or death and iconic figures, Jungian archetypes, animus figures with strong outlines, harsh comfort and, often, voices of their own which dominate the first, the 'title', section of the book. Here you can find poems that are both autobiographical or entirely fictional set in Liz Lochhead's native rural/industrial Lanarkshire. There are also poems dedicated to other poets and a section of the rude and the rhyming, the out-loud, boldly revealing Lochhead's interest in 'unrespectable' poetry, in black prison 'toasts', in recitations, folk-poems and music hall monologues. The colour of both the black and the white. The collaboration with the printmaker Willie Rodger was also an essential part of the making of this book. Lochhead, long an admirer of Rodger's work, felt strongly that he was a kindred spirit and his poetically pared down and essential linocuts accentuate the positive and the negative, the black and the white.

Genres: Poetry, Scotland

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Liz Lochhead is a Scottish poet and dramatist, originally from Newarthill in North Lanarkshire. In the early 1970s she joined Philip Hobsbaum's writers' group, a crucible of creative activity - other members were Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, and Tom Leonard. Her plays include Blood and Ice, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Perfect Days (2000) and a highly acclaimed adaptation into Scots of Molière's Tartuffe (1985). Her adaptation of Euripides' Medea won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2001. Like her work for theatre, her poetry is alive with vigorous speech idioms; collections include True Confessions and New Clichés (1985), Bagpipe Muzak (1991) and Dreaming Frankenstein: and Collected Poems (1984). She has collaborated with Dundee singer-songwriter Michael Marra.

In January 2011 she was named as the second Scots Makar, or national poet, succeeding Edwin Morgan who had died the previous year.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darling, tonight I want to celebrate
not your birthday, no, nor mine.
It's not the anniversary of when we met,
first went to bed or got married, and the wine
is supermarket plonk. I'm just about to grate
rat-trap cheddar on the veggie bake that'll do us fine.

But it's far from the feast that – knowing you'll be soon,
and suddenly so glad to just be me and here,
now, in our bright kitchen – I wish I'd stopped and gone
and shopped for, planned and savoured earlier.
Come home! It's been a long day. Now the perfect moon
through our high windows rises round and clear.

- - -

For Marriage, love and love alone's the argument.
Sweet ceremony, then hand-in-hand we go
Taking to our changed, still dangerous days, our complement.
We think we know ourselves, but all we know
Is: love surprises us. It's like when sunlight flings
A sudden shaft that lights up glamourous rain
Across a Glasgow street — or when Botanic Spring's
First crisp, dry breath turns February air champagne.

Delight's infectious — your quotidian friends
Put on, with gladrag finery today, your joy,
Renew in themselves the right true ends
They won't let old griefs, old lives destroy.
When at our lover's feet our opened selves we've laid
We find ourselves, and all the world, remade.

[Oz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the prints, and the one about the sexual smell of bees.

[Tony Brewer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a gift, one among some chapbooks a friend brought back from Scotland along with a few wee bottles and one fine handle of Scotch. I liked the whisky more than the poetry, sad to say. I'll review the other 2 books at some point (both chapbooks I believe) although they are likely to be difficult to find outside Scotland.

Anyway, I've read other Lochhead online and rather enjoyed it. This book was a bit twee for my taste, and I do like my posey dark it's true, but these poems never dug very hard or deep into anything. They seemed like drafts or ideas. Lots of lists of things and repeated phrases. I loved the colloquialisms and brogue scattered throughout, but it always felt ornamental, not essential.

I did like the variety of style and I liked "Hell for Poets," "The Beekeeper," "Little Women," and some others were pretty clever, but overall, not really my thing. Fans of Mary Oliver and Carol Ann Duffy will enjoy it more than I did, and I want to seek out other Lochhead collections because what I found online was intriguing.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd read a few poems by Liz Lochhead online and liked them, so thought I'd enjoy reading a whole book by her, but must say I was a bit disappointed. The only poems I really liked were the ones I'd already seen - the others often seemed to turn into lists of ideas.