The Edge of Seeing

John Duffy's The edge of seeing is a collection full of a deep-rooted love, one that finds its anchor in the sheer reliable physicality of the world and the universe it turns in. The poems range widely through Celtic legend, through revolutionary France and the schoolrooms and parlours of a Glasgow childhood. They move easily from the lyrical to the heft and swagger of Glasgow demotic speech. They are crowded with voices, and the felt observation of the natural world, its birds and its animals. They are, as he memorably writes of a new born fawn "as tough as mice / or daisies". The edge of seeing a delight from beginning to end. - John Foggin