John Glenday was born in Broughty Ferry in 1952. His first collection, The Apple Ghost won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second, Undark, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His most recent collection, Grain (Picador, 2009) is also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He lives in Drumnadrochit and works for NHS Highland as an addictions counsellor.

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An old favourite
My copy of Robin Robertson's wonderful first collection, A Painted Field is now held together with sellotape, I've opened it so often.

A new favourite
It has to be Don Paterson's most recent, Rain. But if I could also sneak in a bit of prose here too, I'd mention William Fiennes' haunting family memoir, The Music Room.

Current interest
Michael Donaghy's prose writings, The Shape of the Dance and his Collected Poems.

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Landscape with Flying Man

I read about him that was given wings.
His father fixed those wings to carry him away.

They carried him halfway home, and then he fell.
And he fell not because he flew

but because he loved it so. You see
it's neither pride, nor gravity but love

that pulls us back down to the world.
Love furnishes the wings, and that same love

will watch over us as we drown.
The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one.

John Glenday © 2009
from Grain (Picador, 2009)