By the River Kelvin, Glasgow 2000Order a print or digital copy by contacting Gordon Wright
helluva hard tay read theez init
stull
if yi canny unnirston thim jiss clear aff then
('Good Style' from Intimate Voices)
Tom Leonard is best known for poetry written in the urban speech of the Glasgow area, a mode which was revolutionary and innovative when his first collection Six Glasgow Poems was published in 1969. His work has exposed the pernicious condescension in the literary establishment towards the vernacular of working class people, in both the spoken and the written word. He is motivated by a fiercely honest, socialist conviction. In his editorial introduction to Radical Renfrew: Poetry from the French Revolution to the First World War (1990), he lambasts language snobbery and the literary values that oppress those who 'had lost the right to equality of dialogue with those in possession of Queen's English or "good" Scots'. Places of the Mind, his biographical study of James Thomson, author of The City of Dreadful Night, was published in 1993. Other work includes Intimate Voices: Selected Work 1965-1983 (1984), Satires and Profanities (1984), On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait (1991) and Reports from the Present: Selected Work 1982-94 (1995).
NLS Acc.11988
This page is part of the National Library of Scotland's Write Stuff web site. To visit this site select here.
