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The Hammer and the Fire

by Henry Marsh

ISBN: 9780956527820
Imprint: Maclean Dubois
Publication Date: Jun 2011
Format: Hardback
Price: £10.00
Stock Status: in stock

·         'Henry Marsh’s new collection of poems, The Hammer and the Fire (Maclean Dubois, £10), shows the poet’s bardic sensitivity to the shades and moods of the Hebridean landscape, distilling a lifetime of observation in a phrase and in tidal shifts of metaphor and rhythm. Yet, emerging after a sequence of verses reflecting on the legacy of the Reformation, the gentle balm of these island poems reminds the reader that peace is usually broken before it is found.' - The Scotsman

Following The Guidman’s Daughter with his poems on Mary, Queen of Scots, Marsh begins this new collection with a sequence exploring the life and times of John Knox, locating this ambivalent figure in the turmoil of the Scottish Reformation. Marsh moves via Kepler and Darwin into a celebration of nature, searching within our secular world to ‘find a language’ to render its mystery and concludes by touching on the great challenges we now face. Our striving to understand the nature of things hints, perhaps, at the possibility of a different kind of redemption.

Henry Marsh was born in Broughty Ferry, Dundee in 1944. He now lives in Midlothian. His working life has been spent teaching English – with a bit of philosophy. His Ph.D thesis is a study of the modes of imagination. He began writing poetry in 2000 following the death of a friend, a Gaelic Bard, Donald MacDonald of South Lochboisdale. Four collections of his work have so far been published – A First Sighting, A Turbulent Wake,  The Guidman’s Daughter and The Hammer and the Fire.

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