Description
Originally written as a series of Facebook status updates during the recovery from Covid-19, Robert Alan Jamieson’s Plague Clothes is an immediate and intimate account of one person’s battle with the virus that emphasises the universality of our struggle during the pandemic. Moving seamlessly between sharp satire, confessional and philosophical enquiry, Jamieson takes aim at Western government, laments the current ecological crisis, and challenges our treatment of the so-called ‘old and vulnerable’, carried all the way by a rare voice of wisdom and protest at a time when ageism in society risks reducing an entire generation to statistics. Published in beautiful hardback with seventeen black and white photographs.
ISBN: 9781838080006
Number of Pages: 96
Publication Date: 1 August 2020
Format: Hardback
Anonymous –
I was struck by the immediacy of these poems. There’s something about their tracking of time, their focus on banal process, and their painstaking appreciation of the seen (and unseen) features of the natural world which really brought home the incapacitation — of both body and mind — felt by Covid-19 victims.
And any chap who has a conversation with his front door is, frankly, my kind of poet.
George Gunn –
“In Scotland poetry matters. It is the literary equivalent of a watch-fire on the hill. Other cultures may have different uses for poetry but in Scotland we use it as light to see ourselves by and as a signal to warn us of approaching danger or as a celebration of the joy of life. In his latest collection of poems, Plague Clothes (Taproot Press), the Shetland poet Robert Alan Jamieson has lit such a fire. These poems illuminate, celebrate and remind us of how tenuous our grasp is on the precious thread of life.”
Maxwell MacLeod –
“He approaches adversity with a quiet dignity, a fierce focus and an objective determination to succeed. All this comes over in this volume. I will treasure it.”