Reviews
These poems are so intensely visual that you feel yourself being transported back to the moment the source image was captured
The Scotsman
Beautifully crafted, Van Winkle catalogues a life in still imagery, both haunting and inspiring
Joelle Taylor
A sweetly melancholy meditation on the gaps in recollection that no record can hope to fill
Harry Josephine Giles
Poems to return to again and again, like a box of photographs carried with you from house to house, country to country, life to life
Peter Mackay, Scotland's Makar
An exceptional collection; poems that unfold and draw you inward to a place where only language, held gently and confidently, can lead you
William Letford
Thoughtful and perceptive . . . Through stunning ekphrastic poems, Van Winkle examines memory – its fragility and fallibility – with tender attention
Alycia Pirmohamed
A tenderly crafted collection. Beautiful, surprising and bittersweet
Iona Lee
A deeply rich and nostalgic collection driven by story and heart
Andrés N. Ordorica
About the Book
In his latest collection, Ryan Van Winkle uses photographs to access themes of abandonment, generational incomprehension and the very notion of how we end up where we are. This collection is a poetic photo album.
Through these poems, Van Winkle looks at life througha lens – to get closer – to meditate on the anxieties and insecurities of a life. He reckons with how we remember and misremember, and how memories and people can be difficult, and at times painful, to hold on to. In reading this collection it becomes clear that while photographs can be carefully ordered, the emotions and impressions surrounding them cannot.
Longlisted for The Saltire Awards 2026 Poetry Book of the Year.
The Author
Ryan Van Winkle
Ryan Van Winkle, an American who has been living in Scotland for over 25 years, is an award-winning author, artist and producer based in Edinburgh. He is currently the Artistic Director of StAnza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival. His first collection, Tomorrow, We Will Live Here (Salt), won the Crashaw Prize. In 2015, his second collection, The Good Dark (Penned in the Margins), won the Saltire Society’s Poetry Book of the Year award. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation and New Writing Scotland.
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