Poetry
Reviews
McCabe is a delightful poet with a serious sense of play
Sunday Herald
A spiky, observant writer, with a lethal wit
Scotland on Sunday
About the Book
Brian McCabe's fourth poetry collection is an inventive exploration of the world of numbers. With playfulness and poise, McCabe brings mathematics to life through a range of voices: a newsreader reports on the government's introduction of the new number through, a mafia boss invents Roman numerals, a fisherman gives his sardonic take on Pythagorus, and a monkey sheds light on the Golden Mean. Re-imaginings of the lives of mathematicians such as Riemann, Moebius and Napier sit alongside witty and thought-provoking interpretations of numbers: eleven is a pre-teen sulking in his room, while twin primes are portrayed as detained refugees under interrogation. Appealing to readers of poetry and number-lovers alike, "Zero" is a compelling and bravura performance from a poet at the height of his powers.
The Author
Brian McCabe
Brian McCabe was born in a small mining community near Edinburgh. He studied Philosophy and English Literature at Edinburgh University. He has lived as a freelance writer since 1980. He has held various writing fellowships, most recently at the University of Edinburgh. His books have won several Scottish Arts Council book awards, and he won the Canongate Prize in 2000. He is currently Editor of Edinburgh Review. He lives with his family in Edinburgh. He has published three collections of poetry Spring's Witch (Mariscat Press) and One Atom to Another (Polygon) and Body Parts (Canongate). He also writes fiction and has published two collections of short stories, The Lipstick Circus (Mainstream) and In a Dark Room with a Stranger (Penguin, 1995) and a novel The Other McCoy (Penguin). His most recent collection of short stories A Date With My Wife was published by Canongate in June 2001. Selected Stories was published by Argyll in 2004.Related
-
Paperback | Pub: 26 Jul 2006£14.99As a young, strong-willed Victorian “new woman” in Arbroath, Marion wrote colourful, witty and perceptive diaries and articles which revealed her to be knowledgeable, well-travelled, cultured and opinionated. After the death of her...
-
Paperback | Pub: 14 Nov 2014£9.99
This selected works of Sorley MacLean brings together published poetry from MacLean’s own edited volumes of Poetry. The poems will be given in their original Gaelic with English translations and introduced by Angus Peter Campbell and Aonghas...
-
Paperback | Pub: 25 May 2018£9.99One of the greatest travellers in Scotland, Martin Martin was also a native Gaelic speaker. This text offers his narrative of his journey around the Western Isles, and a mine of information on custom, tradition and life. Martin Martin’s wrote...
-
Hardback | Pub: 18 Nov 2011£25.00Funny, scurrilous, chilling and gloriously inventive, Tam o’ Shanter is widely regarded as Robert Burns’ masterpiece. This magnificent edition of the poem features the work of Alexander Goudie, one of Scotland’s greatest...
