Epiphany in Azure

By Glenn Telfer

A free selection of poems exploring Scotland's saint, Saint Columba, and his life on the island of Iona in Scotland over 1000 years ago. The inspiration is pious, but the sensibility is modern and slightly irreverent. Hopeful that this interpretation brings a better understanding of our saints. We need them more than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Telfer
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311757579

Glenn Telfer

I am now almost fully grown, being born in 1956 in working-class Glasgow, Scotland (from Kinning Park, Dennistoun and Ibrox, if you’re asking). The hammer and tongs, coal-powered world I grew up in is as gone as Troy, and with it the industrial working class that served it. What seemed so solid and forever, disappeared almost overnight and is rapidly becoming unknowable except through people like me. The hasty departure of a way of life and its replacement by globalized uncertainty is both the background to my life and the raw material of my art. Considering what’s gone, what’s here, what’s yet to come is what I’m about; itemising the bill of life through my writing. Other poets have explored this too, but none are as like the poet as he is himself. This is my special qualification. Imagine being able to write a book? Even when I was a wee boy throwing stones and playing street football I wanted to be a writer. And all the while I thought I was living my life backwards and sideways I was actually tracing a Celtic knotwork to here. Whatever the reason for this want, this writing may be the cure. May be is also maybe not.

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