It is 1st May, and we are among the "fair field full of folk" gathered on Glasgow Green to celebrate May Day. On every side are Chartists and Suffragettes, trades unionists and Communists, tourists and film-crews, artists and asylum seekers, the homesick and the homeless, the long-time-dead and the yet-to-be-born. Helen Crawfurd and John Maclean are here, so are Edwin Muir, Ronald Stevenson and Edwin Morgan, Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Robeson and Nelson Mandela, Matt McGinn and St Mungo, a chorus of voices coming together in dialogue and potential unity in the Dear Green Place that is - or might be - Glasgow.
Granny Albyn's Complaint is a love-letter to the city where David Betteridge has spent the best part of his life. Lyrical, narrative, satiric and reflective, his poetry celebrates the city's radical political and artistic traditions, in despair and hope, struggle and advance, continuity and loss, and all the lovely flarings-up of human achievement. Green thoughts in a red shade.
"Spout not slogans and then have the bloody arrogance to call your bloody slogans the new poetry of the Left. The poet has to be a wordsmith, and have a feel for the music that is inherent in the language of his own people. A poet of the Left has to have these qualities, and more. There is more to Socialism than a hatred of capitalism - though that is not a bad starting point. But love is more fundamental to the Socialist spirit than any other single factor. This is why I like very much this selection of poems by David Betteridge."
Jimmy Reid
David Betteridge has worked as a teacher and teacher-trainer in Scotland, England, Norway, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Pakistan and Nepal. He has co-authored several books for the classroom. Granny Albyn's Complaint is his first book of poetry.
Granny Albyn's Complaint, by David Betteridge
ISBN 978-0-9554028-3-8
Price: £7.95
Publication date: 1st July 2008
Order Granny Albyn's Complaint from Inpress.
