But Dad said 'Monsters do not change
their spots.' How did he know?
Oh he did, just did, just did.
    from 'Loch Morar'

From a quick-tempered singing grandmother to a performance of The Mikado in an African village: David Kinloch's exploration of his relationship with his father is both unexpected and affectionate. An extended sequence of poems moves from personal memory to reflections on the values embodied in such cultural father-figures as the explorer David Livingstone and the Irish patriot Roger Casement. Translations of poems by Paul Celan and others into vivid Scots weave through the sequence, illuminating the disturbing connections between patriarchy and twentieth-century violence. In contrast, moving and humorous 'dissections' of adult relationships evoke images of the body both scientific and spiritual, culminating in a long narrative poem that celebrates the loving relationship between two seventeenth-century diplomats and doctors, against the background of the bustling city of Constantinople.

Table of Contents

In My Father's House

I Set Off Upon my Journey to the House of Shaws

Loch Morar

Avalon

Ralph

I Presume

A Cardross Callas

Pagliacci

Tremmlin Tree

The Cure

'Ye caun traistly'

Psychomachia

Song

Daithfugue

Thresholds

The Earth Dies Too

Roger Casement's Beard

Tenebrae

La Tour de Ganne

Pictures at an Exhibition

An Encounter

Dancing in the Archives

'A dunnerin: it is'

Ghost Seed

'In waters nor o thi future'

Painting by Numbers

4 Shifts

'The skyrin'

Remission

Lazarus

Assisi

Belonging

'Because ye fund the trauchleskelf'

Inquisition

Impressions of Africa

Tae Rimbaud

A Walk

'Knock thi'



Baines His Dissection