Poetry Doubles Preview – Gerry Stewart and Andrew Forster

Penultimate in this year’s Poetry Doubles series is the promising combination of Gerry Stewart and Andrew Forster. This pairing forms a special Flambard Press event, as it is also the launch of two first collections from these poets based in Scotland.

Gerry Stewart declared she wanted to be an expatriate before she even knew what the word meant. She grew up in the United States and left Iowa when she was seventeen for Norway and Greece before settling in Scotland. She is a freelance creative writing tutor working with adults and children and editor of Grimalkin Press, producing books and pamphlets for the groups she works with. She received a Scottish Arts Council Award in 2005 to assist in the writing of her first novel Talking Italian in my Sleep. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies in the UK and abroad.

Her collection “Post-Holiday Blues” is a traveller’s notebook made up of snapshots and souvenirs, sketching the poet’s journeys to Greece, Norway, Mexico and other destinations. Each of Gerry Stewart’s poems is an emotional landmark, anchoring places in memory. Her precise and poignant language distils and captures locations and experiences lost to time, giving them voices that bring the reader into the moment. There is a self-conscious quality to her poems, echoing an expatriate’s hesitance about their right to describe and participate in the culture of another country, but at the same time they revel in the beauty and thrill of the unfamiliar.

Andrew Forster is best known to Dumfries & Galloway as its Literature Development Officer at Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association (DGAA), and among his many activities is also the architect of the Poetry Doubles series. Jenny Wilson, Director of DGAA said, “DGAA is extraordinarily lucky in having a Literature Development officer who is himself a poet, and Andrew has a foot in each camp. That his first collection of poetry is published as a book now is a double celebration for us – he’s obviously succeeded in juggling the job and the creative life, and there’s a new collection from a very distinctive voice to read and enjoy. I feel it’s an achievement to celebrate, and I’m delighted we can do so with the Poetry Doubles reading.

Andrew’s first collection, “Fear of Thunder” asks us to consider our common experiences, from the father unable to shake a childhood fear to the woman dreaming of Australia. From the industrial South Yorkshire of the poet’s childhood to his adopted home of rural Scotland, via imaginative leaps to Spain, America, Germany and eighteenth-century rural England, these poems look at what makes us who we are. Andrew was singled out by the Scotsman as a “notable newcomer” at Stanza 2005.

This Poetry Doubles event will take place on Monday 8 October at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre at 7pm. Tickets cost £7/£5 and are available from Andrew Forster at DGAA on 01387 253383 or andrew@dgaa.net.