The Nine of Diamonds

Using a kaleidoscope, a deck of tarot cards, and an 1895 Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, this collection of poems is influenced by French surrealism and opens with the Gaelic visionary practice of inducing visions behind a waterfall. Treating the Highlands as a Gaelic garden, the rebels on the run as herds of deer, and the preservation of Gaelic culture as a type of sugar-cured mummification, The Nine of Diamonds is set in a phantasmagoric landscape described in the Scots of Henryson and Dunbar but evoking Scots Gaelic concepts and motifs to mix Highland and Lowland experience with magical and occult terminology. Written in the run up to the 2014 Scottish referendum, The Nine of Diamonds operates as a powerful wish-text.