Light and Other Observations

Light and other observations is a collection of poems born out of seeing Scotland. As the 2017-18 Poet in Residence for the National Trust for Scotland, Martin Cathcart Froden has visited some of the nation s favourite places in search of words. The houses, islands, castles, homes and people he found on the way helped him find some. Going to sixteen NTS properties over the course of a year has inspired a volume covering the urban and the rural, the landlocked and the salty sea. This collection draws connections between ghosts and wax cylinders, lost letters and found love, linseed oil and the blood of privateers, between the way light plays on a wooden floor and how a carpet knife can so easily slice through an oil painting.