Strath

Strath is the latest book published by Easel Press. It contains Scots versions, by Robert Crawford, of Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) Chinese poems paired with black and white duotone photographs by Norman McBeath.The title, Strath, is the Scots word for a low sided valley often with a river running through it. Most of the poems have a rural setting, while several mention grassy plains or rivers. The photographs in Strath offer subtle points of contact between poem and image, with pictures hinting at delicacy and fleetingness, at weathering, withering and growth. Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews. “ The photographs have been selected to provide a visual current that flows through the book, complementing the poems in mood and tone. Often, but not always, there are subtle points of contact between an individual poem and the image beside it, with several pictures hinting at delicacy and fleetingness, at breezes, weathering, withering and growth; but the overall visual shape of the volume aims at a continuing rhythm, a cadenced flows that balances the lasting and the transient, communicating through telling details and cumulative hints a sense of the course of a strath.” (Robert Crawford)