At the top of Blackpool Tower

It's nice to be back home after a busy, blustery week in Blackpool!

It was also nice to come back to a lovely short review of Vintage Sea in the new Northwords Now (p22)

"This poetry is full of confident play with words, deep connections with nature, especially the sea, and vivid images evoking joy and agonising loss."

It looks like a great issue as usual with contributions from Meg Bateman, Hugh McMillan, John Glenday, Rody Gorman, Andrew Greig and many more.

Never had the chance to read any of the poetry collections I took on holiday with me! But we did go up the tower, play on the Pleasure beach, go to Nickelodeon Land, get a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, go to the zoo, see a magic show, watch a 4-D film, walk, walk, walk, and eat, eat, eat....

The house is just about ours, finalising the last few details on the contract etc and we get the keys on Friday 13th (!!!) of April!!!

"An airy, visceral mood permeates her work, which captures the narrator’s unhurried gaze" 

I was delighted yesterday when someone facebooked me to say that Vintage Sea had been reviewed in this month's Scottish Review of Books, a quarterly pull-out mag in The Glasgow Herald. You can read it on-line here. I'm reviewed alongside poets like Elizabeth Rimmer and Gerry Cambridge whose work I much admire. There are some criticisms of my pamphlet, which I can't say are unjustified, such as: "it can be argued that the poems in Vintage Sea feel too similar to each other". Very pleased to have been reviewed.

Also, my six wee poems are now up on the new Shadow Train. I'm delighted to have some poems up there alongside Claire Crowther and Rupert Loydell no less!!

I guess reviews are like buses...! Yes! Another Vintage Sea review!

"Marion can write simple lines very well...on the other hand she has a kind of mystical side that stops the work being too mundane"

"Marion has the voice that some poets look for and never find or hear"

Thanks to Rachel for the lovely review on her blog alongside reviews of the very talented JoAnne McKay's Grave with Lights and fellow Calder Wood Press poet, Ross Wilson's, recently published collection The Heavy Bag. Rachel's market research reviewing style is a little bit different to the usual which makes it all the more interesting to read, which you can do - here!

Other good news this week - six poems accepted for the next issue of Shadowtrain!

"McCready has the uncanny ability to imbue even the most mundane, common place things with mystical properties"

"This is nature turned mythical and extraordinary, there is an acute awareness of life-cycles, weather patterns and things coming to some kind of fruition or ending. And through it all there is a deep running smouldering sensuality, a delight in the beauty and unpredictability of nature and a sense of place and of rootedness"

"McCready brings a heightened awareness to her subjects that make her poems a joy to read"

Thanks to Julia Webb and Ink, Sweat & Tears for this wonderful review of Vintage Sea which you can read here. I'm over the moon with it!!!

Review of Vintage Sea!!

"Throughout Vintage Sea is the accumulation and distillation of things that Plath did well – situating the self in / seeing the self through landscape; myth-making as a way of making sense of experience"

"My favourite poems here are highly musical, and their sparse forms, clipped lines and taut linebreaks support their close sound recurrences and small units of meaning. In this, I’m reminded of Elizabeth Bishop"

"So many lines (too many to quote) from ‘Sargassum Lullaby’, ‘The Cockle Picker’s Wife’ and ‘Life Rafts’ are tactile, smelly, tasty"

I'm so exited about this fantastic review of Vintage Sea by Mark Burnhope which you can read on the Sabotage Reviews website. 

Though I really must stop writing smelly poems! :))) 

Part two of Jim Murdoch's intro to Vintage Sea is available here! 

A rather mammoth series of Q & A's. Thanks to Jim for the excellent questions and I hope my answers aren't too dull!

Review of Vintage Sea here!!

Many thanks to Jim for this detailed and insightful blog-review, I'm absolutely delighted with it!

Anyone who reads Jim's blog, The Truth About Lies, regularly, knows the research, preparation and effort that goes into each of his blog-essays which make them a constant source of fascinating information and philosophical discussion into, among other things, writers, creativity and the writing processes.

Jim's next blog post is dedicated to a series of questions and answers on my poetry and will be published on his blog next week.