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Tom Pow

Tom Pow‘One of Scotland’s finest poets’ (The Scotsman) - and a graduate of St Andrews University - Tom Pow has won three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards for his poetry and twice been short-listed for the Scottish Book of the Year. The title of his most recent collection, Landscapes and Legacies, expresses the main concerns of his work - though the landscape is as likely to be one from Baffin Isalnd as from Galloway. Working for Glasgow university at Crichton Campus in Dumfries, on the site of a famous nineteenth century lunatic asylum, his recent work is an imaganiative exploration of the legacy of the institution and its archives. A one-time writer of travel, radio plays and magazine columns, he has recently established himself as a fine writer for children. Who is the World For? (Walker Books) won a Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book Award and the teenage novels, Scabbit Isle and The Pack (both Random House Children’s Books) have been widely praised. An inspiring creative writing tutor, he was for three years Writer in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Praise for Tom Pow’s previous books
‘This book is a love poem to the world – a declaration of love to the storied world, the light and the dark world, the gone world. . It has a rare and infectious freshness in its vision, a setting that is always a combination of joy and apprehensiveness… I found Landscapes and Legacies beautiful, grave and moving’
Ali Smith

‘Compelling and beautifully written’
Michael Morpurgo

‘A short classic’
Literary Review

http://www.tompow.co.uk

Books by Tom Pow

CaptivesCaptives
Set on an unnamed Caribbean island, Captives traces the story of two families kidnapped by guerrillas. It shows the tensions between the captives as well as between them and their captors. The focus of the story is the relationship between the two teenage hostages and the young translator – for all three the kidnapping offers an excitement and a richness of experience they have not previously known.

Captives is a novel which deals with a number of large issues – the relationship between the first and third world; small countries’ desire for independence and self-respect; the moral issues of exploitation and armed struggle. But it also tells very personal stories of love, disappointment and loss; of coming of age and of seizing the moment; of what happens when small lives touch on matters of great significance.

World Rights : Random House Children’s Books
UK Publication Date: Summer 2006
US & Canadian Rights: Roaring Brook Press

Dear Alice : Narratives of Madness

Tom Pow’s powerful new collection of poetry explores the imaginative legacy of a nineteenth century lunatic asylum, the Crichton, drawing on the richly-documented history of the site. This remarkable book includes the sequence ‘Resistances’ gathered from female patients’ notes, but Pow brings many others within his compass: Nebuchadnezzar, Tom Thumb and Peter Pan all make an appearance, as do Freud and the Wolf Man. The Crichton Lunatic Asylumwas at the forefront of the great nineteenth century European-wide ‘rdae in lunacy’ – a period when old assurances were crumbling and our modern sense of the permeability of identity was being formed.

“These are wonderfully lucid poems, full of humanity...Pow is regarded as one of Scotland’s finest poets – and it shows in this brave collection.”
The Northern Echo

“The elegance and sensitivity makes this sequence [Resistances] the highlight of Dear Alice. When it comes to describing insanity, poetry, it transpires, is a deeply sympathetic medium: the negotiation between words and meanings, the unexpected connections and curious juxtapositions; in life these are marks of madness, but in poetry, they become art.”
The Times Literary Supplement

February 2008
Salt Publishing

Tom Pow is represented at Jenny Brown Associates by Jenny - .

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