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New news Not Just Moonshine, new and selected poems Tessa Ransford Luath Press, Edinburgh This book, a selection of Tessa's poems over four decades, is due in August in time for a reading at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Sunday 24th August at 7.30 p.m. in conjunction with former colleague at the Scottish Poetry Library, poet Ken Cockburn. Not Just Moonshine will be available at discount at this event. You can also hear Tessa reading poems from the book in conjunction with North Uist poet Pauline Prior Pitt at Word Power Bookshop, West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh as part of the Word Power Book Fringe on Wednesday 13th August at 1 p.m.

Tessa's publication, Shades of Green, was shortlisted for the 2006 Eco-Creativity Award, sponsored by Friends of the Earth and the Eco Building Society (see below). Shades of Green can be ordered from Akros Press on the Scottish Pamphlet Poetry web site. Tessa's previous publisher, The Ramsay Head Press, has now closed down. The following Tessa Ransford titles are available from Tessa directly at wisdomfield@talk21.com , each at £7 including postage (to the UK). When it works it feels like play Medusa Dozen and other poems Fools and Angels A Dancing Innocence Seven Valleys

Tessa is editor and translator of "The Nightingale Question : 5 Poets from Saxony" which has been published by Shearsman Books (www.shearsman.com). In the 2002, poet Tessa Ransford and artist Joyce Gunn-Cairns travelled to Leipzig as part of a Scottish Arts Council travel award. While there, Tessa investigated the local poetry scene and translated 5 poets who are based in Saxony: one in Weimar, one near Dresden and three from Leipzig itself. Joyce sketched portarits of each of the writers and made the portrait photographs that grace the cover of this book. The poets included are Wulf Kirsten. Uta Mauersberger, Andreas Reimann, Thomas Rosenlöcher, Elmar Schenkel and Tessa Ransford herself. (The book cover is shown below, left).

POEM

A passionate philanthropist and advocate in 1830 of the immediate abolition of slavery, regardless of the costs.

Let it not be said that I am indifferent to the consequences of immediate emancipation. I am indeed indifferent to them. I despise them wholly as put into competition with the demands which are made by outraged humanity for justice.

Let it not be said
      that I am indifferent
to the slavery abolished two centuries ago
or the pleas made then by impassioned Scots -
such as Andrew Thomson aged seventy-two -
despite the threat of a total collapse
in the world's economy - and their own discomfort.

Let it not be said
      that I am indifferent
to the arms trade that enslaves the world
manufactures war for the tools of war
to be sold as foundation for western wealth
our comforts, our freedoms, our cutting-edge science
our democracy and hypocrisy.

Let it be said
      that I am indifferent
indifferent to any consequence
of the end of war and the arms trade.
I despise them wholly when compared
with the widespread, outraged demand
for justice by humans among us.

Let it be said
      through our knowledge economy
the networked consciousness of our species,
our collective conscience, our international intolerance
of money from death    let it be said

regardless of cost, of cost to our lifestyle
of cost to our comfort, of cost to our tribe,
of cost to our cars, of cost to our pride,
it shall be abolished, the arms trade, now.
regardless of cost.

Tessa Ransford 2007