Photograph by Mike Knowles
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Biography
Poetry Master Classes
Poetry Postcards
Poems
Poem entitled "Kashmir"
Selection from "Shades of Green"
Scottish Pamphlet Poetry
The Callum Macdonald Memorial Award
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Recent news
MP3 recordings of Tessa Ransford
LINK to 'Alarming Times'.
LINK to 'Goldilocks Principle'.
LINK 'Magic' (english).
LINK 'Magic' (german).
Interview with Tessa Ransford
A very interesting and wide-ranging interview with Tessa by Ruth O'Callaghan can be found
in Markings 27 which can be read or purchased on line at
www.markings.org.uk.
A new poem, written by Tessa in India 2008, can be read here :
SWEEPING, India.
Not Just Moonshine, new and selected poems
Tessa Ransford
Luath Press, Edinburgh
543/2 Castlehill, The Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 2ND
Email: sales@luath.co.uk
Price : £12.99
ISBN 1-906307-77-6
This book, a selection of Tessa's poems over four decades was
published in August 2008 in time for a reading at the Edinburgh International
Book Festival.
A review that appeared in the Scottish Review of Books in November 2008 can be viewed
here (PDF) : Review
The book's cover can be viewed here :
Not Just Moonshine
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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).
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
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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).
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POEM
CHRISTMAS AND CHILDREN IN SIALKOT, PAKISTAN
as I remember celebrating in the 1960s
(Sialkot is in the North East of the Punjab, near the Kashmir border. I worked
in a welfare centre for women and children in a part of the city called Christiantown.)
Blessings on the big day.
(bare din mumbarak ho)
a bowl of steaming rice
see it cooking in the courtyard
ladled out a Christmas taste
for the children of the compound
never mind the dirt and flies
it makes a feast, a concert
for Christmastime brings cold winds
from Kashmir and storms of rain
but today the sun shines gently
and the goat-stew curried gravy
simmers with potatoes
carrots and tomatoes,
let's lick our lips again
halleluya
beat the tabla
sweep the house
a bright dopatta
coloured clothes
with tinselled border
spangly shoes from the bazaar
fresh milk from the buffalo
shawl washed at the river bank
hair washed at the common pump
fetch the baby, run and follow
sing psalms and clap hands
dogs and donkeys flick their ears
the camel kneels
the vulture wheels
we live for the day today
sweetmeats and jamboree
jerseys given from charity
sit in shade beneath the trees
Santa Claus is nothing here
chimneys, candles, twigs of fir
presents, dancing, parties.
Here it's staving off hunger
hope of cure
for dysentery, malaria
hope that grain-growing weather
give us lentils and chapatis
sugar cane is in the fields
sweet and sticky, juicy yields
irrigation channels flow
chrysanthemums and dahlias
in pots on verandas
poinsettia bushes glow
new life, new sun
divine become human
earth blessed anew
we accept and know
this is somehow true
written in aid of the Sick Children's Hospital, Edinburgh, Christmas 2009
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