Review: The Thing That Mattered Most

I sometimes feel I should apologise for the amount of poetry I cover on this book blog, but I'm not going to. The truth is, poetry remains something the Scots do well, and in the past decade or two, Scottish poetry has been blooming and the shortlists for prizes display a disproportionate number of Scottish poets. Most years see a few queries reach me from abroad, from journalists and academics, showing an interest in my own work or an appreciation of the work of my peers.

We have been booming in the way Irish poetry did in the 1960s and 1970s, an American editor told me recently, while Sean O'Brien, probably the UK's most respected critic of poetry has suggested Scots poets are currently leading the world in the art. Not that you'd know it from within the country though – the media shows little interest, book festivals offer a grudging amount, Glasgow is unmatched among British cities when it comes to a lack of literary events. Scotland still does not have a dedicated poetry publisher of any size and promising poets head for English presses.

Yet though my generation of poets continues to thrive and publish, I wonder where our successors are – none of the last 70 winners of the Eric Gregory Awards (for young poets) have been Scottish – in fact the last Scottish awardee was Kate Clanchy a dozen years back. So I'm glad to see that the publication of poetry aimed at Scottish children has been prominent recently. Much of this has been down to James Robertson and Matthew Fitt's Itchy Coo imprint, specialising in verses in Scots for youngsters. But Black & White, in conjunction with the Scottish Poetry Library, have now brought out The Thing That Mattered Most (£6.99), a collection of pieces by contemporary Scottish writers, mainly in English, but with quite a few in Scots or Gaelic.

Though there one or two old favourites, such as Edwin Morgan's 'The Chaffinch Map of Scotland', most are new works, with a few unfamiliar names alongside some of our leading poets – John Burnside, Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay. Poets like Gregor Steele serve up the sort of pungent Scots rhymes we know and love from Itchy Coo volumes. Subject matter ranges from mad pilots to mouthy parents, from perilous cats to caterpillars, and there is a welcome lack of that sort of poem which preaches on 'issues' and which is a fixture of the curriculum.

The book is aimed at ages 8-13, but there is plenty here to tickle the younger kid or the inner child and, as Michael Morpurgo says in his intro, all best read out loud. The quality is not always top notch – ever a problem when a book relies on commissioned work – and it was interesting to see how poets adapted their voices for a younger reader, or to see what they chose as suitable from their books for adults. A fine example of this is 'What the Horses See At Night', from Robin Robertson's latest volume. List poems and repetition always work well for children (and for adults I think) and there are nice pieces here from Tom Pow, Thomas A Clark, Carol Ann Duffy (who has become a fine children's poet) and Alec Finlay, whose 'found poem' composed of curious questions was one of my favourites in this enjoyable book: