Pamphlets - North Idea

North Idea pamphlets

Click on any cover to find out more, or to read reviews and samples from the book

Alex Cluness: 2005

North Idea's first collection, by Alex Cluness, is a series of poems that blur the boundaries between cinema and reality, between the streets of Edinburgh and the celluloid world of Hong Kong.

Malachy Tallack: In Prague

The result of a year spent living and working in the city, the poems in this collection focus not only on specific places and people, but also on the relationships between past and present, experience and memory.

James Sinclair: Gulf Stream Blues

Gulf Stream Blues contains poems in two voices, English and Shetland dialect, and explore one Shetlander's relationship with his surroundings: the sea, the sky and the weather.

Mark Ryan Smith: Midnight & Tarantella

A diverse collection of poetry in both English and Shaetlan, Mark has compared Midnight & Tarantella to "a 'rumblee draar': a random assortment of surprises and unusual bits and pieces rumbled together in the same container."

Lise Sinclair: here

The poems in Lise's debut collection all relate to a strong sense of people and place, distance and presence in the land, sea and cityscapes of Fair Isle, Shetland and Florence.

Matthew Wright: Topping Up

The short stories in Topping Up represent a bartender's-eye view of life in a pub, from lager to locals, and all the stories contained in a pint.

North: an anthology

North is an anthology of poetry by some of Shetland's best writers, exploring the themes, images and ideas of North. The pamphlet also contains woodcuts by the artist Paul Bloomer.

Donald S Murray: Praising the Guga

In Donald's native Lewis, gannets - the guga - have long formed a part of the local cuisine and culture. In these poems, Donald examines the relationship between people and gannets, and offers his own praise and prayers to the guga.

Identity: Essays

The new pamphlet from North Idea is a collection of short essays on Shetland identity. Written by Tom Simchak, Malachy Tallack, Christie Williamson and Mark Ryan Smith, the pieces approach the subject in very different ways, covering oil, landscape, exile and literature. The artist Roberto Ghetto has contributed three images to the collection.

These essays were produced to coincide with the recent conference on identity and culture: Taking Shetland Out of the Box, and the conference organiser, Adam Grydehoj, has provided an introduction for the essays, which you can read by clicking on the cover.