The best of the new in contemporary Scottish poetry - not to be missed. RON BUTLIN, Sunday HeraldGerda Stevenson is one of Scotland's great renaissance women, equally gifted at acting, directing and writing. She has written, adapted and performed in numerous radio plays, as well as writing and directing for the stage. In 2012 her layered, nuanced play Federer Versus Murray enthralled a packed audience off-Broadway. If This Were Real is described as an autobiography in verse and it brings to life a journey that is personal and political, intense and wide-ranging. Stevenson's way is compassionate, defiant and honest. These poems offer authentic meanings, connections, ideas. Poems of childhood reanimate vivid experiences and people with both power and subtlety. The tones are a shifting, compelling blend of joyous, plaintive, humorous and poignant. Stevenson's lines are clean, clear, musical. The inherent fallibilities and sad frailties of humankind and nature alike are explored with an edgy panache. Stevenson finds, and recreates, a magnificent joy…an antidote to the pains that can otherwise beset a sensitive, intelligent mind. These cool or impassioned, always clear-eyed, poems comfort and disturb, sadden and enlighten; they at once ground and elevate the reader. Though Gerda Stevenson is very much a poet with her own style, If This Were Real put me in mind of Iain Crichton Smith's A Life, both books being autobiographical collections written by remarkable Scots who have had lives rich in moments of eloquence, insight and empathy. KEVIN MACNEIL, Association of Scottish Literature magazine, THE BOTTLE IMPBrings a fresh eye and a wise head to familiar Scottish themes. Tribune MagazineLike a night-time bonfire, the poems by Gerda Stevenson in If This Were Real, a poetry collection published by Ensemble (in the invaluable Erranze series directed by Gëzim Hajdari), captivate the reader with her delicate incantatory magic. If This Were Real is the most beautiful collection I have read in recent times. Stevenson's poems, pure like snow, yet ardent like fire, are a true hymn to life. PATRIA LETTERATURA, Rivista internazionale di lingua & letteraturaI’m not a good reader of poetry. Although I always look forward to the biannual anthologies of Stairwell Books, it is as much for the short stories as for the poems. In the latest edition, "Dream Catcher 38", Wendy Pratt quotes Robert Frost “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong…” and she goes on to say that a good poem should give you a jolt “down a step that isn’t there.” Which helped explain why I so treasure this anthology by Gerda Stevenson. The musical Scottish cadence is warmly familiar but look out for power cables concealed among the words. Each of her short poems tells a complete story, from sharply defined narratives of loss “midwife to words that will cut the cord” (How to Tell Him) “nothing without her grace” (The Red Cardigan) to howls against injustice “their ears deaf to truth, though still intact” (Asylum Seeker). A book of poems to buy and read. And read again. FIONA ERSKINE, GoodReads
