Square Baw

Poignant, funny, on-target and true, this is a cracking collection of poems.

Even for someone who is not a diehard football follower, Hamish MacDonald’s exploration of what really makes the Scottish game tick is rich and revealing. It digs down to the roots, touching on issues of class, community and politics as it goes, and is as much a social and family history as it is a record of local heroes, close miracles and glorious failures - the world so brilliantly captured in just one of the poems, ‘The Fitba Multiverse’.

With its powerful evocation of men and boys who loved the game going off to war and coming back to poverty or not coming back at all, Square Baw makes a persuasive argument in support of the Shankly dictum that football is much more important than a matter of life and death.         James Roberston, author of The Testament of Gideon Mack

-- James Robertson * Preview *

 

A fantastic mix of history, autobiography and biography through the prism of Scottish football: the cold, but redemptive, days on the terraces, the constancy (and hopelessness) of hope, the intricate relationships between football and working class rhythms of life, and – through the story of the poet’s grandfather William Grant – the overlaps between football and war. A lovely celebration of a few strands of the ‘fitba multiverse’. Peter MacKay, Poet, translator, broadcaster and Scotland’s Makar

-- Peter MacKay * official preview quote *

This book is like two large calloused hands lifting you over the turnstiles to take you on a journey through the history, tribes and folklore that shaped our national game. An uplifting and essential read.  Donna Matthew, Makar for the Scottish Women's National Team Poetry Society

-- Donna Matthew * official previ