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  Andrew Greig ROSE NICOLSON A novel of our Formation. Due out 4th August 2021! This is a Companion-piece to my earlier FAIR HELEN. Set in C16th Edinburgh (Embra) and St Andrews and the Scottish Borders, in a riven country with turbulent, shambolic governan
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Here's my latest novel. It was a tough struggle/ a sair fecht but got there in the end. I'm pleased it is not dour or heavy, given the Scottish Reformation wasn't the jolliest of times. I realise now the central characters are young and so laugh and joke, fancy each other and seek adventures in this most unstable of times. It's had very nice reviews and was SHORT-LISTED for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction - which is fitting, given that Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch, a direct forbear of Walter Scott the writer, is one of the central protagonists of my previous historical novel FAIR HELEN. .
Fair Helen, though set slightly later (c. 15 years) also took place during the wildly unstable Reformation (think: Brexit with knives), and is essentially a love-and-death story based on the real life people who feature in the Border Ballad Fair Helen of Kilconnel. 
I'm currently working on the novel PADUA, which should resolve these linked stories in - guess where? - PADUA.
​I hope you enjoy ROSE NICOLSON, and relish spending time up close with this lively bunch of strivers and chancers, in the period that in large part made us Scots who we are.

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NEW NOVEL Out 4th August 2021!

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Here's the new collection of poems, which came out just in time for Lockdown! Still, it exists and is available. A number of Orkney poems (they begin and end it), and some from a life-enhancing 12 weeks in New Zealand (including the extended sequence 'Settlers'). There's also a quartet of poems around Jimmy Stand, Scottish icon - the first concert I went to, aged 10, was him and his Band. The second, some seven years later, was the Incredible String Band. A very different occasion! Both are markers of our psyche and culture. And 'The Old Codgers', meeting with pals outside the Ubiquitous Chip, with a wee smile acknowledging the stage in life we are fortunate to have got as far as.


 For more details, see Forthcoming.








   
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OTHER NEWS
CD 'CLEAN BY RAIN'!

​ For a long time I've wanted to do something like this. Re-meeting the legendary Eric Plectrum (aka Brian Michie), former Fate & ferret guitarist, in the course of writing You Know What, we hatched the idea of combining a bunch of my poems with the instrumental music he had recorded some time ago.
We put this together at the CaVa Studios in Glasgow, with the generous and adept support of Brian Young. We got in another old pal, Allan Tall, to add flute to the three tracks. The mixing and adapting sessions were a revelation. I added a couple of extra tracks, taken from a very good recording made live at the Queens Hall, with Fiona Hunter (vocal, cello) and Mike Vass (vocal, tenor guitar).
Overall, it's not quite like anything. The aim was to have the spoken word up front, but not at the expense of fading down the music. We want them to co-exist, but in relation to each other. The music isn't backing for the poems, and the poems weren't written to the music - but they were recorded live to the instrumental playback, and so inevitably the voice responds to it.
I will sell it after readings. Also at a few sympathetic music and book shops. And the CD is available on Amazon, iTunes, also for streaming and download.




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GETTING HIGHER: The Complete Mountain Poems

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Published by  Birlinn, and launching in April 2011, 'Getting Higher' is a complete collection of Andrew Greig's mountain poems, and also includes outtakes, commentary, facsimile notes and marginalia, plus sketches and illustrations from James Hutcheson. An outstandingly elegant and varied production. For more information and images relating to the book, click HERE.

NB From May 12th, this will be available as a ebook (!)  via Waterstones or Amazon or the LoveReading site!

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Andrew thanks you for coming by to look at his home on the web, and he hopes you enjoy your stay.

THE SOUND OF THE WORDS
Recordings of 26 poems are on the National Poetry Archives, Some can listened to for free, and they are all on the CD reviewed below by the Observer:Books

AUDIO BOOK

Reading From His Poems

Andrew Greig

POETRYARCHIVE.ORG £12.99. 41MINS 26 POEMS

Greig is "hooked by the heart" to

Scotland - to "the big sky and its

changes" of Orkney; the old fishermen

of Anstruther with "eyebrows like grey

spray"; Stronsay, where the only sound is

"the world turning" - and to his mentor,

Norman MacCaig, as shown in "Norman's

Goodnight". Another theme is climbing in

the Himalayas, where he feels intensely

alive with a new awareness of "everything

we cannot see". Greig's mellifluous

chiming and his gentle voice highlight the

tenderness and vulnerability that infuse

these poems. Rachel Redford



LISTEN TO ANDREW READING HIS POETRY AT THE NATIONAL POETRY ARCHIVE



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