Full Description
Scales Dog provides a selection of Hutchison's work from Deep-Tap Tree (1978) to his most recent collection Carbon Atom (2006). The earliest poem "Mr Scales Walks His Dog" was written in Canada in 1970, following the poet's arrival there from Scotland in 1966. At the time Michael Ondaatje said :"I love that poem" - and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, hearing the piece at a public reading in British Columbia, announced as soon as he came to the mike: "I dug that dog!"
Deep-Tap Tree was written during the seventies while Hutchison was living and working on Vancouver Island. Of that first book, the distinguished critic Richard Ellmann wrote: "Mr Hutchison is his own man, individual in temperament, pungent and accurate in expression. His work is compounded of wit and mystery, and delights his readers even as it teases them into self-recognition".
Ellmann's comments suggest that the appeal of Hutchison's poems is both direct and indirect: being not only satirical and intelligent but also mysterious and moving. Another American reviewer found that variety a cause for celebration: "In a time of too much plain and too often poverty-stricken verse, Hutchison's poetry looks and sounds bravely alive, colourful and crafted". Underlining this positive reception across the Atlantic, the poet Robert Creeley said: "Sandy Hutchison's poems read brightly, with a fine economy and precision. There is humor and warmth, an ear for clear edges of sound, and a pace that can hold all together".
These responses were echoed in the UK when The Moon Calf and the pamphlets Epitaph for a Butcher and Sparks in the Dark were published after Hutchison's return to Scotland in 1984. Gavin Ewart found the work: "Sharp, dark, funny - and with more vigour than almost all those usually singled out for praise." Writing in Lines Review the poet George Bruce declared: "There is no questioning [his] verve, inventiveness and versifying skills. There's been nothing quite like this since Sidney Goodsir Smith's Under the Eildon Tree. Hutchison's poems ... are in the same witty, brio tradition".
Singling out "An Ounce of Wit to a Pound of Clergy" - which is the opening poem in the collection Carbon Atom, and was published as a pamphlet by Gael Turnbull - Ian Hamilton Finlay said: "The Hutchison piece is fascinating to me ... really good, energetic, knotty, interesting". Gael Turnbull added his own praise when invited to comment on on early draft of Scales Dog by writing: "There are a dozen or so poems in the collection which register for me as having a totally unique quality, a momentum and richness, an energy and an edge, quite unlike anything I know written by anyone else".
Recently, Hutchison's work has sparked a response from a broader audience, and he is recognised by contemporary writers as a poet whose work has cut its own channels gradually, and is steadily gaining in reputation.
Scales Dog is a book which ranges widely with invention and delight. It is distinctively Scottish in some respects - but the appeal is international. It has depth and humour to carry its readers all the way through.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Deep-Tap Tree
To Freyja
Mr Scales Walks His Dog
Political Digression
Climacteric
Of Akbar
The Dead-Carn Shifting Slowly in the Drift
A Slate Rubbed Smooth
Riguarda
The Death of Odinn
The Moon Calf
The Moon Calf
The Usual Story
Goosegogs and Gorcocks
Surprise, Surprise
Buchartie-boo
Hyne Awa, Nae Howtowdie
Helix
Flyting
Gravity One, Fielder Zero
`En Mai Quant Naist La Rosee'
Famous Last Words:
"Lord Maunsie sniffed hard"
"Within the courtyard of New College"
"Well, we were sitting"
"Ostler had been breathing"
"It's nae aw that difficult efter aw"
"Next to City Chambers"
"It was simply the sound of his laughter"
Switching Channels
At the Brasserie Pique
Fleurs-de Lys
Carbuncle's Thrashing of the Tub
Inchcolm
Carbon Atom
1
An Ounce of Wit to a Pound of Clergy
West Coast Tally
Alba
Lady Scotter
Sparks in the Dark
Epitaph for a Butcher
Jimp
Excuse Me for Saying So
Announcement
By the Beef and Not Touching It
Mind the Gap
Last Time
Council Debate Resumes
The Hat
Citronella
Sibilance: Swifts
Brief Praise Poem
No Point
Didn't Do
Annals of Enlightenment
Pea and Ham
Unfinished Business
The Holt
Incantation
Carbon Atom
2
Scota and Gaethelos
Coup de Foudre
Heading in to the Bar
One Line at a Time
Simply Platonic
Kanticle
Rhetorical Devices
Epistemology
Receipt
Mao and the Death of Birds
Cunty Fingers
Hippertie-Skippertie
Above Stromness
Yeeaiow
Phytogeny
Carbon Atom
No, No
Grass of Levity
She Said
A Saturno Conditum
Landing
Hole House Farm
Suona Per Te
