Blood Salt Spring

From Edinburgh’s Makar, poetry that “speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland . . . with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other” (The Scotsman).

In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers?

Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are—exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020, but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars.

Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined.

In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring—into hope.

“Lavery’s poems are born of a fearless and unflinching interrogation into heritage, race, identity and the nature of belonging. Lean and challenging, her work is driven by an honesty and energy of surprising power and immediacy.” —Owen Sheers, author of Resistance