I was lucky enough to read James McConachie’s first collection from Black Bough Poetry Press before it was launched, and to record some of my impressions. Here they are.

It is extraordinary, an earthy, sun-drenched tour-de-force, peppered with the language of his home in rural northern Spain.

He takes the reader to remote wooded mountains, and brings us so close to animals, wild and tame, that we feel their hot breath.

Beyond his breathtaking descriptive powers, James McConachie has an unerring ability to unveil brutal injustice, to present us with human hurts, past and present, with a kind of poetic rage that is always finely controlled. This is a mountain storm of a collection. I heartily recommend it.

In some ways, though, it was a bittersweet read for me. My mother lived in Spain, at the foot of a mountain, for the last twenty years of her life, though she was far south of where James lives. But the language he uses, the pungent descriptions of countryside and rural Spanish life touch me in a raw place, of affection mixed with grief.

I haven’t been back to Spain (for a joyful reason) since my mum died in 2011. I did go back for 5 days to clear the house when my stepfather died in 2022. That was painful beyond measure. He had always been a controlling and manipulative man, and he had eradicated any trace of her in their house.

And yet I have loved the country, and its people and language, for a long time. I am hoping that sometime, I may be able to write about these mixed feelings, without self-pity, remembering all the reasons why Spain is still, in some ways, home.