Dorothy Baird is an Edinburgh based writer, who comes along to one of the writing groups I facilitate. She has published two collections of poetry and this newly published pamphlet was a winner in the 2024 Poetry Space Pamphlet competition.
It's a beautiful wee selection of poetry about things that are missing, fading memories, lost loved ones, the empty nest and the Sycamore Gap, the last of which is reflected in the cover design by Hanni Shinton. Nature is essential in this collection, from the "squirrel that could clearly run the country / with its problem solving" (You Can't Stand in the Same River Twice) to the "blackbird in his widower's weeds" (Therapy of Vowels), the "otter, the seals and the sleek wheel of a porpoise turning in the blue" (A Small Life Against the Timeline of Everything) and skylarks singing in many poems.
I was taken right back to my own childhood by "Memories are Lonely things to carry alone" with it's description of a child's den under a rhododendron bush, my childhood den was under a sycamore tree, that has since been removed from the garden I grew up in, just as the poet's rhododendron bush is no longer there.
There are moving poems here about her father's dementia and his difficulties coping with the social distancing imposed by COVID-19 lockdowns
"On the way out, she opens the door
with her sleeve covered hand and smiles
across the distance he wants to close
and she has to maintain, pushing back
against thousands of years of evolution
and the magnetism of family"
Social Distancing
But in all the grief and sadness, there is always solace and the comfort of nature, and "snowdrops / spread among the stones like small bulbs of hope" in the cemetery (Carpe Diem).
This is a closely observed, acutely felt and beautifully written pamphlet.
The Importance of Not by Dorothy Baird published (2025) by Poetry Space.
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My latest Substack post 'Art and Activism', went up yesterday, you can read it here.
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