W.N. Herbert is a highly versatile poet who writes both in English and Scots. Forked Tongue was his first collection from Bloodaxe. Sean O'Brien has called him 'outstanding... a poet whom nothing - including what he terms "the Anchises of the Scots Style Sheet" - will intimidate'. For Douglas Dunn, his was 'the best writing in Scots - thoughtful, studied, clever - I've seen in years'. Jamie McKendrick admired his 'vibrant' poetry, his 'ear for the sensuous music of Scots' and his 'ability to effect sudden shifts of scale that bring the human and the cosmic face to face'.
Herbert wrote: 'To be Scottish is to experience suppressed contrasts; it may be between your lifestyle and that of the affluent South, it may be between your speech patterns and the pervasive norm of Standard English. Unlike Ireland, Scotland is not supposed to be "different" or "foreign". It is the country which is not quite a country, possessing a language which is not really a language. To use English or Scots, then, seems to cover up some aspect of our experience, to "lie". The truth about Scotland, perhaps, can only be situated between the dominant and suppressed parts of language, in the region of the forked tongue.'
Forked Tongue is a book balanced between these opposites. At its heart are two groups of poems: The Cortina Sonata in English, and The Landfish in Scots. Both engage with the problem of re-creating a suppressed culture: Can a myth be ersatz? What is an inauthentic word? How complex is "Scottishness" permitted to be? Buttressed with recent poetry in both tongues, Forked Tongue mixes old and new, both startling English and untypical Scots. Like the gairfish or dolphins which speed through the Scots work, Forked Tongue is both fish and mammal. In its geographic sweep and linguistic range, Forked Tongue offers a new definition of what we call "British" poetry.
- ISBN13 9781852242671
- Publish Date 24 March 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 October 2015
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 128
- Language English