Allan CameronBesprekingen

Unorthodox Poetry Collection
Review of the Vagabond Voices paperback (2016)

As the synopsis says, this collection:

... contains a wide variety of subjects, not all of which are commonly associated with poetry: a weak man is interviewed by angels and devils, an Afghan mystic tells us why he became one, a riposte to Scott’s “Breathes there a man with soul so dead”, taking the side of the man with a dead soul, the English language, a lesson on Italian viticulture, and another on Italian anatomy amongst others.

Poet Allan Cameron is also the publisher, an editor and occasional translator (Italian to English) of the Scottish indie publishing firm Vagabond Voices. His informative Preface to this collection distinguishes between the poems which are "the essence of his aesthetic", "the portrait poems" and the "narrative poems." The variety makes for a constantly changing viewpoint, so there is no standard sort of Cameron poem. They can make wild leaps in topic and imagination. My favorite was still something along the romantic line though, an overview of his life's passage in "Time and My Wife".

I can't really be unbiased about any Vagabond Voices book, they have especially published more Baltic literature in translation than any other publishing house in their Changelings series. I have done some copyediting work for them in the past and hope to do more of such in the future.