| Zen Story |
Music: Miriama Young Words:Alan Spence
click here to visit review page |
| The Pure Land |
'With exotic locations, a beautiful woman and a battle against an evil shogun, Thomas Blake Glover's life sounds too fantastic to be true. But now the unsung North-East hero's real-life adventures and achievements are set to become a best-selling novel.......'
Simon Johnson
This is North Scotland |
One of the much anticipated new novels of the summer is Alan Spence's The Pure Land, launched at the Book Festival, the fictionalised story of Aberdeen shipping clerk Thomas Glover.....Spence has turned the story into a beautiful, satisfying novel. '
Living Scotsman.com |
The Pure Land is a page turner of the first order — but what sets this novel apart is its philosophical depth, a depth and texture that could have been achieved only by a writer steeped in Buddhist ideas..... a meditative work of art that is as finely honed as a samurai’s sword.'
John Burnside
www.timesonline.co.uk |
Alan Spence has produced a modern epic, at once a rattling good adventure, a heart-wrenching love story, and a journey of the spirit.
Penguin Books, South Africa |
Spence puts body and soul into the Aberdeen literary festival he founded............
LIVING.scotsman.com |
| Glasgow Zen |
Sharp, penetrating, wry, funny, sad . . . evoked with wonderful precision.'
Edwin Morgan |
Seasons of the Heart |
'Seasons of the Heart is remarkably close in spirit, and execution, to the best of the works of the great four of haiku, Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki . . . it is a work which is bound to give much pleasure, and one which will last.'
Lucien Stryk
'How much pure energy can be packed into a book that fits into a hand, a book so small it will slip easily into a back pocket? Seasons of the Heart, Alan Spence's first poetry collection since Glasgow Zen, testifies in 150 haiku to the sheer potential of the small. It is a reminder of the power of simplicity ... Seasons of the Heart becomes a meditative and sustained delivery of both energy and purity. Spence is a calm and necessary visionary ... This is Spence in essence, all openness of instinct and imagination.'
Ali Smith, |
| The Three Estaites |
The magnum opus of Scottish Renaissance drama... Alan Spence's newly updated script simultaneously illuminates Lindsay's groundbreaking achievement in marrying vernacular language with sophisticated verse forms, while at the same time adding yet more weight to the assertion of Scots' expressive dynamism and eloquence as a language for literary drama.'
The Independent |
| Contacts |
Publisher:
(All enquiries except Rights)
Canongate Books Ltd
14 High Street
Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Scotland
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 5111
Fax: +44 (0)131 557 5211
E-mail:
customerservices@canongate.co.uk
www.canongate.net
|
Agent (Rights permissions)
Curtis Brown Group Ltd
Haymarket House
28-29 Haymarket
London SW1Y 4SP
England
Tel: +44 (0)20 7393 4400
Fax: +44 (0)20 7393 4401
E-mail:
info@curtisbrown.co.uk |
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| Prizes and Awards |
| 1990 |
Scottish Arts Council Book Award:
Seasons of the Heart |
| 1991 |
Glasgow Herald People's Prize:
The Magic Flute |
| 1993 |
Macallan/Scotland on Sunday
Short Story Competition
Nessun Dorma |
| 1995 |
McVities Prize for Scottish Writer:
of the Year:
Stone Garden |
| 1996 |
Scottish Arts Council Book Award |
| 1996 |
TMA Regional Theatre Award:
On the Line |
| 2000 |
Scottish Arts Council Book Award: |
| 2006 |
Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award:
Writing Section |
| Clear Light |
"Alan's poems are glorious. Sharp, clear-eyed, seasonal, cyclical, devastatingly sensuous little moments that catch the heart with intimations of the whole big thing of being alive, here, now. So precise they make you want to sneeze, or laugh. A joy and a delight."
Liz Lochhead |
'Alan Spence is the Scottish master of the haiku, the Japanese lyric form - normally seventeen syllables, three lines, 5/7/5 - in which 'epics are shrunk to epigrams.' His Clear Light offers an observation for every occasion, or nearly ever occasion, and one for all seasons. To read a collection of haiku from cover to cover in one sitting is hard-going: paradoxically, the apparently simple intensity of each piece as a single work seems to diminish in the attempt, as all risk conflating into one massive poem. So I found the only way to enjoy and to get something from this collection of 150 haiku was to read them a dozen at a time. It certainly paid off. Like the late Alexander Scott's 'Scotched' - two-liners about Scottish culture, life and art which appeared over several years in different literary journals and contained nuggets of wry wisdom - Spence's jewel-like haiku are best savoured in short snatches. Out of several dozen wee beauties I could quote to illustrate Spence's mastery of the form, I will satisfy myself with two: in 'secondhand bookshop' Spence, with no apparent self-pity, faces up with wise resignation to the fate of all authors, 'secondhand bookshop -/my own books/musty as the rest.' His winter haiku sequence is breathtaking, like the air on a piercingly sharp winter's day. The title-poem ends the collection, bringing us safe to haven, 'this bright morning/glass buddha/in the clear light.'
Michael Lister
'Textualities'
http://textualities.net/tag/alan-spence/ |
Lovereading view...
Alan Spence's collection of haiku beautifully explores brief moments in time, from making a cup of tea to a summer downpour. There are 150 poems, perfect for dipping into or reading in one sitting. Delightful. |
| Way to Go |
The Magic Flute is the most compelling example of Spence's abiding preoccupation with the ways in which characters can be suddenly shocked from their everyday complacency by the realisation that there is something out there (whether that be political, spiritual, cultural) that is way bigger than themselves........'
The List/
Glasgow and Edinburgh
Events Guide |
Community Media Association
An edition of the television programme Writers’ Stories, featuring novelist, poet and short story writer Alan Spence in an interview recorded at the 2003 Edinburgh International Book Festival.
click here to visit the site
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