Publisher's Synopsis
ABOUT GATHERING PHOTONS IN MAY No subject is off-limits in these wide-ranging poems. They are like bees in a field, gathering the honey of objects. They are poems which distil essences, in quick, lively forays of attention. Vividness and specificity of language are to the fore, relishing verbal depth and density. Their aim is to evoke the sensual granularity of the world, by infusing objects with language, by living the world linguistically - a joy in how the world feels and smells; in how it looks as sunlight breaks over the horizon; in the muscularity of a mollusc; in the scratchiness of a grasshopper. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Basil du Toit was born in Cape Town in 1951 and came to Edinburgh in 1980 to undertake postgraduate study in Philosophy. He has lived there ever since. Although nearly all of his poetry has been written in Scotland, he identifies both as a Scottish and as a South African poet. In 1987 he shared the Sanlam Literary Award with the poet Douglas Livingstone. Subsequently he has been a winner of the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition (judged by Billy Collins) and won the Wigtown Poetry Prize in 2021 (judged by William Letford).
