Gerry Cambridge

POEMS LISTEN BIBLIOGRAPHY CRITICISM

In 1995, Gerry Cambridge founded the transatlantic magazine The Dark Horse, which remains Scotland’s leading poetry journal and still lies beneath Gerry’s critical stewardship. He is also an essayist, print designer and typographer, regularly setting pamphlets for Red Squirrel Press and others.

Gerry works from a background in natural history photography, images that often make their way, descriptively, metaphorically and as pure, diaphanous prints, into his collections.

He lived in an Ayrshire caravan for twenty-five years before leaving to become a Brownsbank Fellow in Hugh MacDiarmid’s former home from 1997–1999. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2006–2009) and at Glasgow Caledonian University (2010–2012). In his early twenties he was, as far as he knows, one of the youngest regular freelancer writers, specialising in nature articles, which at the time (the 1980s) had a monthly circulation of 1.5 million copies.

Gerry is also a fine harmonica player and has played regularly with songwriter Neil Thomson-

Listen

Selected Bibliography

The Dark Gift and Other Poems, St Inans Press, 1994
The Shell House, Scottish Cultural Press, 1995
‘Nothing but Heather!’: Scottish nature in poems, photographs and prose, Luath, 1999; 2nd edition, 2008
The Praise of Swans, Shoestring Press, 2000
Madame Fi Fi’s Farewell and Other Poems, Luath Press, 2003
Light Up Lanarkshire: a poem, 2006
Aves, Essence Press, 2007; reprinted 2008
Notes for Lighting a Fire, HappenStance Press, 2012, 2nd edition with 5 new poems, 2013
The Printed Snow, On Typesetting Poetry, (prose essay) HappenStance 2015
The Dark Horse: The Making of a Little Magazine, HappenStance 2016
The Light Acknowledgers & Other Poems, HappenStance Press, 2019

as Editor

Songs of Other Places, New Writing Scotland, 32, edited by Gerry Cambridge and Zoe Strachan, 2014
The Rooftop Busker, New Writing Scotland, 33, edited by Gerry Cambridge and Diana Hendry, 2015
Talking About Lobsters, New Writing Scotland, 34, edited by Gerry Cambridge and Diana Hendry, 2016

collaborations with primary schools:

‘blue sky, green grass’: a day at Lawthorn Primary (Lawthorn Books, 2003)
Building a New Path: Cairns Plantin (South Lanarkshire Council, 2006)