Featuring poems by Kate Tough, Tilt-shift (£5) gained the runner-up prize of £600 for its publisher Tapsalteerie in this year’s Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, the annual award for poetry pamphlets as designed entities.

The pamphlet’s material – based on “found” quotes, images, and observations – ranges eclectically, from an indictment of Glasgow’s historical involvement with the slave trade (“amazing disgrace”) to messages from a Vermont knitting store. 

    ESCAPING THE SELVEDGE

Takes a special kind to go
another kind to stay


Kilmaluag  Kirkibol  Scourie  Borve


         Their appearance 
         was truly appalling


Nowhere do such patriots so embrace
the leaving of the place


Scerrymains  Portree  Duntulm  Scullam


           and their grief
           on being rejected
                                        

Going because peat is not gold, aye,
hame can be gye feckless cauld.


Achnahannait  Bundalloch  Hungladder  Uig


          most painful
           to witness

Poet’s footnote: Quote from the records of the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society (www.scan.org.uk). Sestude responds to National Museums Scotland item H.1992.1829.2 (for ‘26 Treasures’).