Madame Fi Fi's Farewell opens with some lively, affecting poems of love and relationships in a variety of voices: an old man wistfully regrets lost opportunities; Madame Fi Fi decides it is time, somewhat ruefully, to hang up her whip; a lovelorn woman speaks of her unsatisfactory night with a youth from Aruba; and, 'In the Supermarket', a man and a woman encounter one another after a gap of twenty years. The book also includes poems rooted in the specific soils of Ayrshire and Orkney, where old country characters, primary schoolchildren, and exasperated bus drivers make their voices heard. This is a book of poems to read and re-read, quietly to yourself or - as good poetry of any age deserves - out loud.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors. Available this summer, New Writing Scotland 32: Songs of Other Places is the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, and includes new work from more than forty authors - some award-winning and internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.