Drink the Green Fairy

"The last time I drank the Green Fairy was twenty-eight year ago on my stag night. I ended up upside-down, having been deposited in a rubbish bin with my legs sticking up in the air in Glasgow’s Queen Street station." M

In this, his fourth poetry collection, Brian Whittingham walks the streets of Glasgow, dips into people’s lives and delves into the world of the Impressionist painters. Like looking through a family album, the poems are quick snapshots, focusing on the particular of the ordinary and yet widening the gaze to the universal in life. Colour is not just splashed across the canvases of the painter’s lives he explores, but finds its way into the lives of all those he encounters. With his own bold brush strokes Whittingham mixes the territory of high-art and city-streets, making both as significant in the make up of daily lives.

"Brian Whittingham's ship has been launched. It should take Glasgow to the world. For here is a collection which packages Glasgow (and Paris flung in for good measure) using microcosmic insights and incidences to create, through an integrity of humanity, the universality most writers would sell their soul for. Brian Whittingham hasn't sold his soul. That's his trick - he's kept it. He's stuck to his own path over the years and produced the finest collection of poetry I've read in years."