Description
In September 2020, Rodge Glass of Strathclyde University commissioned acclaimed poet Juana Adcock to write a poem in response to Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, with the support of the Alasdair Gray Archive. The work of this father figure in the renaissance of Scottish literature and art was so expansive that Adcock was inspired to write a series of poems and texts as she approached the multiple facets of the work. The concept of vestigial traces – of loss, identity, memory, human contact and urban life weaves this new work together.
The chapbook opens and closes with the image of a silhouette in a window, which comes up in Chapter 2 in Lanark, and draws also from the painting ‘Eden and After’ featuring a snake with legs – hence the title of the pamphlet, Vestigial. It plays with the layout on the page, the remains of cities, genomes, memory, human contact, and with several attempts at writing the same poem, loss and potential. Playing with form and phrase, Juana has taken Alasdair’s work into a conversation about contemporary Scotland.
Praise for previous work:
“Juana Adcock’s ‘Split’ is one of the most exciting debuts I’ve ever read. Formally and linguistically innovative, Adcock’s poetic dialogues expand the terms of lyric address to interrogate language itself. Here we find both violence and desire at the level of the word, upending rootedness of power with tremendous skill and captivating authority.” – Sandeep Parmar
Juana Adcock’s dazzling collection is a lyrical exploration of the intersection between Mexican myths, cultural displacements and language in the context of personal and political interrogations. Split fiercely questions notions of translingualism, the female body and what it means to transcend history and ancestry. Her poetry moves between Mexico, Scotland, and beyond, and speaks with an urgency and nuance that is unique in the Latinx poetry world. – Leo Boix
Juana Adcock is a Mexican-born, Scotland-based poet and translator who works in both English and Spanish. Her poems and translations have appeared in publications such as Magma Poetry, Shearsman, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote and Words Without Borders. Her first book, Manca, explores the anatomy of violence in Mexico and was named by Reforma’s distinguished critic Sergio González Rodríguez as one of the best poetry books published in 2014, and is published in English by Argonáutica. Her English-language debut poetry collection, Split, published in 2019 by Blue Diode Press, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019. She has performed at numerous literary festivals internationally.
