Shake the Kaleidoscope

Memory, time, love and loss weave through all of G W Colkitto’s poems with a resonance that moves us fluidly from yearning to insight. The master of seeing connections, Shake the Kaleidoscope finds Colkitto taking a view across the whole of life: non-linear, sometimes fragmentary, imbued with whimsy and humour, but above all permeable to the scars and triumphs of loss and love.

As the poems range back and forth across the years, one memory provoking another, it is not only the whole of the poet’s life laid out in the pieces of glass to be endlessly rearranged, but the whole of the human condition. Whether examining interior moments or negotiations with the world of work; whether writing astute commentary on political and social inequalities, or simply savouring those small moments of deep joy provoked by the simplest of things, Colkitto holds up a mirror to life-his own, and ours.

Shake the Kaleidoscope is a major work from an accomplished poet: lucid, accessible, profound.

GW Colkitto is a widely published poet, short story writer and novelist from Paisley. He won the Scottish Writers Short Story Competition, in 2011, and the Poetry Competition in 2012. His poetry collection, The Year of the Loch, was published by Diehard Press, in 2017; a second collection, Waitin tae Meet wi the Deil was published by Diehard 2018; and he published the pamphlet, Clyde: my river, with Cinnamon Press in 2022. He is also the creator of Sebastian Symes, Victorian Detective.