Radical Renfrew

Radical Renfrew challenges the view of nineteenth-century West of Scotland literature which sees it as a desert in which a few 'minor figures' bloomed: it asserts that people have been deprived of a whole literature of what they once held to be valid poetry. The introduction closely argues why and how this has come about. Nearly four hundred pages of poetry are brought back into print, all from the extensive archives of Paisley Central Library where Tom Leonard worked as writer-in-residence during the book's compilation. Besides known Renfrew poets such as John Davidson and James Thomson of Port Glasgow, over 60 other writers are featured, including the forgotten radical feminist Marion Bernstein, and the pungent Chartist satirist Edward Polin. For the reader's help, a guide to some of the main themes supplements the contents list. The aim of the book, Leonard stated, was to be pan of that process by which anyone can use the public library to reclaim and reconstruct their own past. TOM LEONARD was born in Glasgow in 1944 and died in 2018. This book is published by his surviving family, thirty years after it was first published.