Harry Josephine Giles’ innovative The Games has been shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Award 2019.
Scotland’s high profile National Book Awards, the Saltire Literary Awards are awarded annually across six categories by The Saltire Society to books by living authors of Scottish descent, residing in Scotland or writing on a Scottish theme. The winner of each category receives a cash prize of £2,000 and go on to be considered for the top prize of Saltire Scottish Book of the Year, receiving a further £5,000.
The Games, published by Out-Spoken Press in September 2018, is a book of play with language. In Scots and English, exploring themes of ecology, power and sex, it mucks about with sound poetry, found poetry, computer-generated poetry, dirty poetry and others ways to blur and bust the borders of genre. The Games makes and breaks rules in an effort to live a full life in a full world and has been described by Jenni Fagan as poetry which “disarms, barbs, takes risks. It is true poetry: vital, funny, humane, wrathful, pulsing and peculiar, in the very best of ways.”
Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer who grew up in Orkney, Scotland, and now lives in Edinburgh. They say “It's a delight to be on the shortlist, and more still to have queer and bolshie approaches to Scots as part of the Saltires. It's a grand good time for language.”
Out-Spoken Press Editor Anthony Anaxagorou comments “I am delighted to see The Games win the affection of the judges in their deliberations on such an important prize for Scottish poetry.”
Supported by Creative Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library, the Scottish Historical Review Trust and the National Library of Scotland, The Saltire Society has been celebrating the best of Scottish literature annually for over 35 years with past winners including Louise Welsh, Leila Aboulela and Graeme Macrae Burnet. This year’s Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Award will be judged by Professor Rory Watson, Dr Rhian Williams, Jennifer Morag Henderson, Julie Danskin and Colin Waters.
The Games is available now in paperback at £8.99
For review copies, sales enquiries or further information, please contact Patricia Ferguson at press@outspokenldn.com