Portrait

A debut collection of searingly honest poems. After being diagnosed with cardiomyopathy at aged 42, Patrick looks for a poetic language, form and expression that could help give meaning to her lifechanging experiences. The result is funny, challenging and inventive, a reckoning with mortality that captures the fear of dying, vicissitudes of change, and the sheer the joy of being alive.

'It is safe to say that there is not one dishonest sentence in this dazzling and long overdue debut collection... truthful, inventive and constantly surprising... Do read it.' A C Clarke.

'In sickness and in health, these smart, wry, confiding poems, some of them in Scots, adopt a tough but tender, often subversive stance... A very good book, that makes for very good company; to be sought out again and again. Brava!' Donny O'Rourke.  

Intelligent, funny and irreverent, this is one of finest collections of poems ever made in modern Scotland... Her voice captures uniquely the fragile joy of being alive.' Dr Jim Ferguson