Return by Minor Road

In her mid-20s, Heidi Williamson was part of a Scottish community that suffered an inconceivable tragedy, the Dunblane Primary School shooting. Those years living in the town form the focus of her third poetry collection. Through rivers, rain, wildlife and landscape, she revisits where ‘the occasional endures’ and discovers the healing properties of a beloved place: 'These small movements towards the bracken are to be reckoned with.'

Table of Contents:
I What the river leaves behind 12 The wall 13 In a schoolroom, the woodcutter 14 Thrawn 16 Cormorant 17 Weir 18 Loch Occasional 20 What the river leaves behind 21 It’s twenty-two years ago and it’s today 22 Bracklinn Falls 23 Watching the past in the waters of Loch Earn 24 The rain in the night 25 Fugitive dust 26 Lepus timidus 27 Tharn 28 Hare II Cold spring 30 From 31 Scottish spring 32 Monochrome 33 Cold spring I 37 Calls 38 After 39 Describe 40 Flowers 41 And 42 Dumyat 43 Balquhidder 44 Aubade 45 Sheriffmuir 46 Cold spring II 49 Elegy 50 Snowdrop III The wild rain 52 When we were stone 53 Culvert 54 With a rootless lily held in front of him 56 Tonight my heart is open so hard it could shatter 57 Every day 58 Allan Water bridge 60 Facing north 61 Disappearance at six o’clock 62 Return by minor road 63 Dunblane 64 The weight of news 66 Historical markers 67 Wet morning in the cathedral square 68 A language learned abroad 69 The trees of the Trossachs 70 Self 72 Smoke 73 Dust, at intervals 74 The wild rain 75 Winter river 76 Place 79 Acknowledgements

About the Author :
Born in Norfolk in 1971, Heidi Williamson has lived in Stirling, Brussels and Salisbury. She now lives in Wymondham, Norfolk. In 2008-09 she was poet-in-residence at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre. She was writer-in-residence at the John Jarrold Printing Museum in Norwich in 2011-14. In 2008 she received an Arts Council award to complete her first collection, Electric Shadow (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Her second collection, The Print Museum (Bloodaxe Books, 2016), won the poetry category of the 2016 East Anglian Book Awards. Her third collection, Return by Minor Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2020. Her work has been used to inspire poetry and science discussions in schools and adult creative writing groups, and has featured in NHS waiting rooms, cafés, and at festivals. For more information, see her website.