The Good Dark
published by Penned in the Margins, 2015
“Intimate and haunting.” – Lyn Gardner (The Guardian).
The Good Dark is the place we go to remember. The Good Dark is the place we go to take account.
My second collection ‘The Good Dark’ was published in paperback by Penned in the Margins in May 2015.
The Good Dark includes poems from my one-on-one poetry performance Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel (Edinburgh Fringe 2012) and charts what is found when love is lost.
The Good Dark was awarded the Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2015.
“Van Winkle works with the language of love and lost till it is scarcely recoverable but which still nourishes the lover’s past and present. His range is remarkable: everything invokes everything else, the tactile calls in the intellectual, one poem calls in every other poem, mundane tasks call in whole physical and emotional worlds.” — from THE SALTIRE SOCIETY: POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015
You can read more reviews & interviews on The Good Dark page.
“A lyric voice that is both familiar and strangely different leads us through the shifting forests of memory and towards a grim acknowledgement of the need to get up, to be careful, to move.”
You can order The Good Dark here.
The Good Dark — Reviews
‘(The Good Dark) moves between stabbing pain, deep melancholy and cautious optimism, always with the same gentle touch.’ — The Skinny
‘Channelling Bob Dylan at his trippy, visionary best…’ — The Scotsman
‘…the poetry of loss in The Good Dark, particularly loss of love, is not bitter or recriminatory, but a kind of analysis, a recognition of one’s own failure, even a manner of apology.’ — Dave Coates
‘The Good Dark has to be the ultimate break-up collection, a kind of Lonely Planet guide to Heartbreak – a land with unexpected restorative qualities.’ — John Sayers, Magma
‘The personal and the remembered, whether true or invented, lend vibrant intimacy to these poems.’ — Jennifer Williams, The Bottle Imp: Best Scottish Books of 2015.
‘Van Winkle works with the language of love and lost till it is scarcely recoverable but which still nourishes the lover’s past and present. His range is remarkable: everything invokes everything else, the tactile calls in the intellectual, one poem calls in every other poem, mundane tasks call in whole physical and emotional worlds.’ — The Saltire Society: Poetry Book of the Year 2015.
‘Van Winkle’s universe is a dark one, aching with loss. In his hands, language is tense, and unstable and thrilling.’ — John Fields, Poor Rude Lines.
‘This is a sorrowful but cathartic collection. The Good Dark is painted with subtle hues of emotion that lead you, unprotesting and mesmerised, into the world within.’ — Donald Marshall, Scottish Writers’ Centre.
The Good Dark — Interviews
Penned in the Margins — “Fundamental, beautiful or total menace.
“The Poetry School — “So, I tend to apologise.”
Scottish Book Trust — “I do miss reporting and think it can be truly meaningful, truly impactful in a way which poetry and fiction just can’t be.”
Scottish Poetry Library — “…man, this beach is useless.”
3AM — “Are you threatening me?”
Inpress Books — “Aliens and hoverboards…”
Shakespeare & Company — “I still have a little of that in me, the feeling that some days I’d be better off packing up for Australia.”
The Ofi Press — “I’m still trying to figure out how much I can cut him up without killing him.”
Missing Slate — “When I write a poem, I’m not trying to entertain, I’m trying to be honest.”
Sabotage Reviews — “I’m afraid of scales.”
The Good Dark — Podcast
I visited Colin Waters on the Scottish Poetry Library podcast to discuss my award-winning second collection, The Good Dark. A collection that has its origins in heartbreak, I talks about struggling to rise above an adolescent tone and explain why, despite extensive travels abroad, my poetry rarely touches on his destinations. And how Snoopy came to be an unexpected literary influence.
