May Day

Jackie Kay

Synopsis

This poetry collection is beautifully and skilfully read by the author, renowned poet Jackie Kay.

May Day is the long-awaited new collection from one of our best-loved poets and former Makar of Scotland, Jackie Kay.

As the title suggests, these poems cast an eye over several decades of political activism, from the international solidarity of the Glasgow of Kay’s childhood, accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaigns, through the feminist, LGBT+ and anti-racist movements of the 80s and 90s, up to the present day when a global pandemic intersects with the urgency of Black Lives Matter.

Kay brings to life a cast of influential figures, delving beneath the surfaces of received narratives: the Jamaican model Fanny Eaton, for example, muse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England; Paul Robeson, Angela Davis and the poet Audre Lorde; and a ‘what-if’ poem concerning Rabbie Burns and a road-not-taken towards the West Indian slave trade. Woven through the collection is a suite of lyric poems concerning the recent losses of Kay’s parents: poems of grief and profound change that are infused with the light of love and celebration.

Jackie Kay is a distinctively Scottish voice in British poetry. In her new collection, May Day, accessible and gratifying, the personal and the political are seamlessly interwoven.
Linton Kwesi Johnson, dub poet, activist and author of Mi Revalueshanary Fren and Time Come

Jackie Kay is the people‘s poet because she puts language where it starts - in our mouths, and holds it where it belongs - in our hearts
Jeanette Winterson, author of Frankissstein and Oranges Are not the Only Fruit

What a timely reminder, as our right to peaceful protest is under threat, of the sense of community that comes from raising our voices together against war, injustice and oppression, of the power of protest, and of the joy of resistance. And threading these poems together, as always in Jackie's work, is love. Love of family, of friends and lovers, of art & music, of nature, of words, love for the world. This book made me want to fight harder, shout louder, stand taller and love better.
Julie Hesmondhalgh, actress and star of Coronation Street, Happy Valley and Broadchurch