Languishing, Cute - Ian Macartney & Maria Sledmere (Tapsalteerie Poetry Books)

languishing, cute presents a collection of jittery missives that propels the speculative Scottish canon of Morgan, Gray and Mitchison into a maximalist ‘high femme goth surrealism’ via hyperpop, Celtic futurism and digital culture. Here the poets tend towards e-pistolary contemplations of retro-adolescence, fizzy ecology and mercurial slippy gurlhood to complicate notions of Scottish identity, nationhood, ecology, nostalgia and more.

Ian Macartney’s previous publications include ‘The Infinite Fury and other stories’ (Strange Region), ‘Turtleshell’ (Saló Press) and ‘Shale Bings’ (Broken Sleep Books). His work has been featured in The Poetry Review, PROTOTYPE, The Scotsman and The Guardian.

Maria Sledmere is the author of over twenty books of poetry, including ‘Cinders’ (Krupskaya, 2024) and ‘The Luna Erratum’ (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2022. She is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde and managing editor of SPAM Press.