Set between Scotland and Mexico, the poems in Glass Knot Sun pose perennial questions of love, labour and land. They do this through the central metaphors of building (from adobe bricks to boat making) and gathering (from windfall almonds to fishing nets), the poem becoming part record of subsistence, part song.
In the face of widespread disconnection and environmental decay, McCafferty’s poems remain full of hope, charged with metaphors that capture tiny marvels such as ‘the honey / of a summer thought’ and ‘sudden islands in the sound of milk’. Revealing a poetics that is tender and immersive, inquisitive and wise, the poems display a playful reverence for the natural world, capturing its timeless vitality and transformative power - Isabelle Baafi