Life Sentence

Life Sentence follows on from Rab Wilson's ground-breaking collection of poems Accent of the Mind. In this new collection Rab investigates Scottish ancient legends, conflicts throughout history, and contemporary political issues; is inspired by a cultural exchange visit to Ireland; and, presents a powerful sequence containing nine sonnets entitled Quake, based on the themes and ideas suggested to him by earthquakes. This impressive new collection is written in traditional south-west Scots, in standard English and, in Burns tradition, often a combination of the two. This is some of the finest and most innovative contemporary Scottish poetry, above all because it is inspired by life, as Rab Wilson highlights in the title poem, Fir life is whit we are sentenced to.

Rab Wilson was born in New Cumnock, Aryrshire, in 1960 and worked in the Ayrshire pits until the Miners' Strike of 1984. He then left the mining industry to train as a psychiatric nurse in 1986. A Scots poet, Rab writes predominantly in Lallans, and his poetry has appeared in some of Scotland's leading poetry magazines, and regularly in The Herald newspaper's daily poetry column. He has performed his work to varied audiences throughout Scotland and has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, the Robert Burns International Festival, and was recently Festival Bard at the Wigtown Book Festival. Rab has twice been a prize winner of the McCash Poetry Prize, is currently a member of the Scots Language Society's National Committee and the Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association. He lives in New Cumnock.