Outside the Narrative
Poems 1965 - 2009

"Tom Leonard has been publishing poems since three years before I was born, and his volume Outside the Narrative: Poems, 1965-2009... is a masterpiece of political engagement and memorable speech. His poems written in Glaswegian are brilliant moral beauties, as perfect in every way as the lyrics of Hugh MacDiarmid or the best of William Carlos Williams." Andrew O'Hagan, The Observer

"a unique body of work: terse, funny, unyielding, and necessary." Paul Batchelor, The Guardian

"Tom Leonard's Outside The Narrative is a furious, funny and brave book of great poems on huge subjects... Leonard writes for all those who have been told they live "outside the narrative," who are made to feel like "foreigners on their native soil." Andy Croft, Morning Star

"Regarded by many as one of Scotland's most influential writers - a revolutionary poet who has shaken up the literary establishment in as many ways as it's possible for one man and a typewriter to do. ...his innate respect for other people, which is what gives his poetry its moving but deadly edge. In one form or another, music is at the heart of Leonard's work. Throughout his poetry he displays a cadence all his own, a sweetness of rhythm sometimes at odds with the tartness or anger of his words." Rosemary Goring The Herald

"Even the surliest of readers will find it hard to resist the blend of subtlety, honesty and emotion that pervades his work.... a testament to the many voices and stylistic bravura of Tom Leonard, all of which confirm his importance as a writer, both within Scotland and far beyond". Matt Maguire, Scottish Studies Review

"Tom Leonard has made a radical commitment to the music of the spoken voice and to how people really speak (and live) in the streets of our big cities. His key collection Intimate Voices has been republished three times, and Leonard's writing has been immensely influential as a harbinger of critical change in how we think about poetry and about how literature is taught and used in schools and universities throughout the country. Leonard's own poems are popular and challenging - satirical, experimental or even surreal. Wildly funny, or savagely disturbing, his work speaks for human compassion (his most recent collection called Being a Human Being) and for the necessity "not to be complicit" in a world that is saturated with sound bites, social inequality and corporate flannel". Roderick Watson

Outside the Narrative contains all the poetry written over more than forty years from 1965 to date that Tom Leonard wishes to keep in print within the confines of a single volume. It is in this respect his own version of his Collected Poems.

Jointly published by Etruscan Books and Word Power Books