Madame Fi Fi's Farewell

Madame Fi Fi's Farewell opens with some lively, affecting poems of love and relationships in a variety of voices: an old man wistfully regrets lost opportunities; Madame Fi Fi decides it is time, somewhat ruefully, to hang up her whip; a lovelorn woman speaks of her unsatisfactory night with a youth from Aruba; and, 'In the Supermarket', a man and a woman encounter one another after a gap of twenty years. The book also includes poems rooted in the specific soils of Ayrshire and Orkney, where old country characters, primary schoolchildren, and exasperated bus drivers make their voices heard. This is a book of poems to read and re-read, quietly to yourself or - as good poetry of any age deserves - out loud.

Gerry Cambridge