‘The poem continues to amaze me for so many reasons… it’s a universal poem… it’s for everyone,’ says Catherine Murray of ‘Walk and Talk’, which her uncle Tony McManus dedicated to her brother, John Michael. We were talking the day after the launch of Tony McManus’s geopoetics essay collection The Radical Field. Tony McManus found geopoetics as conceived by fellow poet Kenneth White to be a source of inspiration. During his lifetime he devoted much energy to discussing geopoetics, tying it in to his own work as an educationalist, writer and musician. The Radical Field distils his thinking on the subject. According to him, Kenneth White returns poetry ‘to its central role as clear and perceptive expression of human experience in the world and renewer of culture,’ and has ‘evolved a poetic language which is as remarkable for its simplicity, its musicality and its oral tone as it is for its intensity, profundity and formal astuteness.’ The Radical Field by Tony McManus. Sandstone Press. £8.99 ISBN: 978-1-905207-14-5 Sandstone Press: www.sandstonepress.com Scottish Centre for Geopoetics: www.geopoetics.org.uk Catherine Murray: www.rada.org/grad04/mur.html © Jennie Renton