Books

Research

Scholarly Works

Creative Works

Media

About


The Bestiary is a collection of lyrical, meditative poems which challenge the ways in which we respond to the natural environment around us. With subjects that range from sea-bound eels, lost hedgehogs and lonely butchers to a 17th-century autopsy, Chinese mythology and the flight patterns of snow geese, Sam Meekings’ poems explore both the instability and the small moments of epiphany in our complex and changing world.






“Shuttles between the natural, the philosophical, and the manufactured world, never missing a beat…my expectations are high for the future of Sam Meekings.”

– Edinburgh Review
“A rather beautiful volume of verse.”
– The Lady






“This first collection glows and hums with promise from an intriguing new writer… The Bestiary bristles with creatures – geese, seahorses, bats and prawns – representatives of a new way of seeing. Meekings specialises in this quietly excited observation. Like Heaney, with supple language, and odd but lovely connections, he takes and brings poetic pleasure in regarding the oft overlooked.”

– The Scotsman




“Sam Meekings is a modern poet, and The Bestiary is a very modern poetry collection. It’s almost exclusively unrhymed, which seems to be standard nowadays, but it’s almost never free verse – there are schemes and meters bubbling under most of these poems. Meekings uses some lovely images – seahorses are ‘matchbox dragons’, a bat is ‘A flap of tattered black leather / pulled taught over a rung of knuckle’… And Meekings is clearly in command of his verse – the tightly controlled ‘School of Rushes’ is taken from Dante, and whilst it keeps the original structure and rhyme scheme, it somehow fits into this very different collection too. Meekings is complicated but accessible, and worth keeping an eye on.”

– The Skinny



 
 




“Meekings uses words with such sensual effect they make your skin shiver. The natural world is his sourcebook, allowing him to play with ideas of reality and beyond, as well as to meditate on the beauty of wildlife and the elements.”

– Best Scottish Poems 2008“Young novelists tend to get the lion's share of attention, but there's a real buzz around Sam Meekings' debut collection of poems, The Bestiary. Twice longlisted for an Eric Gregory award, and an alumnus of the Edinburgh University creative writing course, Meekings has taught in China, co-edited an anthology of Shanghai poetry, and his first book includes versions of classical Tang poems. Published by Edinburgh- based Polygon this April, it's hailed as " lyrical" and " challenging". Our sneak preview confirms that it's nuanced, alert and intelligent.”

– Scotland on Sunday