The Cream of the Well: New and Selected Poems - Tapa blanda

A weathered poet with four decades of fieldwork behind her, Valerie Gillies is a true guide to Scotland and beyond, and this collection affirms the companionship of poetry on the journey. The Cream of the Well contains a rich gathering from her earlier volumes, along with poems never published before. Traditionally, the `cream of the well' was the first sip of the well taken at sunrise, when the healing properties of the water were believed to be most potent. People would sleep out all night close by the well, and then they would run to drink as the sun came up.

VALERIE GILLIES is an internationally known and highly regarded poet. She was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city from 2005-2008. She received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a landmark book of poems inspired by Scotland's wells and springs. An inspirational teacher of creative writing in school, colleges and universities, she has held several writing fellowships across the country. She currently divides her time between Edinburgh and Harvard where she has an ongoing fellowship.