Common Name: Saskia McCracken

Released 27th August 2024
Edition of 200 copies
ISBN: 978-1-3999-3850-1
Bound with algae-dyed string or saddle-stitched

‘Saskia McCracken’s Common Name pushes language to its limit, investigating the poetic potential of the names of seaweeds washing up on the Scottish coastline – ‘plumed chenille, pearl moss, black tassel, red eyelet silk, lace, ribbon.’ The prose-poem sequence brims with visceral soundings – ‘gneiss’ churns at the back of the reader’s throat, whilst ‘sheen’ sits between the reader’s teeth. Common Name goes beyond a cognitive exercise in how we allocate language, but instead asks us to physically encounter each word, ‘gasp[ing]’, ‘implod[ing]’, and ‘bubbling’ on the page.’ (Isabel Galleymore)

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Saskia McCracken is a Glasgow-based writer and former editor at Osmosis Press. She is a member of the Victoria Writers’ Circle and 12, a women’s poetry collective. Her poetry and fiction publications include Imperative Utopia (-algia press), Cyanotypes (Dancing Girl Press), The King of Birds (Hickathrift Press), and Zero Hours (Broken Sleep Books). She won the Floresta poetry prize, was awarded second place in the Streetcake Experimental Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Future Places Environmental Essay Prize, and was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction prize and Nature Chronicles nonfiction prize. Her work appears in publications including Magma, Datableed, Amberflora, Bluehouse Journal, Tolka and Zarf, and has been anthologised by Dostoyevsky Wannabe and Spam Press. @SaskiadeRM