Fault Line

'Fault line: 1) a line on a rock surface or the ground that traces a geological fault. 2) a divisive issue or difference of opinion that is likely to have serious consequences.' Poet Gerry Loose's fifth collection maps the 'fault line' dividing man from his environment, centring in this instance on the Faslane submarine base on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute, home of the UK's nuclear arsenal. The incongruity of the area's natural beauty coupled with weapons that could reduce it to dust at the push of a button has inspired a book-length poem that probes the delusions of the political and military classes. Loose explores the landscape surrounding Faslane, his hymns to its beauty only throwing into sharper focus its fragility. He describes a land poisoned by the 'deterrent' meant to protect it. In so doing, Loose has reinvented nature poetry for the 21st century, reconnecting with a radical tradition Burns, Byron and Shelley would have recognised and celebrated.