Richie Mc Caffery

Richie Mccaffery’s second collection Passport (Nine Arches Press, £9.99) is in part inspired by a move to Belgium, the sense of dislocation a shift to Ghent provoked working its way into a number of new poems. ‘Currency’, however, appears to be set in the UK, although it illustrates the same theme. A German couple, returning for the first time in many years, attempt to pay a bill in shillings, unaware we changed to the metric system some time ago; the poet finds in this moment a metaphor for how a revelation of what we think matters often reveals our vulnerabilities.

In the restaurant on our last night the waitress tells us of an old German couple just in who’d tried to pay for their meal with shillings and farthings leftover from a happy holiday many decades ago.

They thought their gelt was current as ever, the way we all have something we think is valid, to be brought out in a flourish of earnestness and laughed out of town.

You can find a copy of Passport by Richie Mccaffery at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@spl.org.uk or visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk