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Search - List of Books by Tom Leonard

Tom Leonard (born 1944 in Glasgow, Scotland) is best known for his poems written in Glaswegian dialect.

Tom Leonard has been part of the Scottish literary renaissance for the past forty years. With Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, he has been appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow University.

Published in 1976, his Glasgow Poems kick-started a literary counterculture.

In 1984 he released Intimate Voices, a selection of his work from 1965 onwards including poems and essays on William Carlos Williams and “the nature of hierarchical diction in Britain.” It shared the award for Scottish Book of the Year and yet was banned from Central Region school libraries. Peter Manson, in the Poetry Review, claimed the poems, “speak so precisely and with such a fierce, analytical wit that they transcend their status as poems and become part of the shared apparatus we use to think with. I don't know any other contemporary poetry of which that is so true.”

His poem "The Six O'Clock News" from Unrelated Incidents is compulsory study for an AQA English Language GCSE qualification in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Whilst working as Writer in Residence at Renfrew District Libraries in 1990 Leonard compiled Radical Renfrew: Poetry from the French Revolution to the First World War, an anthology resurrecting the work of long forgotten poets from the West of Scotland and disproving the “traditional”, fictitious belief that Scotland at that time was a cultural wasteland. T. S. Eliot once claimed, to the effect, that Scotland has no literary culture. Radical Renfrew shows that this is incorrect and also suggests that in denying the existence of a native Scottish culture, the Scottish people have been denied “the right to equality of dialogue with those in possession of Queen's English or "good" Scots.”

Three years later he released Places of the Mind, the only 20th century biographical novel of the Scottish writer James Thomson. Best known for his epic poem The City Of Dreadful Night, Thomson’s life and works are captured by Leonard in a study of poetry, alcoholism and freethinking.

His most overtly political work followed in 1995. Reports From The Present compiles work from 1982 to 1994 including political satires, collages, essays, “antidotes, anecdotes and accusations” ranging from explorations of the differences between poetry and prose to scathing attacks on the forces of power that corrupt culture for financial or political gain.

With Access to the Silence (2004) compiles his poetic works from 1984 to 2003, exploring the experimental and the surreal to a greater degree without losing any of his truthfulness or openness.
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Total Books: 23
Becoming Bach
2017 - Becoming Bach (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781626722866
ISBN-10: 1626722862
Genre: Children's Books
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Outside the Narrative
2009 - Outside the Narrative (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781901538687
ISBN-10: 1901538680
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Passing Place
2009 - Passing Place [Edinburgh Review] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780955574573
ISBN-10: 0955574579
Genre: Literature & Fiction
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Access to the Silence
2007 - Access to the Silence (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9781901538472
ISBN-10: 1901538478
Genre: Literature & Fiction
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Nora's Place  Other Poems 19651995
2000 - Nora's Place Other Poems 19651995 (Other)
ISBN-13: 9781873176399
ISBN-10: 1873176392
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction
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The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
1999 - The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780333673812
ISBN-10: 0333673816
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Etruscan Reader V Tom Raworth/Bill Griffiths/Tom Leonard
1998 - Etruscan Reader V Tom Raworth/bill Griffiths/tom Leonard [v. 5] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781901538038
ISBN-10: 1901538036
Genre: Literature & Fiction
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Reports From The Present Selec
1995 - Reports From the Present Selec [Jonathan Cape original] (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780224031691
ISBN-10: 0224031694
Genre: Literature & Fiction
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Some Words Rhyme
1994 - Some Words Rhyme (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781857314571
ISBN-10: 1857314573
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Places of the Mind Life and Work of James Thomson
1993 - Places of the Mind Life and Work of James Thomson (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780224031189
ISBN-10: 022403118X
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction
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Poems
1973 - Poems (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780950204635
ISBN-10: 0950204633
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Course in Categorical Data Analysis [Chapman & Hall Texts in Statistical Science] (Hardcover)
Tom Leonard [Writers in brief] (Other)
Intimate voices  selected work 19651983
Intimate Voices Selected Work 19651983 (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780904837681
ISBN-10: 0904837688
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If only Bunty was here A dramas sequence of totally undramatic nonsequiturs
Nora's Place
Nora's Place (Other)
ISBN-13: 9781871537253
ISBN-10: 1871537258
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On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait
On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781873176252
ISBN-10: 1873176252
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