Weaving Songs
By Donald S. Murray

Weaving Songs by Donald S Murray is now available in paperback for the first time. This well-received book was first published in hardback to widespread acclaim in 2011.

This is a superb collection of poems and prose. All the writing has been inspired by the processes involved in the weaving of Harris Tweed and reflect an intense emotional attachment for the writer.
The writing is complemented by a series of superb colour photographs by Carol Ann Peacock taken variously in the Harris Tweed mills and at the homes of weavers where this unique cloth is woven.

128 pages.

Drawing on the richness of his imagination and his experiences as a child in the Isle of Lewis, Donald S. Murray has fashioned his own original collection of Weaving Songs. They celebrate Harris Tweed – the cloth his weaver father played his small part in creating while working on the loom behind their croft-house. Full of craft, skill, rigour, colour and vitality, his verse and prose have much in common with the patterns of that unique fabric. 

Donald S. Murray was raised in the Ness district of the Isle of Lewis. He spent his teenage years at The Nicolson Institute secondary school in Stornoway - in those days, pupils from rural districts stayed in school hostels in the town rather than returning home each night – before studying at the University of Glasgow in the 1980s. After receiving an MA (Joint Hons) in English and Scottish Literature, he went on to gain a Diploma in Education and a Secondary Teaching Qualification.

Since then, Donald has written an ever-growing range of books and published a wide variety of essays, columns, short stories, and poems in the likes of The Herald, The Guardian, and The Island Review. His writing, both of fiction and non-fiction, has received widespread critical acclaim and appeared on shortlists and longlists for numerous literary awards.

More information: Publications (donaldsmurray.co.uk), Weaving Songs | Acair Books