Shortlisted for the Scots Book o the Year Award 2025

Fower Pessoas is the most original work of translation that you will read this year: a bold reimagining of Fernando Pessoa's poetry by an exciting next-generation Scottish poet. Following his subject's unique approach to composition, Colin Bramwell puts all four of Pessoa's heteronyms into a present-day Scots-language vernacular, and so creates a parochial Pessoa for our own times.

Bramwell's adaptation matches his subject's restless lyricism. It is rare to see a translator go toe-to-toe with their subject in this way. The resulting entanglement makes for some astonishing, full-throated poetry.

Readers will be delighted by this witty, emotive and artful reinterpretation of an indispensable European poet. Fower Pessoas not only celebrates Pessoa's extraordinary range of modes and moods, but also marks the arrival of an outstanding new talent in Scottish poetry.