Book Launch: The Vulnerability of Precious Things by Tom Pow

Join us as we launch Tom Pow’s The Vulnerability of Precious Things: Encounters with Simone Weil, new from MARISCAT PRESS and MOLECULAR PRESS of Geneva.Simone Weil (1909-1943) was one of the twentieth-century’s most significant thinkers and inspirational figures.

Her philosophy and how she lived her life are intimately connected.

Her ideas on affliction, attention and force are as vital now as they were when she described them, while the harshness of her life still moves us.Tom Pow’s poems (or ‘encounters’) engage with her short life and the times through which she lived.

The resulting work – varied, thought-provoking and moving – is a work of imaginative mpathy that makes clear Weil’s relevance to the world today.

Tom Pow was born in Edinburgh in 1950.

He has published many poetry pamphlets and collections, including In the Becoming: New and Selected Poems (Polygon 2009), Recent collections are Naranjas (Galileo 2021) and Svetlena’s Dance: Triptychs (Mariscat 2022).

He lives in Dumfries.A key element in Tom Pow’s poetry is his exploration of diverse lives and landscapes.

His most recent collection is Ghosts at Play: Poems from RuralJapan (Giovanni 2024), part of an ongoing project with Bird Theatre, Japan, and the musicians of the Galloway Agreement.