‘Bold and Brilliant’, Fower Pessoas wins the 2025 Highland Book Prize
Fower Pessoas by Colin Bramwell is the winner of the 2025 Highland Book Prize.
Published by Carcanet, Fower Pessoas is a bold reimagining of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry. 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.
Colin Bramwell was brought up in Fortrose on the Black Isle. Writing in English and Scots, his work has been published widely in magazines such as Poetry Review, Irish Pages, The London Magazine, PN Review, Magma, The Rialto, New Writing Scotland, Interpret, Poetry Scotland and The Scotsman. He holds a doctorate in creative writing from the University of St Andrews.
The judging panel – comprised of Jen Hadfield, poet and essayist, and winner of the 2024 Windham Campbell Prize; acclaimed multi-award-winning fiction writer Cynan Jones; and Peter Mackay, poet, lecturer and broadcaster, and Scotland’s current Makar (national poet) – chose the winner from a shortlist of four. Fower Pessoas was praised by the judges for its living language that successfully synthesises the idea of many selves of each individual.
Jen Hadfield said: ‘The four voices feel both united and plural, and there’s a lovely fleetingness to the poems, just like that of conversations with strangers: they breathe, they flow, they draw you in. It feels like the true manifestation of Fernando Pessoa’s idiomatic soul in language.’
Cynan Jones said: ‘Fower Pessoas is bold and brilliant. The intuitive purposing of language and vernacular instinct at work is far from just a circus trick. It’s a triumph of emotional ability and craft, bringing to the page a collection that is astute, moving, and loaded with relevant impact.’
Peter Mackay said: ‘This is a very strong collection of poems, by turns playful and emotionally and formally daring, making full use of the tonal variations and emotional range of Pessoa’s four heteronyms and bringing an iconoclastic and fearless approach to writing in Scots.’
Alex Ogilvie of the Highland Society of London and non-voting Chair of the Judging Panel said: ‘Hot on the heels of the Scottish Languages Act 2025, I am delighted that the Highland Book Prize has its first Scots language winner, after Gaelic and English language winners in previous years.’
Presented by the Highland Society of London and facilitated by Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre, with support from the William Grant Foundation for public engagement, this annual award celebrates the finest published work that is created in or about the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The prize aims to recognise the literary talent of the region, and the rich and diverse work inspired by its culture, heritage, and landscape.
Colin Bramwell will receive a £2000 prize and a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor, close to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.