‘There is no tool to make noise, only a happenstance wrong wielding of an awkward implement. I hear noises but they are mainly alarming. Take me to a sound that grows bolts and leaves and lanterns. It must be this silence of his sleeping that houses something I have yet to hear.’

Guitar! describes the contours and conditions of writing – interrupted, in flashes, or in restless moments through the night. A narrator listens; as a child learns to speak there is a re-acquaintance with the strangeness of putting a feeling into words. There is a yearning for meeting, and an idea of love or companionship as a sense of being met. Reading is punctuated by a series of black and white images of buskers, photographed by Francis McKee in Glasgow. Cover artwork by Ciara Phillips.