HAVING seen Don Paterson's fantastic play set in a psychiatric ward, The Land of Cakes, at Dundee Rep two year's ago, I went willingly to his reading.

Not a poetry lover however, I confess I found the spoken renditions of his obviously remarkable, thought provoking and original poems difficult to follow.

Between poems, though, as the award-winning poet expl-ained his philosophies and trails of thoughts, he was illuminating, wry and funny.

Dark hollows around the eyes gave the impression of an intense autodidact whose thirst for knowledge drives him to insomnia and painfully new avenues of thought.

However, he revealed that he has, at 36, become the father of twins, whose presence has opened the floodgates for a new realm of poetry.

What is clear is that no poems by Paterson will ever follow a well-worn path, even in a literary realm swamped with angst-ridden clichs.

When he read a short poem about a sunset, Paterson explained that for publication he borrowed the name of a non-existent Swedish poet - so lending the overused subject acceptable authenticity. In doing so he successfully distances the reader from the subject and finds ways of saying things that startle.

Ally Hardy