On a Sunday afternoon in late April, a blizzard of Biblical proportions is pounding Winnipeg, Manitoba. At the same moment, southwestern Ontario basks under clear blue skies at temperatures in the mid-20s C. Weather reports are coming in from at least four continents as folks from all over the globe assemble virtually to hear Alexander McCall Smith (from his home in the Scottish coastal town of Morven) read from and talk about IN A TIME OF DISTANCE.

For an author so prolific, to be marking a literary first in his career is something of a draw to begin with. Having produced or contributed to more than 100 prose books, it turns out that Smith has never before had a full collection of his poetry published. But he’s hardly new to the genre.

As he explained to a rapt webinar audience, he and poetry have been an item through most of his half-century career. Poems have been sprinkled through his novels to add greater dimension to characters, to enhance the atmosphere of his chosen settings, to comment on cultures he’s encountered --- in short, to contrast tonally and rhythmically with any number of ongoing fictional narratives and contexts. But less familiar to many is his longtime avocation of writing words for composers --- lyrics for solo songs, song cycles and libretti for chamber operas. 

"Under topics that include journeys, places, weather, love, books, animals, reminiscences and reflections, IN A TIME OF DISTANCE actually evokes much closer and more intimate concerns than its sweeping title might suggest."

Not surprisingly, it took the 2020 (and onward) COVID-19 pandemic to focus Smith’s attention on gathering a selection of his poems under one cover. The project was propelled in large part by a commission from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) to write poetically about life in the context of COVID. The resulting poem became the title of IN A TIME OF DISTANCE, bringing together some of the complex feelings evoked by the first of several isolation lockdowns, during which many other writing projects (he usually has several on the go simultaneously) ground to a halt.

Like many of us, Smith can now cautiously reflect on some of the good that came from slowing down and dealing with a viral threat that “changed life utterly.” He felt he’d been touring too much, spending too much time in airports and hotels between the high points of international conversation with authors and readers. Ironically, as Scotland’s first lockdown was imposed, he had been reading books about monasticism. Then, all of a sudden, “peacefulness was imposed on us,” and he soon realized (along with so many of his faithful readers) that “we’ve filled our lives with too much busy-ness.”

In selecting and grouping several decades of poetry for IN A TIME OF DISTANCE, Smith gives special attention to location and context. In our very mobile society, he noted, we risk losing our anchorage to “particular meaningful places.” So rather than trying to influence a reader’s reception of a given poem, “I feel it enriches the experience when you can contextualize it.” In the case of the book’s first piece, about a wash line hung with clothes outside a humble highland cottage, the backstory is twice as long as the poem, yet just as interesting as the poem itself is evocative.

Having traveled all over the world and immersed himself in many cultures while researching fiction plots, Smith brings equal parts of lived experience and vibrant imagination to his poems. He seeks out details and oddities rarely noticed by casual travelers or tourists, like the public signage crafted by those whose first language is definitely not English. A notice in a botanical garden in Martinique read “Do Not Lean Again.” Its quirky diction called up a pensive philosophical reflection about leaning as a metaphor in life. 

Another context in which language is imagined as a transformation of the norm came directly from the numerous air miles Smith has logged in his long career. Having heard thousands of pilots give the same speech about weather, altitude, speed and arrival times, all in exactly the same telegraphic jargon, he mused on what would happen if a pilot were to suddenly wax poetic. Tongue in cheek, yet descriptively brilliant, “The Language of Pilots” is a charming flight of fantasy.

Under topics that include journeys, places, weather, love, books, animals, reminiscences and reflections, IN A TIME OF DISTANCE actually evokes much closer and more intimate concerns than its sweeping title might suggest.

Among his most poignant poems is one he wrote after an unplanned visit to the human rights museum in Winnipeg on his last pre-COVID Canadian tour. It was among several that he read in full, which only added to its powerful evocation of what happens when memory, justice and forgiveness coalesce into something that is more than a mere monument to things humans have done wrong.

Commenting on the exterior sculptural presence of the building itself, he reflected that “we don’t really build spiritual places anymore,” and on entering, “I thought it was a place of forgiveness.” The resulting poem concludes prophetically: “So much in life is unavoidable, / But these things we’ll show you here / Are clearly not --- remember that.”

Asked why he even finds poetry necessary when he’s such an adept and rapid wizard of prose, Smith captured the essence of his “in-between” art by musing on how poems seem to emerge spontaneously and “take you by surprise at odd times.” Despite often being very quickly written down with minimal or no editing, they have in fact been germinating for months, years or decades, in readiness for being birthed as “distilled observations that have a rhythm and music of their own…”

There could be no better description for the 75 diverse gems of IN A TIME OF DISTANCE.