In Praise of transpiration by Meredith MacLeod Davidson
From the opening poem of Meredith MacLeod Davidson’s transpiration, we find ourselves in a landscape haunted by cycles of loss. ‘Anchorless / a boat bangs against sea-weathered pylons,’ and this same lack of purpose and the inevitably of decay is infused throughout the imagery of ‘Deltaville’. And yet, despite this loss, life prevails and expresses itself in new forms. ‘Bells / installed by dead men ring across rivers’ and
The river remembers
the heron’s limb dragged across its surface
as the bird gathers itself to flight.
How do we cope with the natural rhythms of life and death? This seems to be the central question of Davidson’s debut pamphlet, which came out in October 2025 with ignitionpress.
The title, transpiration, denotes the way in which plants lose water as part of the continuous flow from root to leaf. Persistent loss is precisely what Davidson interrogates throughout the work, which takes its shape in experiences as private as grief and as broad as the climate crisis.
A particular highlight is ‘Erosion Index’ where the memory of a loved one ignites and erodes throughout the course of the poem. Davidson is masterful with irony and pushing it to its extremes. A stumble on the pavement unravels as ‘the vertigo of the past hurtling towards me for once / instead of the future.’ The poem’s motif of a cassette player captures our desire to rehearse our own grief, so as to understand it:
…a cassette crackling
from the speaker, I love this beer, you or your voice
said, it’s really rounding out the high.
There are so many moments of tenderness throughout transpiration that punctuate the loss. “Letter to a Friend in St Patrick’s Cemetery” is a beautiful and sincere tribute, as well as the pamphlet’s closing poem ‘Letter to [redacted] in Montezuma County’ where the anatomy of a broken relationship is mapped across the geography of Scotland and Colorado, allowing the speaker to reflect and move on.
Davidson employs a variety of forms with nuance and precision. The ekphrastic poem ‘Interior of Saint Peter’s, Rome’ captures the magnitude and scale depicted in the work of the artist Giovanni Paolo Panini, while leaving room for the speaker and even questioning the ekphrasis itself:
…I couldn’t begin to capture it.
Title it. Even in exaltation, I cannot replicate my reach.
The poem ‘We Are Entirely Dependent on Adequate Rain’ also begins with a work of art by examining the home of Frida Kahlo, before going somewhere entirely different. Here, Davidson couples her own experience of grief with the wider death of the natural world, watching
…monsters making their homes beyond the primordial
soup, dried, and missing the pressure of a full basin.
The result is a staggeringly beautiful testimony to our planet, which poems such as ‘Orca are wearing salmon hats again’ and ‘Ecotone’ similarly underscore. In light of grief and loss, Davidson’s work reminds us that even when we are alone, we are united by sentiment. As she writes in ‘Subliminal’:
…Absence is impossible. There’s only
lessened presence.
transpiration is a profoundly moving body of work that made me aware of my deepest experiences of isolation, but also those of connection.
I met the poet at a reading series in Glasgow which they run called Crisp Packet Poetry, which has provided so many poets a space to share their work. There is much to be said about Davidson’s contribution to the Scottish creative community, and how their work is continuing to bring together so many different writers. I am incredibly grateful to them for their book and what they are continuing to provide beyond the page.
Transpiration is published by ignitionpress and is available here: https://shop.brookes.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-humanities-social-sciences/poetry-pamphlets/transpiration-by-meredith-macleod-davidson
Zain Rishi is a writer from Birmingham. He won the 27th annual Ware Poets Competition and placed third in the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize. His debut pamphlet, Noon, is forthcoming in February 2026 with The Emma Press. Instagram: @zain.rishi