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The FREE literary magazine of the North Northwords Now Issue 22, Autumn 2012 Tom Pow on The Suitcase of the Dying Village New Poetry and Fiction including Liz Niven, Aila Juvonen, Kona Macphee & Andrew McCallum Crawford Articles and Reviews EDITORIAL Contents From Horse’s Bits to Kindles 3 The Suitcase of the Dying Village here is a saying, beloved of environmentalists, that eve- Essay by Tom Pow rything connects to everything else. By this they mean the Tinterdependency of life on earth – something that has 5 Poems by Kona Macphee been brought into sharp focus recently with the news of the threat to Europe’s ash trees and the various animal and plant 6 Gaelic Poetry from Aonghas MacNeacail Greg MacThòmais, Catrìona Lexy species that depend on them. I reckon a very similar principle Chaimbeul, Maoilios Caimbeul, Màiri NicGumaraid, Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh of connectedness is at work when it comes to literature and, indeed, how we live our lives generally. When Tom Pow set & Angus Macmillan out to explore the ‘dying villages’ of Europe (page 3) he trav- elled as far afield as Spain and Russia, but what he discovered 8 Poems by Andy Jackson, Elizabeth Rimmer, Alan MacGillivray, Deborah Benson there echoes on home turf as well. Tom’s evocations of how & Howard Wright the past clings on in surviving fragments of daily life – even in something as simple as a horse’s bit – has a resonance in 9 Standing Stones Scotland’s rural communities. He reminds us of the eloquence Short Story by Juliet Lamb of everyday things, of how they can speak so poignantly of ways of living which are becoming lost to us. 10 Poems by Laurna Robertson And then there’s Aila Juvenon’s wonderful poems, originally written in Finnish, translated by the writer into English, and 11 Dinner Date from there finding a new shape (and sound) in Scots thanks to Short Story by Alan Gillespie Liz Niven. It’s collaborations like this which show how writers bridge the world, forging new connections across the north. 12 Poems by Aila Juvonen & Liz Niven Speaking of making connections, there’s a new way of getting your copy of Northwords Now. We remain, of course, 14 Acts of Trust committed to circulating the magazine among bookshops, Essay by Ian Stephen libraries, galleries and art centres throughout Scotland, but the very popularity of the magazine results in frustration for 16 When Iron Turns to Rust some readers – copies can vanish all too quickly. To help solve Short Story by Andrew McCallum Crawford this problem, and stay in touch with how readers engage with stories and poems, Northwords Now is now available via Kindle. 17 Bird Poems by Lesley Glaister, Anita John, Joan Lennon & Kate Ashton Even if you don’t have a Kindle device you can download Flash Fictions by Sheena Blackhall the software free of charge onto PCs, Tablets etc. Tony Ross explains all on the back page. n 18 Writing Groups News Chris Powici, Editor 19 Poems by Julian Colton, Jane Aldous, Jen Cooper, Karen Bek-Pedersen & Seth Crook 23 Contributors’ Biographies Where To Find Northwords Now At The Northwords Now Website: www.northwordsnow.co.uk Podcasts of Kona Macphee, Liz Niven and Catriona Lexy Campbell Gaelic Poetry in translation Reviews Extra Acts of Trust, page 14 Northwords Now is a three times Designer a wood and glass case, made by Kenneth yearly literary magazine published by Gustaf Eriksson Bryden. Boules from a Dying Village, cast Northwords, a not-for-profit company, www.gustaferiksson.com in foundry bronze, by Elizabeth Waugh. registered in February 2005. Technical Advisor Submissions to the magazine are welcome. Address Tony Ross They can be in Gaelic, English, Scots and PO Box 15066, Dunblane, FK15 5BP [email protected] any local variants. They should be sent www.northwordsnow.co.uk to the postal address. Unsolicited e-mail Contact NNow attachments will not be opened. The material Board members Manager: Angus Dunn should be typed on A4 paper. Contact Adrian Clark (Chair), Ann Yule, [email protected] details and SAE should be included. We Valerie Beattie, Kristin cannot return work that has no SAE. Pedroja, Stewart Lackie Subscriptions Copyright remains with the author. The magazine is FREE and can be picked up The next issue is planned for March 2013 Editor at locations across Scotland. See list on P23 Chris Powici, [email protected] The fee for individual ‘home-delivery’ is £6 The Board and Editor of Northwords Now for 3 issues, cheques payable to ‘Northwords’. acknowledge support from Highlands and Gaelic Editor Islands Enterprise, Creative Scotland, Rody Gorman, [email protected] Front cover image Hi-Arts and Bòrd na Gàidhlig. Images from ‘The Suitcase of the Dying ISSN 1750-7928 Advisory Group Village’ taken by Ross Zillwood. The suitcase Jon Miller, Peter Urpeth, Pam Beasant itself, sliver of felt from a Russian boot in 2 Northwords Now Issue 22, Autumn 2012 The Suitcase Of The Dying Village – A Journey In Objects Tom Pow’s explorations of the rural heartlands of Europe have resulted in his acclaimed book In Another World: Among Europe’s Dying Villages - a response in poetry and prose, to the social, cultural and ecological ‘crisis’ facing rural communities throughout the continent. His journeys have also deepened a fascination with and respect for how the past persists in the remnant objects of everyday village life. By Tom Pow n the edge of a lane in a village pitting them in the dust, their hatched sur- not plenitude, but what the art historian that moves J. M Synge to comment in The in central France lie seven apples. faces catching the light where they’ve been Norman Bryson terms, in Looking at the Aran Islands (1907): OThey catch the light on their gravel worn. They have something of the presence Overlooked (1990), ‘the unassuming mate- bed - fruitbowl ready, a mixture of striated of hand grenades. From these two objects – rial base of life that “importance” constantly Every article on these islands has an almost pinkish red and greenish yellow. One shows the abandonned apples and the memories of overlooks’. This is the genre of rhopography personal character, which gives this simple life, the bruise of its fall and the ragged triangle a boules – I sense a third thing forming. (as opposed to megalography, the depiction where all art is unknown, something of the bird has pecked. Ripeness alone has brought Boules from a Dying Village were made for of encounters with history and gods) and artistic beauty of medieval life. The curraghs and them down. Very different from a village in me by the sculptor Elizabeth spinning-wheels, the tiny wooden barrels that are Russia, where an old woman tells me how Waugh. I had told her I still much used in the place of earthenware, the people drive out from the city and strip her wanted three apples that The French historian Fernand Braudel home-made cradles, churns and baskets, are all full cherry trees bare: her helplessness, one sign were almost on the turn; of individuality and being made from materials of a dying village. Another this: ripe apples, ripe, but bruised, as if fallen, has taught us to examine the present that are common here, yet to some extent peculiar to the island, they seem to exist as a natural link unpicked, unlifted, already with an entry and one was to show the pit- for what survives in it of the past: a between the people and the world that is about sign of decomposition. Maybe someone will ted attentions of a bird. They them. chance upon them later and take them home; were cast in foundry bronze, felt boot, a proverb, a snatch of song, make use of them in the way that everything given a mottled verdigris a ritual linked to the land. In other was once made use of in village life. In the patina, through which the It is this last quality, in the found mate- meantime they lie there, another image of deep russet of the bronze words, the threshold between the past rial of the dying village, that makes what is abandonment. shows. They are in form and the present is porous. In the world insignificant in every other way so strangely But there is something else about them perfect apples, suggesting moving: the sliver of a felt boot, from the vil- the moment of decomposi- of the dying village, everything becomes lage of Glebova in Russia, is a reminder both tion, but their colouring, like an image of loss: an abandoned jar, a of the craft I saw practised and of its probable used coins, speaks of the pas- demise.. It sits in the plain wooden box I had sage of time. They sit in your broken chair, a rusted bridle-bit, a felt made for it – the dullest silver reliquary. hand, pleasantly cool to the boot, a proverb spoken out of context, For all that the bronze apples have been touch, as a boule does, before given a permanent physical form, I see them the first play. a snatch of song, a wooden switch, the as a found idea within the paradigm that also Their meaning for me villagers themselves. Memory takes us accommodates the oval strip of felt. Many deepens, when I read of how writers return to their desks bearing such Gustave Courbet, in captiv- by the hand, crosses the threshold into “fruit”. Robert McFarlane writes, in Wild ity for involvement in the a lost land. A lost land, but one that Places, of the importance he attaches to bring- 1871 Parisian Commune ing back with him something from each of his and forbidden life models, we can visit from time to time, and one destinations and, in Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie painted the fruit his sister that visits us.