I Was Born in a House of Turf and Stone

Here are poems I have woven from the answers people gave to the ‘questions’ exercise after the dig last Wednesday. Feel free to adapt them – it may well be interesting, for example, to see and hear what they sound like if translated into Scots. I’m also including a writing exercise you may want to use to build on these poems and the experience of the dig.

Chris Powici

Loch Ore Poems

My name is Bear. I was born in a house of turf and stone. Every day I carry my axe and my knife. Every day I hunt the beats of the forest and the open lands – the deer and the hare, the birds of the water and of the air. But they hard to catch. I pray to the spirit of the bear that my tribe will not go hungry that we will live well But every day brings new dangers. I fear the wolf’s tooth, the bear’s claw. My name is John of Lomond. I was born in sight of the castle walls twenty eight years ago. Now I live in the castle in the cold cellar on a wooden bed. I am serving man to the laird. I bring him win and bread, stews and soups. He barely looks at me. My mother and father are dead but my brother Kenneth is well. He looks after the swine of the castle. Every day I pray for Kenneth and his wife and his pigs. I pray that the summer is warm and dry and the winter mild without snow. I pray to God he not take me yet. I pray to God I stay strong.

My name is Mary. I am a scullery maid at the castle in the loch. Every morning I wake with the sun and light the fires and clean the food bowls. I sweep the floor and prepare the mats and vegetables for the laird and his lady and their guests. They speak in a foreign tongue. I talk to my mother in Scots of everyday things - my sisters and brothers, the man who will one day take me as his wife. I am twelve years old. I am almost a woman. I want to stay young and healthy and live well for my husband and for my God. Chris Powici The Big Dig at Lochore Creative Writing Exercise

Fragments of the Past

Here’s a list of questions you could ask about an object – or even a fragment of an object – that’s been recovered from the big dig at Loch Ore. Using your knowledge of the local area, its history, and your own imagination, use the answers to these questions as the basis for a poem or a story about somebody from the past. For example, write a poem about someone smoking a clay pipe or eating an oyster – bring your character to life by showing them interact with the object.

What is it made of?

What shape is it?

What colour is it?

Does it have smell?

Does it taste of anything?

Does it make a sound?

Where was it made?

Who made it (person or organisation) or did it come into being by some non-human process?

How was it used and who may have used it? (you can speculate about this think about if it was owned by a man or a woman, if it took any skills to make or to use).)

Was it a valuable object in the past? Is it valuable now?

Where may the objet have been kept?

Might it have been a gift?

How easily did it break?

How did it come to lie unregarded in the earth? Here are some follow-up questions about the person who owned or used the object:

Where were they born?

How old are they? What colour hair and eyes?

What kind of clothes do they wear?

What does their voice sound like?

What language do they speak?

What food do they eat?

Are they injured or unwell?

What do their hands look like?

What do they fear most in the world?

What makes them happy?

Who do they love?

Do they believe in God (or Goods)?

Do they pray?

Do they play a musical instrument, sing or tell stories?

What is the longest journey they have ever taken?

If it could speak, what would this object say the person who owned or used it? Here are some poems (and one song) that explore objects from the past and archaeological themes. Note how the writers focus on particular, concrete details.

My Shoes Charles Simic

Shoes, secret face of my inner life: Two gaping toothless mouths, Two partly decomposed animal skins Smelling of mice nests.

My brother and sister who died at birth Continuing their existence in you, Guiding my life Toward their incomprehensible innocence.

What use are books to me When in you it is possible to read The Gospel of my life on earth And still beyond, of things to come?

I want to proclaim the religion I have devised for your perfect humility And the strange church I am building With you as the altar.

Ascetic and maternal, you endure: Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men, With your mute patience, forming The only true likeness of myself. Unnamed Lands Walk Whitman

NATIONS ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before These States; Garner'd clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel'd their course, and pass'd on; What vast-built cities--what orderly republics--what pastoral tribes and nomads; What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others; What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions; What sort of marriage--what costumes--what physiology and phrenology; What of liberty and slavery among them--what they thought of death and the soul; Who were witty and wise--who beautiful and poetic--who brutish and undevelop'd; Not a mark, not a record remains--And yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing; 10 I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it.

Afar they stand--yet near to me they stand, Some with oval countenances, learn'd and calm, Some naked and savage--Some like huge collections of insects, Some in tents--herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen, Some prowling through woods--Some living peaceably on farms, laboring, reaping, filling barns, Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.

Are those billions of men really gone? Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone? Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? 20 Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?

I believe of all those billions of men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me; Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world--counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world. I suspect I shall meet them there, I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands. The Tollund Man Seamus Heaney

Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for The cap, noose and girdle, I will stand a long time. Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him And opened her fen, Those dark juices working Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters' Honeycombed workings. Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus.

I could risk blasphemy, Consecrate the cauldron bog Our holy ground and pray Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed Flesh of labourers, Stockinged corpses Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth Flecking the sleepers Of four young brothers, trailed For miles along the lines. III

Something of his sad freedom As he rode the tumbril Should come to me, driving, Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands Of country people, Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland In the old man-killing parishes I will feel lost, Unhappy and at home. City of Dreams (song – available on YouTube)

Talking Heads

Here where you are standing The dinosaurs did a dance The Indians told a story Now it has come to pass

The Indians had a legend The Spaniards lived for gold The white man came and killed them But they haven't really gone

We live in the city of dreams We drive on the highway of fire Should we awake And find it gone Remember this, our favorite town

From Germany and Europe And Southern U.S.A. They made this little town here That we live in to this day

The children of the white man Saw Indians on TV And heard about the legend How their city was a dream

The Civil War is over And World War One and Two If we can live together The dream it might come true

Underneath the concrete The dream is still alive A hundred million lifetimes A world that never dies