The FREE literary magazine of the North Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014

IN COLOURS FIERCE AND JOYOUS Aonghas MacNeacail remembers John Bellany Poems, Stories, Articles and Reviews including John Glenday, Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul, and the Magic of Moniack Mhor EDITORIAL Contents rather intriguing wee book recently arrived through the Northwords Now letterbox. Dear Scotland: Notes to our nation 3 Poems by Aonghas MacNeacail Ais a collection of monologues whereby modern Scottish writers address their fellow Scots by giving voice to men and women 4 Poems by Colin Will represented in the National Portrait Gallery. Sadly the book arrived too late for review but with the referendum fast approaching here are some 5 Bringing Us Back to Earth – Article by Stuart B Campbell of their thoughts on Scotland and Scots which may inform the debate: 6 Poems by Irene Cunningham, Kathrine Sowerby, Yvonne Marjot, I feel your futures stretching out like reckless sleepers Robert Louis Julian Ronay, Vicki Husband, Coinneach Lindsay, Audrey Henderson Stevenson/AL Kennedy & Hugh McMillan Scotland, I have always found you a gloomy, backward, Presbyterian, unforgiving place James Boswell/Iain Finlay Macleod 7 Interview with Alex Gray by Tanera Bryden

Be the master of your soul Scotland Mary Queen of Scots/Louise Welsh 8 The Creative Process – poetry & prose by John Glenday

A wee country Scotland, you and me, welcomed the exile, the risk-taker, the 10 Poems by Eoghan Stewart, Deborah Moffat, Derek Crook, Lydia refugee Jackie Kay Popowich & Simon Berry I am thrawn, romantic, disputatious and energetic Robert Bontine 11 Poems by Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul Cunninghame Graham/James Robertson 12 Beyond the Croft House – Article by Angus Dunn Think thoroughly. Discuss the full dimensions of what you intend to effect. Then act without timidity or fear Muriel Spark/Janice Galloway 14 Ketea – Short Story by Shane Strachan

Issue 27 of this magazine marks a time of farewells. Firstly, all good 16 The Story of You – Short Story by Karen Bek-Pedersen wishes to Vicki Miller who, for the past twelve months has handled our advertising and accounts with the kind of care and precision that 17 Poems by Dàibhidh Eyre, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Ingrid Leonard inspires much gratitude. She’s also very friendly with it! & Mary McDougall Angus Dunn is vacating his manager’s role at Northwords Now. Angus’ association with the magazine, as editor, writer and reviewer and all 18 Poems by Pauline Prior-Pitt, James Andrew, Jared Carnie, Sally Evans, round loveable genius loci of literature in the north, reaches back to the & Iain Urchardan last century when the old Northwords fell upon people’s doormats with a welcome thud. With this in mind, I had thought of writing a valedictory 19 Reviews notice that would make the average Oscar acceptance speech read like the small print on an insurance form. Then I realised what a good idea 23 Contributors’ Biographies, Where To Find Northwords Now it would be to get Angus to write more for the magazine (see pages 12 and 13) so I’ve decided to remain in his favour and keep things simple. Much thanks my friend and in the words of Neil Gaiman, “Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can At The Northwords Now Website: www.northwordsnow.co.uk sometimes pay the rent.” n – Chris Powici Podcast of Eoghan Stewart Editor Gaelic Poetry in translation Reviews Extra How to download Northwords Now to an e-reader

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Northwords Now is a three times Advisory Group Images. Also thanks to Rhona Ramsay yearly literary magazine published by Jon Miller, Peter Urpeth, Pam Beasant and Jane Cameron of the Art Collection, Northwords, a not-for-profit company, University of Stirling www.stir.ac.uk/artcol registered in February 2005. Designer Gustaf Eriksson Submissions to the magazine are welcome. New Address for Submissions www.gustaferiksson.com They can be in Gaelic, English, Scots and Northwords Now any local variants. They should be sent 6 Kippendavie Lane Technical Advisor to the postal address. Unsolicited e-mail Dunblane Tony Ross attachments will not be opened. The material Perthshire [email protected] should be typed on A4 paper. Contact FK15 0HL details and SAE should be included. We Advertising cannot return work that has no SAE. Board members [email protected] Copyright remains with the author. Adrian Clark (Chair), Ann Yule, Payment is made for all Valerie Beattie, Kristin Subscriptions successful submissions. Pedroja, Stewart Lackie The magazine is FREE and can be picked up The next issue is planned for November 2014 at locations across Scotland. See list on P23 Editor The fee for individual ‘home-delivery’ is £6 The Board and Editor of Northwords Now Chris Powici, [email protected] for 3 issues, cheques payable to ‘Northwords’. acknowledge support from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Creative Gaelic Editor Front cover image Scotland and Bòrd na Gàidhlig. Rody Gorman, [email protected] ‘Woman of the North Sea’ by John Bellany. ISSN 1750-7928 © Estate of John Bellany/Bridgeman

2 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Poems by Aonghas MacNeacail

art, lived though just a name without dimensions for every syllable you hear i.m. john bellany that street stayed in memory - i never there is a shadow sound, to asked if she revisited its floor, to mark, in measure which you must have that he should go, with brush in hand, sight and memory, the window she’s have access to an unmutated lexicon engaged in dialogue with what had been learned to view a city’s trade from, stairs mute canvas, seems apropos, we might down which she’s go in convoy to their you know there are clear truths have wished the breath had held its weekly observances, the shops, and on behind a hedge of grammars - measure that final day, with aunt, to make the long bring your parsing scythe and longer, road back to what her child called home hope to strip the message clean when a mind, still hungering to tell and unequivocally there, as is another composition, still engaged in as is shaping, shading, realising how the vital shifting substance of an exact place the deadline will be met could be made new, again, again, again the dead- it was home a sailor of harbours who knew line will be met, although all the stories of storms and it’s not the most comfortable returning here, from which a part of me stupendous plimsoll- place to work, this has never really been away, i realise it is drowning catches his own kin had told, hammock slung between a place where this, the i i am, has never he believed in what he saw and drew it woodworm-pitted posts that call really been out in colours fierce and joyous themselves mortality and memory the gravestones up behind the road remind me there were always he knew how to lay it on thick, to stipple, you have to want to choose which strangers in dark suits and voices burying stroke his pigment into lives and lived-in way to lean their dead, whenever i came back to visit patterns of tenement and trawler, and having seen family and friends and each time fewer, drank that there’s a way to set your line fewer, faces told me, wordlessly, just how deep from the well of changes, kept your answer must be - sew wrong i was to manifestly follow such an his vision true, spoke to the world until your name into the fabric of that ungrammatically ordered path, and even that final pause (his story cannot end sheet and trust its durability if it brought me journeys out across clear to keep you going airways, into irresistibly fluent narratives while you reach out of sound, taste, colour they could never through such blurred unknowns dream of, still they’ve measured me as in portugal street and drizzled crags wearing leaden boots which drag me out as must be travelled yet from where the light they follow radiates a woman giving birth in portugal street, but when i see that loose fluorescence, my grandmother delivering her last-born there are clouds around it, querulous in who would not remember her, who would, density, that resonate with contradiction - in her time, have scant memory of that how the radio reports i’d rather not be there - while dialectics thoroughfare - she might have been a may be fun, this dialogue might weave city girl, but aunt, who’d take a mother’s in my silence i hear the radio between the certainties of cirrus, stratus place, could only be at ease with grass report on weathers, wars cumulus, nimbus, cumulonimbus, and if beneath her feet - so grandfather was applying its wise wizardry to the rain has cleared, a nacreous cloud persuaded to remove, lock, stock and fact and incident, as if all it might drape its benign mother-of-pearl infant (with her sibs) to where his sister had to say was absolutely glow round this - that we agree to differ could provide the necessary harbouring yes exactly as, although at day’s end - that doesn’t take me back and sustenance that would environ them in any rationality you always except when in what she knew of speech and spade must remind yourself it has still remembering those stony and feeding shores - to make its choices - listen lachrymose polemics cleaving rooms then a father’s death left for the questions not being sending riven child and parent into not quite child, aunt, sister, brothers in absence of asked of those persuasive rational divergent roads, it doesn’t seem as that feeding shadow, she the warrior aunt voices of inferred authority if, except the scars, the bruises felt, that then wrapped around herself, becoming never show mother, father, farmer, fisher, seamstress, reflect on how your vision of i’d like to be able to walk the nurse - and then, the world is formed by nimble same (as if deer-hoofed - that narrow) lip a war, called great, took absences that being un- above the unseen waterfall that told its own husbands, fathers, brothers, sons (to be declared are not required to fictions, singing danger, there being always sent home as telegrams), from croft and have a resonant existence the possibility of falling, though the meshy croft and croft - it left so many vacancies, which could then be asked if tangle of hazel wands offering a safest net in beds, at tables, out among the growing it might justify its less than through which you could not fall, from which crops, where women learned to be the all manifest dark presence in you’d in their time pick sweet happy harvests a family required, and children grew into this uncertain wish to scratch tall saplings forced to turn load-bearing and scrutinise what’s spoken slaves to steepled call and sour necessity softly in chill trigonometries that give their validation to such brightly gilded groves as those who speak can use to hide their valent power in

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 3 Poems by Colin Will

Pictish Where I am today Into the trees

I’m a Pict who doesn’t want to be painted, The sun has brought out the first crocuses, There’s one that stands who says no thanks to the tattoo man’s needles, Cream Beauty and a pale purple one, in the patch at the junction of two paths. who has never sat on a horse in battle, swung a sword of municipal grass where the dogs shit, It’s an old walnut, too isolated from its kind or shot arrows in anger, where the lollipop woman parks her bike, to bear nuts. Most branches are dead and leafless, who believes the time for raiding cattle over the wall from the hotel that closed but still held out, upturned, was long ago, and in another country, two years ago and remains shuttered. to take the sun’s blind gift. who knows none who died at Mons Graupius, who could not translate Columba’s Gaelic, Clouds scud, as clouds do, in a mild south-easter. As for the paths, you can do the Frost thing, but who does not speak the old Brythonic tongue either, Cumulus. I never learned to classify clouds but they both circle round, come back who has no Irish ancestry, no Q-Celtic connections, but the highest ones, pale streaks against blue, to where they started, choose or don’t choose. who did not carve Sueno’s Stone, or any other, are ice crystals smeared by the jetstream. who does not have red hair, but is a carrier, My sore back is easing, and this walk will do me good. Coming over the pass after the track to Ben Lawers, who has never watched Brave Heart, nor ever will, the narrow road winds down into Glen Lyon who is not a Mormaer, broch-builder, crannog-dweller, I like the way my cosy scarf, a present from my son and there, I swear, is a gorgeous tract who likes Pictish art and imagery, has a silver ring, I know his wife chose, whips round my neck, of old growth pine, a remnant of the Boreal. whose family came from the land of Ce, but streams out to the side. It’s quite gusty, Close by, by the old cemetery, is Europe’s oldest, who knows nothing of the land of Ce, force 5 or 6, I reckon, and offshore. the Fortingall Yew, conferring immortality on the dead except it is good farming country, Incoming rollers have their tops sheared off escorted between its rejuvenating trunks. who knows the hills and straths of his forebears, in spray, and the swell is flattened. Out where and loves them, but does not want to live there, the oil tankers park it’s kicking up a bit of white. Over in the west, the old oaks of Argyll who feels a kinship with those who work the fields must share their glens with bunkers and tend the beasts, but that’s as far as it goes, In my garden the clump of snowflakes looks promising where warheads are stored, symbols for the failure who knows no standard to which he will rally, but the Buddleia stems I didn’t dead-head last year of goodwill, but their protection who believes a people is not a country, are shaking their fists at me. Soon be time to prune is cleaner, more generous to life, and outlasts who knows a country is an economic and political unit, them. the silly words of politics. subject to change, and it has, and it will, Some plants haven’t seen a winter this year, who will not stand up for a national anthem, flowered all the way through, but it’s nice to see Big is impressive, granted. Walking among giants but who gets misty hearing Caledonia, something fresh. A first fly just went past. you can’t help lifting your eyes, but the smaller ones, who knows that the Pict lands are not in the Highlands, the first arrivals, birch, rowan, aspen, carpeted strictly speaking, and that his family the emerging land, gave shelter for the seeds were never in a kilt-wearing clan but wears one anyway, of life, as the ice retreated, and hazel nourished who thinks Sir Walter Scott has a lot to answer for, Holding pattern the first folk to venture north, settle, who likes his morning porridge, but puts sugar on it, put down roots. who is still coming to terms with being outed as a Pict Some kind of delay before take-off, by his DNA, a specific marker in all his cells, an under-estimate of landing rigmaroles, who is as confused by this as by everything else. passport control – the barriers politicians put between people – baggage reclaim and the obligatory airside toiletings, mean we’re far too early for the family. Hare on Beinn Dorain I’m wondering, since it’s a couple of years I’m skylined, head above the ridge, between visits, how much the children watching a two-leg approach the hilltop. have changed, how they’ll react. You have to keep an eye and both ears And then they come through, on them, but this one’s going into winter, son pushing overloaded trolley, hair snowed, breathing hard, slow. daughter-in-law smiling, grandson shy.

I sniff, whisker-twitch, but smell no dog, But my granddaughter sees us, shouts no bang-stick. He stops – I know it’s a he – and starts to run. She leaps into my arms folds onto a rock, takes his back off, snuggles her head into my neck, easts something I haven’t smelled before, drinks breathes against me. As I turn her bitter, steaming water. to and fro I see smiles and moist eyes Do I crouch? Do I run? No, he couldn’t catch me. on the faces of bystanders, little ripples of remembered joys. The black birds fly close, tumble, croak. No eagle today, but I am brown as heather stems, lying low, still. Sweet grass here, and the morning rain washed off the sheep piss. I like it here.

4 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Bringing Us Back To Earth Stuart B Campbell celebrates the poetry of Nan Shepherd

n T h e Ca i r n g o r m s has been out of print experience. The Living Mountain can be read grey plateau, rock strewn, vast, silent’. It is an it is difficult to read these as being entirely since it was published in 1934; Galileo as an extension of the issues explored in In environment that can be emotionally crushing imaginary, or written from second-hand IPublishers should be commended for The Cairngorms and it’s now possible to read in its proportions. As a counterpoint to that experience. The poems are astonishing for making it available again. It must rank as one both books in the order in which they were ‘world of eternal annihilation’, Shepherd often their honesty and astounding in their depth of the most significant collections of Scottish written and published; the concentration of delights in small features: a burn is a ‘glass- of feeling. They read as if when Shepherd poetry and its author, Nan Shepherd, should the poetry gives clarity to the prose. white shiver, / Singing over stone’, but it is encountered love, it was as immense, as be celebrated as one of our most important All but a few of the poems are written in the quality of the light that she most rejoices unimaginable, as the Cairngorm massif: ‘I am poets. three or four line stanzas, with an unobtrusive in ‘Light swum between the mountains / mazed to find my world/sore altered in the Nan Shepherd was born in 1893 and lived end rhyme and are carried by a strong […] Light was the principle of their making’. passing night […] no hurricane swirled./But all her life in Cults, now a suburb of Aberdeen. rhythmical voice. Given the era in which Shepherd’s engagement with nature is at morn the earth was strange, a blur, white’. She attended Aberdeen High School for Girls. these poems were written, the capitalisation essentially physical. The Cairngorms blow Despite the fact that these poems are written After graduating MA from the University of of the first letter of each line can make away any notion that the world is a construct out of the disintegration of a relationship, she Aberdeen in 1915, she lectured in English at reading the poems initially a little difficult for of the mind. Shepherd claimed it is possible has the emotional tenacity to persevere with Aberdeen Training Centre for Teachers and the modern eye. Similarly, there are a few to live ‘a life of the senses so pure […] that the what love is. For her the break-up is ‘Pure taught there until her retirement in 1956. words, like ‘doth’ and ‘be’t’, that now seem body may be said to think’. This is close to pain, pure loss, destructive, sore’, but needs to She died in 1981. It was while at secondary quite archaic. Surprisingly, only a few of the what contemporary neuroscientists describe confront that pain, ‘let us recognize the thing’; school that Nan Shepherd began writing poems are written in Doric. We can assume as ‘our embodied selves’. When she says ‘I had and not devalue it with: ‘easy comfort to poetry and she went on to publish some whilst that Doric would have been second nature looked into the abyss’, Shepherd means both allow/ ‘Tis not so bad as once we thought / Will at university. In The Cairngorms was written for Nan Shepherd, but we can only speculate physically and metaphysically. Having looked not devitalise us now’. Despite the hurt of during and in the aftermath of WW1. as to why she did not use that language more. into that ‘unfathomable void’, the question her experience, Shepherd acknowledges the Nan Shepherd was a friend of Willa Muir She also reveals a working knowledge of for Shepherd is how to live authentically. In necessity of love in order to be wholly human: and regularly corresponded with Neil Gunn; Gaelic: In the poem ‘The Hill Burns’, the this there are echoes of Shelley’s Mont Blanc. ‘We are love’s body, or we are undone’. These and she championed the work of Charles colours of the ‘green’ and ‘amber’, burns are Beyond her immediate perception, are supremely powerful poems. Murray, Marion Angus and Jessie Kesson. translations of the Gaelic names of actual Shepherd also sensed ‘some keen order of Modern outdoor equipment does not Shepherd published three novels: The Quarry burns in the Cairngorms. existence’, a world ‘with meanings missed significantly diminish the objective risks Wood (1928); The Weatherhouse (1930); and A The Cairngorms is the largest continuous before’. That‘oceanic’ feeling is not uncommon inherent in travelling in the mountains, though Pass in the Grampians (1933). Being aware area of ground above 1000 meters in Britain, amongst climbers, as W H Murray discussed it can anaesthetise them. That primeval part of of her contemporaries helps put her writing a vast subarctic plateau, ‘where the forces of in ‘The Evidence of Things Not Seen’. our psyche will still respond to real wilderness in context. DH Lawrence published Lady nature work with a power and a violence Shepherd, too, speaks of phenomena that are in the same way as it did for Nan Shepherd. Chatterley’s Lover the same year as Shepherd undreamed of at lower heights’ (Scottish ‘Unseen, unheard, yet all beside us,/And co- Yet, many people engaged in outdoor pursuits published The Quarry Wood, that year also saw Mountaineering Club guidebook). Winter existent with our own,/That shines through now seem almost oblivious to the fact they Virginia Woolf’s Orlando; Hugh MacDiarmid’s changes everything out of all recognition. ours at quickened moments’. Shepherd’s are in a mountain environment. To them Stony Limits was published the same year as This was the environment into which Nan poetry succeeds in conveying an impression being on a mountain is the means to an end; In The Cairngorms. Between 1932 and 1934 Shepherd entered. She also entered into a of such moments. If that all seems a little bit the mountains are a playground to be utilised Lewis Grassic Gibbon published A Scots Quair. domain that was peopled mostly by white too mystical to us (both she and Murray were for recreation. Nan Shepherd, however, talks Both writers came from and set their novels upper-class males; gentlemen with beards and influenced by Zen Buddhism), the possibility of ‘re-creation’; for her the mountains were in the north-east, but a distinction needs to hairy breeches. In the early years of the 20th of experiencing the world more fully was for restorative, healing and life enhancing. In an be made between comparing the writers and century few people visited the mountains, far Shepherd as much a spiritual proposition as a age when the virtual world is increasingly comparing their work. Arguably, Shepherd’s less women; that she made solo trips makes physiological one. taken to be more real than the actual, we female protagonists are just as strong as Chris her, for her time, exceptional. Despite the This collection, however, is in three parts; really need poets like Nan Shepherd to bring Guthrie in A Scots Quair, but although cover photograph showing a young lady that the second acts as a bridge between the us back to the earth. Eighty years after it was Shepherd had become part of the Scottish would not be out of place in the drawing mountain poems and the third which contains first published,In The Cairngorms continues to Renaissance, she was nonetheless a woman room of Downton Abbey, Nan Shepherd was, eleven love poems all in sonnet form. Nan be relevant. n writing in what was very much a man’s physically and mentally, a tough cookie. Shepherd never married and it is not known world. The inherent gender imbalance of 20th Travelling in the mountains, Shepherd was for whom these poems were written. In his In The Cairngorms is published by Galileo century publishing and criticism, however, taking risks that were objective and physical, foreword Robert Macfarlane warns against, Publishers, Cambridge. An extended version resulted in Gibbon’s work continuing to be but also psychological. Shepherd conveys ‘identifying the speaker of these ‘bruised and of this article can be found in the Northwords read while Shepherd’s became neglected. to the reader ‘That awful loneliness’ of ‘this oblique’ sonnets as Shepherd herself”, but Now website reviews section. Her novels are available (from Canongate), published along with The Living Mountain (her only non-fiction book) as The Grampian Quartet. Northwords Now at the Arguably The Living Mountain is out of place being bundled with the novels; it is really a companion piece to In The Cairngorms. Nan Shepherd wrote The Living Mountain thirteen Inverness Book Festival years after publishing In The Cairngorms, though it was not published until 1977. Nan Shepherd is recognised increasingly today Featuring John Glenday and Jared Carnie due to this small book, not her poetry or novels. Climber/writer Jim Perrin said it Join us at The Eden Court Theatre, Inverness on Wednesday 20th August at 5.30pm to celebrate the launch of was ‘The finest book ever written on nature our summer issue. You’ll get to hear some fine poetry and tickets are free! Just call the Eden Court Box office on and landscape in Britain’. That is only 01463 234234. partially correct. In The Living Mountain Nan Shepherd does more than describe the Northwords Now will also be hosting a writing workshop conducted by editor, Chris Powici on 20th August at Cairngorms; she tries to convey the effect and 2.30pm in Eden Court. Contact the box office to reserve a place. affect of being in the mountains. It is a prose book written by a poet, sometimes pushing For details of other festival events check the festival website: www.invernessbookfestival.co.uk the limits of words, trying to make sense of

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 5 Poetry

Under This Sky Diathan Ròmach Lowland Autumn Irene Cunningham Julian Ronay Audrey Henderson

The planet holds lochs, suffers Blàths is ceileireadh Everything raised itself hard and durable wind to make waves, snow dealan-dè agus seillean in our bare-knuckle air, blunt root crops, to cap our mountains and sun to nas mìlse na mil watertight cabbages grew in rows warm my shoulders. nas aotruime na lus–chlòimh behind the school. Pigeons raced guthan gaoth is ceòl by men who worked the seam sheared Fern, the barking dog-star, shouts a’ measgachadh sideways into the wind. We carved at me, begs my attention boulder-sized turnips at Halloween until I’m full of the world – she beats le deàrrsadh na grèine twisting our table spoons. In October my back, haranguing me air mo chraiceann the fields burned, a red line between straw for a bloody stone... gabhaidh mi ceum and cinder, the men digging underneath. my son’s fashionable jeans slip. lomnochd tron doire He moons us. agus thèid mi fodha a-steach dhan ùir I worry about the universe. a-nuas domhainn For my sister, who went to Guayaquil anns a’ choille Hugh Mcmillan chunna mi thu Mamma airson mòmaid Guayaquil, Kathrine Sowerby molach is teth to hear my mother, was the whorehouse The shower drips oir thog thu mo chridh’ at the end of the universe, into the lukewarm bath agus tholl thu mi the frontier town you see in the room between rooms thug thu orm in films, with stubbled men tiled from floor to ceiling. a phlosgadh and showgirls and nightly shoot-outs in the street. The sink—pink enamel, beathach naomh ‘Gone to Guayaquil’ droplets of condensation. stealladh-sil was mother-speak A votive candle glows red— tuainealach a’ dannsadh for gone to fuck, a cut out crescent moon. fear èibhneach beyond all sense and morality. I on the other hand She waits for flickers on thought it good you’d gone the bulge of her stomach. to Guayaquil, imagined Waves lifting, sinking Dàn you sipping daiquiris her head under the water. Coinneach Lindsay in the colonnaded shade of an ex-colonial house Muffled music Chunnaic mi a-raoir thu while the ocean shone playing somewhere. Geal mar bhruadar silver to the horizon. Marbh mar ghaol Imagine my surprise then, when you came back with that strange tattoo, Commonplaces and pregnant, and told her Yvonne Marjot Bird tongues she was absolutely right. Vicki Husband Daffodils whipped by an arctic northerly. Walking backwards. The year’s first camper in a wood panelled back room drawers Van. Practising for the Mòd. The first lamb. are lined with bird skins: a neat flock Blackthorn hedges. Whitecaps on the Bay. filed in rows of holotype, wings folded flat, feet tied with string, labelled, eyes A sea of blue depths and white sails. stitched shut. But two beaks left ajar Campsite barbecues. Football on the sand: One Sassenach, five Scots and an Argentinian. so bird tongues wag Mergansers on the loch. Sunburn. Hail. tell tales of blossom that smelt like Hills painted green and mauve like a healing bruise. rotten meat, insects that fought back Clouds heavy as hangovers. Driving rain. or weighed them down dangerously A merlin cruising the landscape. Geese in skeins. low, winds seeded with gunshot, birds Boats straining their moorings. Dark day blues. disappearing into flower heads

Chimney fires. Uisge beatha. Afterglow. swallowed whole like a song Mince and tatties contest. Cancelled ferries. Snow.

6 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Killer Heels and Cut Throats Tanera Bryden interviews crime novelist Alex Gray

n engaging Nairn Book and Arts in particular and we blend so well as a trio Festival (2-7 September) is full of that audiences always enjoy our events. We Acontrast this year; visiting authors liked the notion of painting our nails scarlet include Kirsty Wark, Kapka Kassabova, Sally and donning killer heels as well, of course!!! Magnusson and Peter Ross, and subjects TB You founded Bloody Scotland – now, under discussion include tango dancing in within a couple of short years, an incredibly Buenos Aires, island life on Lewis, the afterlife successful crime writing festival. Do you think of a body snatcher, and gruesome deaths on that Scots writers have a particular bent for the streets of modern-day Glasgow. crime fiction, and what do you think makes The Festival’s ‘Wine and Crime’ afternoon them embrace it? features a trio of writers: Ann Cleeves won AG This is a question I am often asked, the inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger in 2006, particularly since the overwhelming success of for her novel Raven Black, and her books have Bloody Scotland. I think we have great writers formed the basis for two television series so in Scotland full stop. Yes, many of us seem to far - Shetland (BBC Scotland) and Vera (ITV). have a particular desire to use the genre to Ann is joined by rising star Malcolm Mackay; express our feelings about the world around born and raised on Lewis, this young writer, us, usually in terms of contemporary fiction. I fêted by the critics for his convincing portraits think dear Willie McIlvanney showed us the of the inhabitants of Glasgow’s underbelly, way with the Laidlaw trilogy, allowing us all wrote his forensically researched books from to follow him into darker realms of fiction his bedroom in Stornoway. His first bookThe than, perhaps, the writers of literary fiction Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, was shortlisted do not always enter. Do we have a darkness for the Scottish First Book of the Year, and the to our nature? Like the Scandinavians, do we second, How A Gunman Says Goodbye, won endure these long winter nights brooding on the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the the vagaries of the human condition? Perhaps. Year Award. Completing the trio of writers I do not think there is one answer, but many. is Alex Gray, author of a series of eleven crime Perhaps there is a book to be written to novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector explore this issue!! Lorimer, the latest of which is The Bird That TB You have said that you very much Did Not Sing. The twelfth book in the series admire PD James. Which other writers, living is due out next year. or dead, have influenced you most? AG Yes I continue to admire PD James. TB Your first published story, at age 9, was As a young writer in my teens I loved the for Bunty, after your primary school teacher Russians especially Dostoevsky and expect predicted you would become a novelist. You that their work was an influence at that time. have said that when you were a child, thanks I devoured the detective fiction of the Golden to the library books your older sister brought Age as a young woman, mostly for their home, your fairy tales were the Greek Myths absorbing story lines and twisty plots. I think and Nathaniel Hawthorn’s Tanglewood Tales. Ian Rankin influenced me inasmuch as he What books would you recommend to was writing about a detective in Edinburgh children now? and I was writing about Lorimer in Glasgow AG The books I would recommend to (I didn’t come across his work until I had children now would, of course, depend on written a couple of books myself) and so I their ages but anything by Julia Donaldson felt a bit inspired to continue my own series. is wonderful for tinies and early school I don’t think I am really influenced by other age children while teens must discover the writers’ ideas or styles at all although I read wonderful books by Catherine MacPhail and a choral singer who has sung at Chartres Why do you think so much successful crime voraciously, especially crime fiction. like Run Zan Run. The books I loved like Catherdral. Your fourth novel, The Riverman, writing is inspired by, and set in, Glasgow? TB Is it really true that you have had your works by JRR Tolkien still stand the test of was the subject of a choral symphony by AG I think Glasgow epitomises the throat cut? time as do so many fairy tales but I do think composer, Ken Walton, who took some of the dichotomy of a warm hearted city that can AG Yes it is quite true that I had my throat that Philip Pullman’s Golden Spyglass trilogy words from the book for his work, Colours turn to violence in a moment like a sunny cut but I was under anaesthetic at the time is also enthralling. I would also tell kids not of the Clyde. How did it feel to have your summer’s day blanketed by a deluge of heavy and I had given the surgeon my permission to miss out on classics like the Narnia stories work inspire a piece of music? Has anyone rain. I love the people of Glasgow and lament to carry out the operation to remove my or Winnie the Pooh and books like Alice in else expressed an interest in doing something the darker side that exists in their lives. Perhaps thyroid. It had wrapped itself around my Wonderland or Little Women and of course similar, and would you consider composing that contrast is what underlies so much of the windpipe and grown so large that it was in Treasure Island. There are so many great books something yourself? crime writing we have in Glasgow. Maybe danger of impeding my heart and lungs! out there that I would urge kids to haunt AG I was both honoured and humbled many cities are like this? And perhaps it is Later on I found that there had been a second their local library as I did myself. to listen to my own words transformed into indicative of the human condition that we thoracic surgeon on standby as the op might TB You wrote your first book while choral music. Yes, I would consider something present a civilised exterior over the potential have become a bit tricky. Sadly my singing holidaying on Mull; do you still sometimes like that again if there were any parts of for violence that hides underneath. voice has never been quite the same. I was retreat to the Hebrides to write? my work that lent themselves to music but TB Can you tell us a little bit about the sorry the newspapers missed a great chance AG Not only do I retreat to the Hebrides it would be a collaboration rather than a Femmes Fatales writing trio you set up with for a headline: Crime Writer Has Her Throat to write, Mull is strongly featured in my composition by myself, I think. Alanna Knight and Lin Anderson , and how Cut! n next book, Keep The Midnight Out. It is like a TB The city of Glasgow has been central it came about? second home to me but I have to cadge beds to a huge range of crime fiction and TV AG Femmes Fatales came about as Lin and from relatives who live there, bless them! drama, and home to some of crime’s great Alanna and I are all friends and decided we Alex Gray will appear at the Nairn Book TB You are very musical; you played characters, from Taggart and Cracker, to would follow the lead of other groups in the and Arts Festival on Saturday 6th September guitar and were a founder member of the Malcolm Mackay’s Calum MacLean, and Crime Writers Association who give talks. We 2014. For full programme details and to book Battlefield Band; you have been a folk singer, your own charismatic creation, DCI Lorimer. wanted to showcase women’s crime writing tickets, visit www.nairnfestival.co.uk.

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 7 John Glenday 39 Comments on the Creative Process

To begin at the very end: their own finished work is its vastness and variety. We see a thing once, and forever § often far more surprising to the poet than the new work after we are blind to its existence. Nothing stays nothing. of others. § § § To generalise is to dismiss. If the poem is to have any All humanity requires a hook to snag against the world, Inspiration is the accumulated shadow of all the things chance of success it must reduce the subject matter to a way of engaging with it, or avoiding engagement with we will never be able to say. Thank goodness. its lowest uncommon denominator. One person is a it. We search for familiarity and patterning, for shapes § human being; everything beyond that, a faceless crowd. in the constellations, for Jesus’ face in our soup. In this Always remember to begin the poem after the beginning; § respect everything we see is filled with significance for that politeness, that clearing of the throat. Because we have been granted everything, we can take us, because we are empty, because we are insignificant. § nothing for granted. § Lowell remarked that belief in God is an inclination to § If I were to compare poetry to the Sciences, I would listen. Listen: the world is telling us about the world Virchoff described illness as ‘life under altered conditions’. suggest that it was most like Archaeology in that both – write down what it is saying. All great poetry is Poetry is too. The creative process is essentially the disciplines concentrate on the apparent detritus of life, dictation. process of disease. The moment before the poem begins but are actually interested in rediscovering how life is § is a time of unease – of discomfort, elation, fever. lived. Archaeology is of course a science of the present If it doesn’t wither, it’s probably not a suitable subject Something is looming. And then the symptoms kick day which pretends to be interested in the way people for poetry. in – a few words scribbled down on paper because they lived many years ago. Poetry pretends to be interested § sound good, or interesting, though they lack meaning. in the physical things of life – the potsherd, the bone A viewpoint is usually more interesting than a point of A single line that persists like an earworm and demands fragment, the bronze arrowhead, but it is actually view. exploration. interested in the hand behind the arrowhead, the face § § that wore the bone, the lips that drank the mead from The great thing about form is that it hinders us from Likewise the fomites of poetry – the physical things that that broken pot. saying what we had originally intended to say. carry the disease between person and person – are those § § physical things embedded in the poem which carry the As a Science, Poetry is remarkably perverse. It has been Love the poem for its roots, as Vallejo almost said, rather sickness known as meaning. Bacteria and viruses cannot said that Science gave much to poetry but poetry gave than it’s flower. be spread by thought or ideas; likewise the germ of the nothing at all to Science. I disagree, of course. Poetry § poem needs concrete items to transport it between gives process to Science, if not content. Poetry gave The self must be expunged from the poem - or at least individuals, like smallpox folded in a woollen blanket. Kekulé the dream that became the benzene ring; it gave scrupulously concealed - so that the reader has enough § Dirac the desire for elegance which led to mathematical elbow room to discover themselves in it. In this respect All poetry, of course, arises out of silence. In this respect proofs. the poem is ruthlessly selfish. it is a nihil ex machina. § § § Sometimes I suggest changes to a poem and the student We need to remember that Silence has been given all After the first couple of drafts, my process is oneof replies in horror: ‘But that’s not what happened!’ To the best lines. The revision process is a difficult trek dogged redaction, of removing any elements which which I reply ‘Well it has happened now…’ back towards a point as close to silence as language will identify the poem as mine, and returning it as close § allow. to that original silence as possible. My second most Every good poem has an angle of refraction, as though it § favourite writing utensil is the delete button. were composed in clear water. We appear to read straight Am I the only one who finds Auden’s statement that § into the poem, but the meaning angles off crookedly, to ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ utterly positive and As the poem arises, the feeling is one of liberating allow us to see what we are not seeing. invigorating? Poetry involves giving nothing a voice. sadness. Sad things make me content, not because I crave § Notice he didn’t write that poetry doesn’t make sadness, but because they accord. For the same reason, I Look at that dim star. It is only visible when we look anything happen. abhor circus clowns, dancing, merry tunes. slightly to one side, so that its light falls on the more § § sensitive elements of the eye. This is averted vision. The creative process begins with the need to exist, not The great secret that the writer must conceal from their The poem also looks to one side of its subject matter. to express. Poems come from pens, not ideas. public is the enormity of their theft from others. I thieve Abstractions are so dim they are all but unknown to us. § from Literature. I thieve from Art. I thieve from Nature. I § The eye does not see things, it only sees change. take someone else’s words and rearrange them to reflect You can usually tell from the title what a poem is not § my contemporary concerns. Donne, I think, noted that about. Consciousness is all. Consciousness of vision. young men don’t mend their sight by wearing old men’s § Consciousness of experience. Even when we sleep, the spectacles. Perhaps not, but they’re always stealing their Always do your best to stop writing once the poem is poem in us is awake. pens. finished. It is such a temptation to sum up, to spill the § § beans, to reiterate. Leave that to the reader. The tone of the poem comes first, then its outline Everything has been said before. But as Gide noted, § against the page, then the words, and finally, perhaps, no one was listening, so we must continually say it all Because each poem, ultimately, is a failure, we constantly the meaning. again, with an altered accent, or a different tone, or a consider giving it all up, of resigning ourselves to the § new perspective, in the hope that this time, at long last, white silence. Who was it said the docken grows next to the nettle? The someone will hear us, or at least ignore us differently. § cure is always a neighbour to the cause. So look beside § Because each poem, ultimately is a failure, we write on. the cliché for its solution; search for the remarkable in Though the process is involuntary, it can be encouraged. § the shadow of the ordinary. If I want to run a marathon, I’ll jog every day to improve If you are satisfied the poem is finished, you’ve probably § my lung function and muscle tone and endurance. If said too much. To allow the poem to enter us we need only open our I want to write, I should practice accordingly. What I eyes, our ears, our hands. Mankind is so practiced in not write is often less important than the act of writing. Put seeing the world. We generalise in order to accommodate another way, the preparation for writing is to write.

8 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Poetry by John Glenday

X Ray Fable Lest We Forget*

So this is outer space, Remember that old tale Peder Ås · Tommy Atkins · Chichiko Bendeliani · Joe this filmy sheet of black of the half-blind angel Bloggs · Jane Doe · Jäger Dosenkohl-Haumichblaue · blemished with stars? fell in love with herself Fulan al Fulani · Kari Holm · Hong Gildong · Aamajee in a frozen pool? Gomaajee Kaapse · Kovacs Janos · Janina Kowlaska That grinning moon · Sari Çizmeli Mehmet Aga · Madame Michu · Jan is balanced on a milky haze ‘Tell me;’ she whispers, Modaal · Erika Mustermann · Numerius Negidius · of cloud, snagged in the thousand ‘tell me your name, No Nominado · Nguyen · Van A · Seán Ó Rudaí · A N more smoke of skin Other · Vardenis Pavardenis · Pera Peric · Petar Petrov · branches of a bare or skein of hair than man. Jef Van Pijperzete · Juan Piguave · Ion Popescu · Vasiliy white tree. But these Pupkin · Imya Rek · Mario Rossi · Joe Shmoe · Maria are nothing - nothing’s marks, Love is the self dissolved. da Silva · Lisa Medel-Svensson · Sicrana de Tal · Tauno Lift up the mirror Tavallinen · Manku Thimma · Wang Wu · Moishe pauses for thought, of my face to your face Zugmir the interstices, the junctures and you’ll see nothing.’ at which something slowed *List not exhaustive and thickened as it made its way through her. Surely this speaks of a wilful Monster hesitancy - interest even? For want of the proper science I miss it terribly - family and everything. we should call that love. Father in that lab coat fathers wear; always too close, always too distant,

always too keen. You may have heard – my mother was the product of unmentionable absences and storms; my siblings Two Ravens for D, and for S. a tick list of slack, discarded failures. We are all born adult and unwise. If I were given a choice, I would become that bird Don’t judge me too harshly. Noah first sent out to gauge the Flood; Which of us was not coddled into life but I would never come back. I would never by love’s uncertain weathers? Are we not come back because I would find another all stitched together and scarred? just like me, and the two of us, casting ourselves for Step forward anyone who can swear shadows they are not a thing of parts. would sweep on like a thought and its answer over depths and shallows and never rest until the last waves had unfurled; beating our wings against the absence of the world.

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 9 Poetry

Fàistneachd The Log-splitter Jackdaw Down Eoghan Stewart Derek Crook Simon Berry

Dhùisg mi aon oidhche A puffing carrier dragged it to our door We thought we must have seen the worst of flats oir thàinig fàistneachd orm. In a box shaped like a cardboard coffin. When viewing, yet this black-on-black made us stop: Na mo shealladh, thàinig trom-làighe beò And cardboard – and of course a coffin- A shock of sootfall radiated from the hearth far am faca mi tràighean is machraichean, Is, we’ll agree I hope, made from trees. The bird’s spread wings amongst it simulating flight. achaidhean is pàircean Leòdhais gun shrann cnapaig a’ seirm, A heavy steel frame, painted black and red “It’s just a jackdaw from the chimney” you declared gun ghleus a’ bhuille bhinn a’ seinn, (You wonder why and then concede that (ill-omened bird was what I thought but didn’t say), gun ghairmean àghmhor nan gillean Not everyone worries about colour So you lifted and dusted the feathers with your hands air toir a’ bhuaidh mar na mìltean romhpa. Or searches for a symbolism. Mainly poets To make each dusky pinion suddenly new-fired. Chaidh na balaich dhan sgoil gun chamain When they think about their poetry, which an cois am fàdan is an leabhraichean-gràmair. They should try not to do too often.) Not a promising beginning, you’d think, nevertheless Chunnaic mi na maidean gan sadail We took a lease on that cottage right then and there. gu cùl pris, am measg nan cabar, One end has a mounted wedge. The other end The man who came to reconstruct the chimney said: gu bonn ciste, gu cùl inntinn. A piston – hydraulic – mean anything to you? “These daws just keep returning to their native nests.” ‘S cruinn mhòr na h-àite Me neither. You place a loglet on the frame ‘s òigridh a’ magadh air an t-seann fheadhainn And pump the handles. The piston crawls From the garden fence a pair looked on in black affront. a chum suas a’ Challainn mar a bha riamh. With persistent menace to the log, What reason could he give, then, for this winged metastasis? Far nach deach a h-aithneachadh na dùthaich fhèin Squeezes that loglet up against the wedge. “Aye, they build a platform for the nest by dropping sticks ged nach bu chian bhon a dh’fhalbh i. You follow me? As a sort of speculation down the stack. Some hold, some don’t.” Mhothaich mi gur bu mhise a bha nam chadal ‘s b’ e mo mhuinntir-sa a bha air dùsgadh. Thirty years of more or less Hardly reassuring. I reasoned the daw’s harsh tetchy clypes Concentric life creaks, cracks And dusky quills were made to cut a figure in the air ‘Fàistneachd’ was the overall Gaelic Poetry winner for And falls in two. Not for lingering down here in our pedestrian realm: the 2013 Baker Prize. For this malign intrusion it had surely paid a hefty price.

So was I sorry for this lonely accidental death, as I supposed, Intersection, Inverness That it had failed to strut about our cottage space Cuireadh Pìobaire Lydia Popowich Making the necessary accommodation for co-habiting? Deborah Moffatt Hell no, just intense relief to see those sequin eyes tight closed. Alone, I wait for the green Is fada bhon uair a dh’fhàg mi i, light at a T junction. In my rear view agus is fad’ on a chuala mi bhuaipe, ach thàinig a’ ghairm, agus thill mi thuice. mirror, mother and daughter, blonde curls, matching smiles, laughing, chatting, trading Is fad’ an oidhche a chaith mi rithe gun ach ceòl bochd na pìoba glances, milky eyed reflections of one gar cumail ri chèile. another, safe as air bubbles in fused

Bha briseadh-dùil aig an dithis againn, glass; on their way home from Asda or ballet or violin mo cheòl coigreach, cearbach, ga cràdh, class or fish and chips with grandma after swimming mise gam chronachadh fhèin, or Maeve’s birthday party and the promise of girl a h-uile rud a’ teicheadh orm, guiding. The lights change, I turn mo mheòir gun lùths, gun fheum, na puirt a’ traoghadh às mo chuimhne, away from the crimson city, away from the sighs of cherry blossom agus eadarainn, dùthaich chaillte, na laighe ann an meadhan a’ chuain, a’ dol à sealladh, in the ranked rows of trees on the riverside agus sinne gar dalladh le faoin-aisling. as petals freeze to pink ice in the chill.

Truagh an latha a dh’fhàg mi i, ach nas truaighe fhathast mo thilleadh, dìomhanas cuireadh pìobaire.

‘Cuireadh Pìobaire’ was the runner up for Gaelic Poetry for the 2013 Baker Prize.

10 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Dàin ùra le Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul

Rud A Mhic Factaraidh Fheamainn Bhaghasdail Thèid rud gu rud: Tha mi gad shaoradh sìol gu craobh, o gach cuing a tha gad cheangal bratag gu dealan-dè, ri nàisean, cànan, dualchas is sluagh. A dh’aindeoin mo cheum ann an Eachdraidh ‘s Poilitigs agus turas rinn mi sgoth O gach dàn fada ruitheamach Gàidhlig cha do thuig mi buileach riamh a-mach à pìos maide agus luideag a’ moladh nan cinn-cinnidhean. gum b’ e seo a bha Marx a’ ciallachadh: gun robh latha cinnteach a’ tighinn ‘s ged nach ionnan sin O gach dual-chainnt is prìseile nuair bhiodh na fir a bha caicleadh ri fìon à uisge anns a’ chruinne-chè. tarsainn a’ mhachaire le màileidean air an dromannan nan eachdraidh nach fheàrr e na obair ar là: O gach òran a’ moladh dùthaich, ‘s gum biodh a’ ghaoth a’ sèideadh dèanamh uisge à fìon? màthair, ‘s am baile mar a bha. tro sprùilleach na factaraidh seo.

O gach creud is cinnidh o gach dùil is dòchas. M’ athair An Taigh Cruinn, Dalabrog O chànan a shàbhaladh, Ghlac mi e dìreach aon turas, agus uallach teangaidh. An starsaich a’ bheinn mhòr seo, far an do dh’èirich a’ ghrian. air a ghlùinean taobh na leapaidh Bidh saor agus daonnda. ag ùrnaigh. An cidsin Agus thuig mi Mar Fhear na h-Eabaide, ann an solas na maidne. cò às a thàinig ma dh’fheumas tu samhla, mo neart. An t-àite-còmhnaidh a shiubhal an saoghal tron là. airson gaol mnatha An làr-caidil An Àrd Sgoil ‘s a choinnich Murchadh mac Briain sa chiaradh. dhan do dh’inns e an sgeul. Sheas iad anns na trannsaichean An seòmar-bàis mar fheannagan dubha, san dorchadas. an cleòcaichean a’ sgiathadh Mac Iain ‘ic Sheumais A’ dol deiseil mun guailnean airson Ceana Chaimbeul o mhoch gu dubh. a’ cuir eagal a’ bhàis oirnn, a’ piocadh gach aisling Nuair a chaidh an gaisgeach mòr Mac Iain ‘ic Sheumais Beachd ach an aon aisling a b’ fhiach: a leòn aig Blàr na Fèithe gun tigeadh latha na saorsa ghlaodh e airson a Mhamaidh Tha eun a thàinig sa bhad le bannal nam ban a’ crochadh bun-os-cionn far an seinneadh a’ churracag ‘s a rinn òran dha taobh muigh m’ uinneig, àrd anns na speuran a mhair fada na b’ fhaide na e fhèin. ag ithe chnòthan agus na h-uain a’ mèilich agus madainn an-diugh mar spìdeagan. nochd ball-teine sna speuran Tha thu ‘s nuair bha mi coiseachd dhachaigh a-raoir Càr beag dearg a’ dol seachad chunna mi corran na gealaich, ‘s chan eil thusa ann. agus smaoinich mi Plèan a’ sgiathadh àrd sna speuran air cho cinnteach ‘s a tha gràdh, ‘s chan eil thusa oirre. a’ gluasad an sin san adhar.

Iat a’ gluasad gu socair sa Chuan Sgìth ‘s chan eil thus’ air bòrd.

Tha thu far nach eil thu.

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 11 Beyond the Croft House Angus Dunn falls in love with Moniack Mhor

Photographs of Moniack Mhor and the Straw Bale Studio Doorway by Ruth Tauber. Other photos by Nancy MacDonald.

wenty one years ago, Moniack Mhor Loch Ness. Towards the north, the massif of Ben Mhor has been visited by many – perhaps even Foundation, though it was also being used for James has created an extraordinary building in website, www.moniackmhor.org.uk has information novel or writing the short story. But the directors Apart from the traditionally structured course, Writers’ Centre opened its doors. The Wyvis is visible, purple in the twilight, white most - of the writers currently working in the self-organised events in the months, autumn to the midst of the garden: straw bale walls with about these and more. are also looking for new ideas, ways to present with Moniack becoming autonomous, there is Tdevelopment of a writers’ centre in the with snow in the springtime. On some days Highlands. They have attended as participants, as spring, after that main program had finished. lime render; a reciprocal-frame roof built of But, wonderful as they are, this heather- and teach writing or to develop skills in areas a chance to look at other possibilities – shorter Highlands was the brainchild of Kit and Sophia one might say that the Centre has expansive invited readers and as tutors. They have kept the More recently, the focus has moved from the round timber, capped with living heather; clay roofed building and the transformation of the that are relatively new – blogging, writing for courses – or longer; or combined interests, Fraser, and many writers throughout Scotland views. At other times, it seems more accurate to place running as directors. There are many warm two main buildings, where the courses have been internal walls; oak door and floor, a woodstove garden area are not the entire focus of energies the Web, using social media – or that don’t exist such as hill-walking and poetry. There already were involved in the fundraising. The 24-hour say that it is exposed to the elements – but a memories of the place and for many writers a run in the big dining room and the library. Now, . . . The building is full of delights. Apart from at Moniack Mhor. It is a centre for writers, and yet, except in the minds of writers. The world is exists a tradition of fine writing and climbing - Poethon alone involved a couple of hundred thunderstorm working its way up the glen has its course at Moniack was a step on their way to a wonders are being wrought in the extensive – the lovely shape and the light and the warmth that is where the impetus is aimed. The physical changing fast, and writers need to keep up. . . sometimes it seems that the hills are as full of poets. As a consequence, there are many of us own drama and splendour. My first encounter writing career. For some, it was life-changing. but hitherto largely ignored – garden area that (a precious commodity when the winds blow in changes are indicative of the plans which are Except for those who don’t, of course. There writers as climbers. Perhaps thoughtful articulate who feel a special connection to this renovated with the finished Centre was in my capacity as a At the beginning, it was a shoestring operation, overlooks the glen. With the help of volunteers from the West (or the North or the North East), finally maturing. is a timelessness about poetry, for instance, that people are drawn to climbing – or perhaps croft house on the Teaverran hillside. It’s not woodworker. I was called in to replace a damaged and it was thrown together in a flurry of good and the Beechgrove Gardening team, the land there is delight in the use of materials – so many From the end of this season, Moniack’s long allows us to hear the voice of Li Po or Sappho the extremes of landscape and weather and only a resource and a training ground, it’s our door in the kitchen. It had to be a strong door, intentions, hard work and optimism. A lot of has been shaped into garden beds and a pond different materials, each requiring its own skill- association with the Arvon Foundation is ending. or Ossian, from a distance of centuries. There experience nurture the thoughtful mind. As well resource. since the winds across the hillside would slam an work has been done over the years to improve and paths. Volunteers have worked with mason set. And there is a sense of security in its shape (an From 2015 onwards, Moniack Mhor will be fully are fertile areas here too, for new ways to infect as hills worth climbing, there are beaches worth The building, a few miles from Inverness, unattended door with force enough to split it the place a step at a time, all the while running its George Gunn to make a drystone-walled ellipse) and in that varied mix of down-to-earth autonomous – planning their own courses and writers with the passion for words, to develop walking, there are trees as tall as any in Britain looks out west across the glen to where the road and loosen the door frame. program of courses. These were largely organised storytelling circle, with a fire-pit in the centre materials. There is a feeling of good solid work, finding new ways to use the space. The regular the facility for precision, for truth, for the phrase - there is a landscape waiting for writers to goes over the pass and across the moorland to In the two decades since that opening, Moniack through the Centre’s association with the Arvon and open to the surrounding hillsides. And Steve of competence in every detail. The Centre’s courses will be there, of course, on poetry, the that will make the heart turn over in the chest. witness. n

12 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Beyond the Croft House Angus Dunn falls in love with Moniack Mhor

Photographs of Moniack Mhor and the Straw Bale Studio Doorway by Ruth Tauber. Other photos by Nancy MacDonald. wenty one years ago, Moniack Mhor Loch Ness. Towards the north, the massif of Ben Mhor has been visited by many – perhaps even Foundation, though it was also being used for James has created an extraordinary building in website, www.moniackmhor.org.uk has information novel or writing the short story. But the directors Apart from the traditionally structured course, Writers’ Centre opened its doors. The Wyvis is visible, purple in the twilight, white most - of the writers currently working in the self-organised events in the months, autumn to the midst of the garden: straw bale walls with about these and more. are also looking for new ideas, ways to present with Moniack becoming autonomous, there is Tdevelopment of a writers’ centre in the with snow in the springtime. On some days Highlands. They have attended as participants, as spring, after that main program had finished. lime render; a reciprocal-frame roof built of But, wonderful as they are, this heather- and teach writing or to develop skills in areas a chance to look at other possibilities – shorter Highlands was the brainchild of Kit and Sophia one might say that the Centre has expansive invited readers and as tutors. They have kept the More recently, the focus has moved from the round timber, capped with living heather; clay roofed building and the transformation of the that are relatively new – blogging, writing for courses – or longer; or combined interests, Fraser, and many writers throughout Scotland views. At other times, it seems more accurate to place running as directors. There are many warm two main buildings, where the courses have been internal walls; oak door and floor, a woodstove garden area are not the entire focus of energies the Web, using social media – or that don’t exist such as hill-walking and poetry. There already were involved in the fundraising. The 24-hour say that it is exposed to the elements – but a memories of the place and for many writers a run in the big dining room and the library. Now, . . . The building is full of delights. Apart from at Moniack Mhor. It is a centre for writers, and yet, except in the minds of writers. The world is exists a tradition of fine writing and climbing - Poethon alone involved a couple of hundred thunderstorm working its way up the glen has its course at Moniack was a step on their way to a wonders are being wrought in the extensive – the lovely shape and the light and the warmth that is where the impetus is aimed. The physical changing fast, and writers need to keep up. . . sometimes it seems that the hills are as full of poets. As a consequence, there are many of us own drama and splendour. My first encounter writing career. For some, it was life-changing. but hitherto largely ignored – garden area that (a precious commodity when the winds blow in changes are indicative of the plans which are Except for those who don’t, of course. There writers as climbers. Perhaps thoughtful articulate who feel a special connection to this renovated with the finished Centre was in my capacity as a At the beginning, it was a shoestring operation, overlooks the glen. With the help of volunteers from the West (or the North or the North East), finally maturing. is a timelessness about poetry, for instance, that people are drawn to climbing – or perhaps croft house on the Teaverran hillside. It’s not woodworker. I was called in to replace a damaged and it was thrown together in a flurry of good and the Beechgrove Gardening team, the land there is delight in the use of materials – so many From the end of this season, Moniack’s long allows us to hear the voice of Li Po or Sappho the extremes of landscape and weather and only a resource and a training ground, it’s our door in the kitchen. It had to be a strong door, intentions, hard work and optimism. A lot of has been shaped into garden beds and a pond different materials, each requiring its own skill- association with the Arvon Foundation is ending. or Ossian, from a distance of centuries. There experience nurture the thoughtful mind. As well resource. since the winds across the hillside would slam an work has been done over the years to improve and paths. Volunteers have worked with mason set. And there is a sense of security in its shape (an From 2015 onwards, Moniack Mhor will be fully are fertile areas here too, for new ways to infect as hills worth climbing, there are beaches worth The building, a few miles from Inverness, unattended door with force enough to split it the place a step at a time, all the while running its George Gunn to make a drystone-walled ellipse) and in that varied mix of down-to-earth autonomous – planning their own courses and writers with the passion for words, to develop walking, there are trees as tall as any in Britain looks out west across the glen to where the road and loosen the door frame. program of courses. These were largely organised storytelling circle, with a fire-pit in the centre materials. There is a feeling of good solid work, finding new ways to use the space. The regular the facility for precision, for truth, for the phrase - there is a landscape waiting for writers to goes over the pass and across the moorland to In the two decades since that opening, Moniack through the Centre’s association with the Arvon and open to the surrounding hillsides. And Steve of competence in every detail. The Centre’s courses will be there, of course, on poetry, the that will make the heart turn over in the chest. witness. n

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 13 ut on the edge of town, Derek both ambled round to look inside the boot. finished sorting through a pile of Ketea As soon as it opened, Derek’s dad shook his Oold boat machinery in his dad’s scrap head at the sight of what was in there. After yard. The weather was fine for it being the a few minutes discussion, he shouted Derek middle of September so he kept on working Short Story by Shane Strachan over to help unload the man’s car. There were even though hours had passed since cars had a few steel bars and other parts of old gym streamed along the road nearby, heading to ✯ equipment that they had to carry together homes outside of the Broch. Under a makeshift into the yard. canopy where the scraps of iron were stored, When the green car drove off, Derek asked he switched on the radio for the first time his dad how much he’d had to pay the man that week. The news was on. He listened as he’d pointed – a strip of people lined the edge back along the pier, through the factories and for it. he sat on the dusty earth and untangled a pile of the pier on the other side of the basin. The round to the caravan. When he got in – the Nae nithing. I just telt him it wisna worth of copper wire, his large hands turning black whale must still be trapped, he realised. bead curtain rattling against the door – he the petrol it would cost to drive it somewye with oil – there had been a bad car crash the He rushed past the pubs and supply stores could hear his dad snoring in the double else, he smiled. Right I better awa. Here… night before on the A90… a local councillor to where all the folk stood. At the edge of bedroom. He crept ben to his room and sat he rummaged through his shirt pocket and had resigned after some scandal… a whale the crowd, he asked an auler wifie what had on the single bed. Through the scuffed plastic pulled out a fiver. Get yersel summin fae the was trapped in Fraserburgh harbour – the been happening. Folk had told her that it window, he watched the waves crash on the chippers for supper. Oh – ye sure ye’r nae radio suddenly cut off. He went over to it and was a young minke whale in the harbour – it black rocks at the foot of the caravan site. wanting to come wie ma to the fitbaa on tried fichering with the on/off switch, but had been trapped there for nearly a day. The Once it was dark, he switched on the Saturday? the batteries had run out. In the shadow of night before, a small fishing boat had tried to small light above his bed. He began counting Derek shook his head. He took the fiver the canopy, he felt a chill slide across his bare herd the whale back out to sea to its waiting out the change he had left in his pockets from his dad and thanked him, then went arms and the short strawberry-blonde hairs mother, but the creature had sunk out of along with some coins he’d hidden across the back to sorting the scrap. His dad and Yulia across them stood on end. Beyond the walls sight only to pop back up behind the trawler, wooden slats beneath his mattress. There was drove off. of the scrap yard, the hay bales in the fields further in than before. And earlier on the day, six pound and sixty-three pence altogether – On his way back home from the yard that nearby cast long shadows across the harvested some experts had travelled up to the Broch he only needed a wee bit more. He’d have to evening, Derek nipped into the bakers before land – it was time to start heading home. and organised a flotilla of three boats to try try and not spend anything tomorrow. it shut. Whatever pies they still had sitting out Weak with tiredness and hunger, he began herd it out, but instead of being coaxed up He hid all the money away again and lay were always buy one get one free at the end the half-hour walk through town. He passed the breakwater, the whale had swum towards down on his bed. It was the coldest night of the day. Along with a small bottle of cola, by the secondary school he’d left at the start the boats and squeezed in between two of the there had been in a while and he had to pull he bought two Scotch bradies and ate them of summer and wondered if this would be vessels, causing the whole operation to come both thin bed sheets up over himself. He both on his way down to the harbour. the last time he’d set eyes on the building – to a standstill. They were going to try again tugged the string cord above his head and the At the Faithlie Basin, a blue van drove past it looked like an old factory, its clock tower the morn, but for now folk were coming light went out. and stopped just a few yards up from Derek. stretching out over the corrugated metal roof. down to try and catch a glimpse of the peer Two men got out, both wearing jackets Then he cut through the street he used to beast. * with a circular logo that read CETACEAN live on, making sure not to catch the eye of Up it came, its slate-grey skin breaking RESEARCH AND RESCUE UNIT. In the any of his old neighbours that were out and through a film of rainbowed oil on the The next day, Derek checked the timetable centre of the logo there was a picture of a about. Before long, he was crossing the links surface of the water. A faint jet sprayed from outside the bus station on his way to the whirlpool filled with dolphins and whales. towards the caravan site at the end of the the blowhole. Its small fin then keeked out scrap yard. A bus left from the station every The men shook hands with the skipper of beach esplanade. They’d bid here since his dad as it curved downwards, heading back below half hour on a Saturday throughout the day. the Adriana before he helped them get on was declared bankrupt three months before. the surface. One bairn screamed out loud that He’d have to plan it so that he wasn’t caught board – one at a time, they crossed the gap Just as he gripped the caravan’s plastic door it looked like a shark, and another clapped standing around waiting for one. between the quayside’s solid concrete and the handle, he heard his dad’s girlfriend Yulia her hands as though she was at a show. Their He was left to his own devices on bars along on the edge of the boat’s deck that shrieking in Russian. The whole unit started parents were quick to wheesht them. the yard that Thursday morning and took heaved up and down with the bobbing of the rocking. He checked his pockets and counted Derek’s belly began rumbling. He said bye his time going through the metal that still tide. Derek decided to head to the Balaclava the money he had on him – four pound sixty. to the wifie and headed back the way to the needed sorting – as soon as they had enough Basin to see what would unfold. Maybe enough to buy a wee plate of chips Ship Inn. Inside, he decided against ordering of any one metal, his dad would fill up his car Tonight, the crowd had grown to a and a drink from the Ship Inn. a drink – he needed to hold on to as much boot with it and take it through to the proper teeming bourach that had wedged itself He walked back out the caravan site and of his money as he could – so he asked for scrappers in Aberdeen for cash in hand and around the whole pier to see the whale. There headed through the reeking fish factories a pint of water to go with his plate of chips. that would mean they had to start replenishing was a TV crew setting up cameras nearby and towards the Faithlie Basin. A few of the boats When he got both, he sat down in a quiet stock. In the past, they’d gotten most of it by photographers elbowed through folk to get to moored here were sore needing a lick of corner by the window and looked out at the stripping it out of old abandoned factories the edge of the pier. Somebody asked the TV paint. The worst was a nameless ship from one harbour – a wee red boat was making its way and the black shells of burned-down houses. reporter what was happening. Derek listened of the trawler companies on the West Coast – into the Faithlie Basin. To drag out the sorting further, Derek read as she explained that there was to be one last blue paint clung to the bow and the stern, but He soon found himself lugging in to a a chapter at a time from a library book in attempt to coax the whale back out to sea most of the hull between had been stripped conversation between the old barmaid and between sifting through the remaining piles before it became too dark. away to orange rust by the sea. The paint a fisherman sat at the bar. The barmaid was of metal – a battered hardback copy of a And fit’ll happen if it disna work? a voice on another from Banff had begun to flake explaining that Jamie Jockel had been in the Stevenson novel. from the crowd asked. The reporter shrugged off across the stern below the net-wrapped night before raving about how the young His dad arrived in the afternoon. Derek her shoulders and turned away to speak to winch. The local boats faired slightly better whale had followed the Pontus into the could hear the wheels of the ancient car her colleagues. and you could still make out their names in the harbour, and how the crew had watched it plowing through the chuckies at the front of There was soon speak of the Jockel loons evening light: Harvest Quest, Adriana, Christian breach out of the spume in the ship’s wake. the yard as he hid the book away under his being asked to move the Pontus round the Watt, Fairweather and Guide Us. The Harvest Jamie had smirtled at the fact he was the jacket out of sight of his dad. Yulia refused to basin to make room for the smaller boats Quest was in the shade of a massive trawler reason half the town had been down the get out the car and sat playing on her phone to manoeuvre. They’d been quick to refuse, anchored in the Balaclava Basin behind, the harbour since then to gowk at the thing. One with her window down. saying it wasn’t worth wasting fuel on. Derek Pontus, a freshly-painted red ship. Some of her of the regulars at the end of the bar had cut I’ve got somebody coming wie some looked over at the Pontus and watched as crew stood out on deck: all three of the Jockel Jamie’s spiel short, saying that surely he could scrap soon, his dad said as he leant his bulk Jamie Jockel flicked a tabbie down into the loons, stocky, dark-haired brothers in their see it was a damned shame for the creature. against the canopy, his hands stuffed into his harbour below him. thirties – the eldest James, the youngest Jamie, Jamie had laughed in return and argued that, jean pockets. Thought I’d better deal wie him Folk started clapping and cheering as a and the middle brother, John. When Derek back in the aul days when whaling was the so you dinna hae us swicked again by some fleet of small trawlers made its way round was younger, his dad had worked out at sea done thing round the coast at Peterheid, his chancer, he sniggered. He must have been from the Faithlie Basin to the Balaclava. In on the Jockels’ boats, but then Jimmy Jockel ancestors would’ve been happy enough to drinking – it was the only time he laughed. their shades of sky blue, Harvest Quest and had died a couple of year’s back and his three harpoon the beast so why should anybody A small green car made its way up to the Guide Us trailed behind Adriana’s forest green. sons soon got shot of Derek’s dad. be greeting and girning now? Folk had gone yard and halted a few metres away from them. A silence fell over the crowd when the blue The brothers lounged just outside the quiet at that and had left him to yabber on The driver was an aul mannie who peered trawlers came to a halt and Adriana turned wheelhouse, smoking fags and drinking about the fish he’d caught on his last trip and out over the wheel like a tortoise deciding in the harbour, moving far enough to one bottles of beer. James pointed down below the muckle boxes he’d sold at the market. whether or not to come out of its shell. His side to let the others follow suite. Once all and said something that made his brothers fall Derek’s plate and pint glass were empty. dad rushed over and opened the car door to three vessels were turned and ready to head into fits of laughter. Derek looked to where He ambled out the Ship and made his way help the man out. They shook hands and then

14 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 back out the basin, they sat still, waiting to see the concrete blocks of the breakwater that ran most of the night by a storm and had sat up at coast, it was possible to make out the wrecked where the whale would re-emerge. up to the small lighthouse at the harbour’s points to watch the thunder flash out at sea. Freyja, still trapped on the rocky shore at Breaking the hush, someone started entrance. The trawlers gradually slowed there He struggled up out of bed and pulled the Cairnbulg. shouting at the rear of the crowd. and their engines quietened. Coming to a curtains away from his window. The sun was A teenage loon rose up above the rest of the Get oot ma road for ony sake! I’ve got nae complete standstill, they plugged the entrance blazing outside – if it wasn’t for the streaks group nearest Derek by climbing up on top of time for this cairry on. It was James Jockel to the harbour shut. of seawater dried onto the windowpane, he something bulky. Derek realised what it was: heading back from town with John. The pair One of the experts from the Cetacean might have thought he’d dreamt the storm of a dark-grey mound with a white underside of them barged through the crowd, bottles Unit came out onto the deck of the Adriana the night before. covered in thin sagging grooves – a minke clinking in their carrier bags. The younger folk and gave the thumbs up. Derek joined in with Coorse nicht again, eh? his dad said. He whale. The flesh across its head had started to were quick to move out of their way, but the everyone in cheering loud enough for the was sitting on the couch listening to the radio turn pale and was flecked with orange, and brothers soon came up against a row of three boats’ crews to hear in the distance. and, his football top already on in preparation its lower jaw was tinged with blood. Derek’s auld mannies, the same three you’d usually Folk were quick to get on the phone with for going to watch the game at the Bellslea. stomach turned as the stench of rotting flesh see sitting on a bench outside the Fishermen’s the news. Newspaper reporters interviewed Derek hummed in agreement. He went blew at him – the whale must have washed up Mission on mild summer evenings. locals and scribbled notes in shorthand, while about his usual Saturday routine – a couple two nights before to have decayed this much. All three took their time turning to face the TV crew speired for someone that could of slices of toast, a quick shower and then out The loon on top of the carcass posed as the Jockels before looking the brothers up speak good English and not slip into their the door for a walk as soon as he got dressed. some of the group took pictures of him, all and down. native tongue. A local minister pushed past The beach was already hoaching – bairns unfazed by the smell and the swarms of flies Fa do we hae here the nicht? said the one Derek and volunteered himself. He told the ran wild at the swing park and a few families circling around them. A couple of the others in the middle. TV reporter he’d been praying for the whale were already down on the bay, setting up their joined the boy by clambering up the side of Fa is’t noo? asked another, his walking to be safely returned to its mother and was windbreakers and laying out picnics. the dead beast, using the grooves in its belly stick held up across him like a barrier. A grateful that he’d be able to celebrate the Derek took off his shoes and cut through as a sort of ladder. The other group further up quine near Derek nudged her yapping friends news in the morning with his congregation. the marram grass along the dunes, down onto the beach were doing the same, helping each and pointed over to the men. Everyone else other to mount a much larger whale – the nearby had fallen silent to listen in. mother. The realisation that neither whale had Weel, fae the look o these pair, I would say made it left Derek feeling a fool for cheering they’d be twa o Jimmy Jockel’s flock, said the with the crowd just two nights before. tallest of the three men. He seemed to have He rushed past the pubs and He turned and started walking back. He’d developed a crook in his neck from always usually go as far as the Waters of Philorth peering down. halfway along the bay, but he didn’t want to The brothers looked at one another and supply stores to where all the folk have to pass the dead whales again. When his smirked. dad ran over a seagull in town or flattened a Aye, you’d be richt enough there, said the stood. At the edge of the crowd, pheasant out on the road by the scrap yard, first man, whose anorak fluttered in a breeze Derek would do anything to avoid crossing that was starting to pick up. I wonder fit paths with the death for a few days after. Jimmy would think if he was here the day he asked an auler wifie what had His dad was gone when he got back. He’d and could see fit had become o his lot. left a copy of the Fraserburgh Herald lying Oor Da would’ve been prood o us, James on the couch. Derek picked it up and read said. been happening. Folk had told what time the football match kicked off – at Huh! said the man with the walking stick. noon, just ten minutes away. He rushed into Your faither was a fine cheil fa worked hard her that it was a young minke his room and yanked the mattress up to get for fit you’ve noo got. He pointed his stick up all the coins out from underneath. Once his at the sky. Mind that he’ll be up there looking pockets were stuffed with them, he filled a doon on ye, so think on him. whale in the harbour – it had been couple of plastic bags with all the clothes, John mumbled something under his breath shoes and possessions he had. and James laughed. They cut round the row trapped there for nearly a day. The Underneath the bed, he came across of men and barged through the rest of the the library book he’d been reading: Weir crowd towards their ship. of Hermiston – he hadn’t finished it yet, but Everybody’s attention was soon drawn back night before, a small fishing boat he wasn’t too fussed since Stevenson hadn’t to the basin where the whale had emerged. either. He plucked out the receipt he’d been Derek watched as its blowhole sprayed once using for a bookmark and wrote a note on more. It didn’t disappear back underwater this had tried to herd the whale back the back of it: time, but, instead, circled in front of the boats as though unsure of where to swim. There out to sea to its waiting mother, Please return this. was a collective thrum from the engines of Dinna try and find me – the trawlers and they began to steadily move I’ll be fine. forwards, side-by-side. In response, the whale but the creature had sunk out of Derek soon straightened up its course and headed onwards up the pier. sight only to pop back up behind He left the book and the note on his bed Alongside the trawlers, the crowd migrated and then rushed out of the caravan with his up the quayside. A couple of policewomen two bags, not bothering to lock the door. commanded everybody to move back from the trawler, further in than before. The bus driver gave him a queer the edge of the pier as folk packed closer and look when he passed her the pile of change, closer to one another to catch a glimpse of but she was friendly enough when he showed the whale’s movements. her the address of the student accommodation At the junction where the entrance to in Aberdeen and asked if she could let him each basin joined onto the wider pier, another know when to get off. trawler from the Faithlie slipped in alongside Nae problem ma loon, she smiled. the convoy to fill the gap that opened up. The bus was quiet – only a couple The skippers signalled with their hands to the Folk started heading home and Derek the bay. of older people sat up front, and a young wheelhouses nearest them and communicated decided to do the same. On his walk back Further along, there were a couple of quine near the back. He chose a pair of seats through their radios until they were all safely to the caravan, a dark cloud crept over the large groups standing in separate circles, midway and lay awkwardly across the two, out aligned. Soon they began moving forward as evening sun, casting the town in darkness. facing inwards. They looked like some sort of of sight of the window. The bus started on its a four. club. He guessed they must have been here journey. He could tell which streets they were When the whale breached a few metres * to surf since there were four surfers nearby, headed along from the motion: Charlotte, in front of the Adriana, all four of the boats paddling out towards the proper waves on King Edward, Strichen, Boothby… When slowed down, their engines humming ever Two days later, Derek woke up on the their boards. the bus slowed to tackle the roundabout so slightly less. Some bairns sprinted ahead to Saturday morning with a groggy head. For the Out at sea, the Pontus headed southeast in on the edge of town, he knew he was on the very end of the pier and clambered onto second night in a row, he’d been kept awake the blur of the heat, and at the edge of the his way. n

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 15 ll of these years I have thought been about the size of a kidney bean. My about it every single day and yet I The Story of You dearest one, I may not even have laid eyes Ahave never told you the story. I have one you. My eyes filled with a gaping void never said what it really was that happened although I searched and searched. You were that day – because I am scared to speak about Short Story by Karen Bek-Pedersen there somewhere. Lumps of blood and gore it; I never spoke to you. And this seems so and stuff. Darkly purple colours. Blackened weird and so wrong. I cannot say for sure ✯ reds and streaks and streaks, all over my hands. what makes me write to you tonight. Perhaps I never found you. I am sorry. I looked. I I sense your presence – it happened at this really did look everywhere and everywhere. time of year, on an evening just like tonight, I stopped. Everything stopped. Nothing There was blood in my shoes. I think I Somehow it slipped. Everything just slipped. soft and pungent with summer rain. was the same anymore. I was not me any stopped breathing then. For a full second I And broke. Only he was there. Only your Do you understand what these words longer – I was us. I was you and me. Do stared into blank space, convincing myself father. I couldn’t endure the sensation of him mean? I may say things you don’t understand, you remember me? From that moment all I that I had not seen what I had seen. One touching me, looking at me, seeing all of but I am not at all sure of how to speak to wanted was to hold you. I had never thought second. Then I could feel it, the blood as it that. He didn’t say anything, not that evening, you, or reach you. It was a night like tonight of you before and suddenly I could think of churned and seethed on its way out of me. I not ever. But he has not forgotten. There are – wet, I had cycled home, got drenched. But nothing else – no one else. Just you. should not have been bleeding. It had run all times when I see it in him, the thought of I was not cold. I don’t remember being cold. You should have seen your father when the way down the inside of my legs without you in his eyes. He weeps the way boys do, I remember a dreadful void. Lying on the I told him. I said three magic words to him me really noticing. It had already happened. no noise, no tears. I could not mention you. bed for hours with tears filling my veins like and made it all real. When I said those words My stockings, my skirt – blood everywhere At times I tried – tying my throat in silent transparent blood. Endless drops and drops out loud it became reality – not just some and it was sticky and warm and wet like the knots. of rain while I stood alone by the bedroom figment of imagination. You were truly there. muggy rain outside. And I had to get it all off. Days went by before I could bear the touch window long into the night. Your father jumped up from his chair, ruler I had to. Couldn’t stand feeling it against my of his hand without it cutting to the quick, Ten years ago. I wish you could remember and pencil still in hand and the draftsman’s skin. I wanted out, out of it. Then your father before I could be just warm and calm and it. – No, that isn’t true. I would not want you drawings spread out on the desk in front of came running. Eyes stiff and fearful. I had could close my eyes without that uncouth to recall that night, but I do wish you could him. It was a Saturday. I don’t know why I probably made some noise, said something, unravelling sensation. Without scarlet heavily remember – and that you were here, with recall that. He looked at me as if he’d never cried. I don’t know. I was squatting on the dripping from the inside of my eyelids. I never me. I wish that even now. There never was seen me before, as if I had appeared as bathroom floor when he came in, and there knew it was possible to switch off a summer another. unexpectedly as you had and he wanted to was blood. Deep-curdling lightheaded blood. just like that; I have no recollection of what A strange thing now to realize that I have fill his eyes to the brim with that moment. And tears, I think there were tears. Somewhere the weather did, how I spent my time, what no way of addressing you. This old pen in my I’m not sure what it was he said. I think he in that mess was you and that thought alone occupied my hands. In my mind all I see is me, hand and my name carefully engraved on it. said something. Or maybe he didn’t – maybe was unbearable. I looked for you. I looked standing by the bedroom window, watching How I would like to have given you a pen that’s what I remember, that for once I had everywhere – stockings, shoes. I saw that my the rain, watching the night, listening to the like that, watched you write your name with managed to render him speechless. I wonder hands were shaking. I had to look. Mysterious darkness and the sound of shattering stars. it. With each of these sentences I find myself now what he felt at that moment, what he noises surrounded me and I couldn’t place Me there on that threshold, going nowhere. wanting to call you by your name and make felt for you. them. Eerie, non-human noises, I had no idea No exit. No entry. I remember details in it clear that I am writing this to you and no close-up. I was nowhere. Summer had one else – but I don’t know your name. I feel disappeared. The only one left alive was so ashamed at that. There never was a name. I wanted to tell you good things, happy your father. I didn’t know whether you were a boy or a He did all sorts of things for me – to keep girl. How then could I name you? – Can you stories. But there are no other stories. This is me snug, then trying to make me smile. He forgive me for that? did practical tasks to alleviate things for me. Sometimes I dream about you. Sometimes the story of you, the only one there is, and I One afternoon I realized that he had shaved I think I hear your voice. Sometimes I even only half of his face – it looked ridiculous and turn to look. In my mind I have images of you never told it to you before. Can you bear to I smiled. He said he’d gone about all day like – the feeling of your tiny hands, your body that and I hadn’t noticed – and I had to smile. asleep against my chest, the warmth of your Your father. little brow when I kiss you. Dreams that went hear it? There never was another – no matter what by undreamt. – Do you remember being? we did. And it hurt. It hurt in a way that I I had not anticipated you. We had not could not express. It didn’t go away when I planned, your father and I, but that did not The next morning I was sick. I have never what they were till I figured out they were was asleep. It did not go away. matter – it didn’t matter a whit once you been so sick and so thrilled and it was horrible connected to the strange trembling of my Ten years on – and me sitting here. Should turned up. You were there and in that same and exulting. Went on for days, weeks – nine throat. I had my hands in all of it. You were I not have put you behind me by now? I instant it was the most obvious thing of all. weeks to be precise. somewhere. I knew that I would recognize probably should; I just can’t. So here I am, It was meant to be that way. You were meant There was a day of reversal – everything you on sight – was totally convinced of that. writing all of this horror to you and I hate it. I to be there. To be. How could I not love you? turned around, as if entry had become exit You’d be tinier than tiny, but you’d be there. hate doing this, writing these words, because I The mere realization of what I was capable right at the point of crossing the threshold, Did it hurt? I think about that now. It is wanted to tell you good things, happy stories. of doing – make another person come out and me discovering a little too late that the raining outside tonight, a gentle, soothing But there are no other stories. This is the story of my body. A conundrum of overwhelming door I had thought was opening was in fact rain. Drenching. I’m so sorry for what I did of you, the only one there is, and I never told proportions. closing. I wonder why it happened. It just to you. it to you before. Can you bear to hear it? I I remember that day, the day I became happened and nobody seemed able to tell me I remember sitting utterly empty under never spoke to you, nor sang for you. I never aware of you. I was standing in the bathroom why. I was supposed to meet someone outside the shower and your father was washing kissed you. Everything I should have done – about to wash my hands, there was a pale the museum and it was raining and she didn’t me and I was not able to look at him. There all is thin air. Moments that never were. blue towel hanging on the railing and the come and the museum was closed because it was so little of me left. I just sat with the Not a story for children. You would have window was ajar with the smell of freshly was a Monday. After I’d been standing there warm water brushing over me until all the been a child by now. You maybe would have cut grass wafting by, and then I looked into long enough to get soaked I cycled home tears had dissolved and the blood turned understood. I don’t know what came over the mirror. Into it. That was the day I wasn’t again – through the park, by the church and pale and transparent and it was over and I me tonight. Maybe just the rain – drenching bleeding when I should have been and yet I the theatre and then along the street – a gentle was so tired I could have slept with my eyes summer rain. The scent of wetness and grass felt as if something was sitting there, waiting. ten minute bike ride. I didn’t strain myself. I open. Something had snapped inside of me. and evening from the open garden door – Snuggling up and waiting. Then, gradually, it swear to you I didn’t. I want you to know Your father was on his knees next to me, bringing memories, bringing you to make twigged – and it hit me like a revelation. You that for sure. It wasn’t that bike ride. I don’t showerhead in hand, and the sound of that my eyes spill onto the paper and leave blots in were there. Like some half reflected shadow think it was. I had cycled the day before, too. I water running and running and running until the ink from my pen. This is how I know you. in the mirror. Already almost there. That got off my bike, took it through the close and I finally realized that he thought I was about It’s all I know about you. I never found out surge of pride. Of headless euphoria – panic locked it in the shed – all the time wanting to to die. just who you were. You slipped away, slipped and dizziness and silent exhilarated shouts in lie down because I was feeling nauseous. The I think I had forgotten about being alive. in the crimson clotted flood. All I wanted was the bathroom as I stood there by the basin rain had made me wet, I was drenched and I watched myself put a very wet hand on his for you to be. Do you remember? There must forgetting to wash my hands. I simply stared grumpy for having been stood up, needed shoulder and clutch it – for all the words that have been at least that mesmerizing noise at the water running and running from the to get into some dry clothes and I headed were nowhere to be found. from a pulsating universe. Did you know it tap – and I knew. straight for the bathroom. Later on I was told that you would have was a heart? n

16 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 Poetry

Là blàth aig an fhaing An Island Spring Auld Luv Sighting Dàibhidh Eyre Ingrid Leonard Mary McDougall

Cha do chuidich mise a-riamh sibh 1. This wee hairt’s nuair a bha sibh a’ togail a’ chruidh. Northern air is blue; it gets wrung hud a fer wee dunt Agus cha robh mi a-riamh thall aig an fhaing, through clouds, spun by wind the day! air làithean blàth a’ chliopaidh. and releases itself through ill-prepared nostrils, down the flue of a lung. It was a man, a boddy, Ach tha mi air feòil ithe, that it didnae furst ken, cus dhith, is cinnteach, Sometimes it doesn’t make it. Howling but it dunted onyway, agus bidh seacaid chlòimhe orm gales drive breath past the mouths And then it said: nuair a bhios mi a’ feuchainn ri bhith spaideil. of startled Orcadians, lips dry-closing “But ah dae mind ane on a void, heads jerking sharply for and his hair that grey!” Agus bidh mi a’ smaoineachadh gu tric gulpfuls of freshness, the whiff of life air na beathaichean a bhàsaich gus sin a thoirt dhomh then a draught of ice water to the gullet; And then I thocht – ma conscious being – agus oirbhse - cùramach, faiceallach - to breathe is to come home. “Mebbe he disnae ken me eether!” a bha a’ coimhead às an dèidh 2. And so ah went aboot ma business an ceangal sin eadarainn. The sky sprawls, acid blue and thins at the top and tried nae tae think aboot ma hairt, Tha e follaiseach, gu ìre sin, nach eil? ‘til outer space feels close (place your which was duntin awa, An talamh is an tuathanach bets now): who will be the first to see the stars an tarbhan is an truinnsear. on a bright, sunny morning? It’s 17 degrees, And I was kind and explicit tae the wumin daylight hurts the eyes. at the coonter aboot hur buik order, Ach tha mi a’ sgrìobhadh seo le peann but aw the time ah was thinking: (Bic, meadhanach, gorm) Later, in a floodlit moonscape, agus a’ feuchainn ri smaoineachadh its child, gathering towards half-full, “Ah dae mind him but does he ken me? air an uiread de dhaoine a bha an sàs ann, - comes close to the earth, her shadows Are baith oor hairts duntin?” scant. Clouds are scraps of threadbare a fhuair an ola, cloth in a different shade of deep, In the end, ah didnae say awthing. a chruthaich am plastaig, an inc, the stars are faded speckles. Earth ah jist went oan wi ma work. a bha san fhactaraidh, sa bhàta, san làraidh, is a scape and daylight has forgot itself, a bha sa bhùth - planets and the dog star shine. The order was yon buik by Proust. I put on coat and boots, the gate grates na mìltean de dhaoine sin and I step from shadow into a lunar field, land a chuidich mi gus faclan a thoirt is a bounced reflection. I reach up to scoop bho inntinn, gu làmh, gu pàipear. handfuls from the sky – soft, cool and crumbling, A’ smaoineachadh oirbh uile. dust of the moon. I press my face to my palms and feel protected, perhaps for a spell, Sinn uile aig an fhaing san t-samhradh from time’s wheel, a 5-minute reward a’ cabadaich ri chèile for a poor, human offering. a’ gabhail cupan teatha a’ moladh an là. 3. Day returns as a gale blows out, the wind-burnt grass is pale. But the sky brightens, a dream of warm weather, Leòmhann where the barley-grass seethes in its silken Marcas Mac an Tuairneir dance, where all is brilliant lime, straw-yellow, blue. Put on your shades, folk, soon the summer Ath-dhealbhte mar leòmhann. witch will be wearing her best ribbon, Allaidh; a watery strip of pink raw silk. Sgrios mi do sheiche, Le mo chrògan is mo spògan Is laigh thu air làr na cidsin Lag is deòrail.

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 17 Poetry

winter shore Oscar Buzz Where her mother took her Pauline Prior-Pitt Jared Carnie Sally Evans

as far as eyes can reach Walking with you The strangest place her mother took her yet. smooth swept sand Isn’t like a romantic comedy. Water sloshes through the boggy sky. ruckled by kelp skeins It has a power of glamour but it’s wet. on fire in a low down sun Other people don’t blend into the background. Some of them distract us. From their last quarters which they’ll soon forget waves caught in its spotlight Some of them scare us. they hired a van to bring their luggage dry sparkle a jitterbug to the strangest place her mother took her yet. Little disagreements where pebbles tackle each other Don’t lead to passionate kisses. Rootless again, they sought new roots to set in glittering foam Some of them fester for days. in this unlikely tower, the moss nearby that has a power of glamour but is wet. and a cloud Shop windows don’t remind us shaped like a giant ichthyosaurus Of stuff that happened Unrepaired roofs above the parapet, slowly insinuates itself between the sun and me When we were kids. it has a beauty that’s about to die, the strangest place her mother took her yet We don’t look good in the rain. When we get in, we’re freezing. and in the gloomy orchard medlars blet, Love Story The last thing on our mind is sex. and through the marshes deer approach and pry, James Andrew We want hot water bottles it has a power of glamour but it’s wet. And cups of tea. When they said they loved each other Besides, one of us still has to let the dog out In this extreme, squelchy, remote, she’ll fret, they felt they could walk on water. For a piss. and soon she’ll quit, like a rare butterfly So they did. the strangest place her mother took her yet Hand in hand, We listen to the same songs over and over. that has a power of glamour, but is wet. they sauntered across the lake, Nobody gets bored. admiring the mountains Nobody gets royalties. and sky. Neither of us had to learn any lessons. Inuksuk agus Innunguaq The boatman, There weren’t any misunderstandings. Ia i n Ur c h a r d a n who was ferrying tourists, We didn’t see each other hoped it wouldn’t catch on. Walking with someone attractive Sheas Inuksuk, Who turned out to be a relative. mar fhianais dhuinne, A cormorant, We didn’t misconstrue cho cruaidh ri creag bobbing around, Something we overheard on the phone. san fhuachd ghuineach. squawked and thrashed the water with frantic wings, We met and then we met again Cairt-iùil cloiche laboured into flight. And things kept happening a’ comharrachadh càite; And we’d make each other laugh toiseach slighe, The lovers felt so good And neither of us a’ sònrachadh àite: they thought they could fly. Had to turn up at midnight So they did. To save the situation àite seilg, On extended arms, It just happened a couple of times àite iasgaich, they glided past the cormorant, After late shifts àite còmhnaidh, who blinked When we really needed the company. àite biadhaidh, and beat his wings harder, looking paranoid. àite adhraidh, àite seòlaidh; The lovers Luckiest Man In The World is taigh-spadaidh settled on the water, Jared Carnie charibou feòla. then lounged back to shore. The concrete walkway Rain on the window Càrn nan daoine: slid open beneath them. Leonard Cohen on the speakers Inupiat is Inuit, They fell, Her asleep on the pillow next to me Crìoch-àit’ tro ùine crashing limbs about in soil, Yupik is Kalaallit. drowned in the practicality of earth. Sheas innunguaq “an coltas duine” cho cruaidh ri creag san fhuachd ghuineach ...

(Fiosrachadh: Peter Irnik, Gnìomhaiche Cultarail nan Inuit)

18 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 REVIEWS

The Stillman satisfies, and bodes very well indeed for Mr become symbols for enduring love (‘who dark, the going off/ of milk or love; our tides by Tom McCulloch McCulloch’s future fiction. n softly climbed the aching stair/of shore claimed back: …’ Sandstone Press There is a temptation amongst critics Review by Alison Napier to conflate ‘solitude’ with ‘isolation’ when considering the work of island poets – which, Many books have made me shiver over by proxy, breeds misconceptions of islands and the years, some with terror at a shocking island-life. There is certainly an odd, romantic denouement, others with delight at an ideal in circulation which sees islands as the unexpected thrill, and a few because I was Ultima Thule; impossibly liminal spaces ripe sitting in a draught. This book made me for discovery, where true escape is possible. shiver with cold, for no one does the Full But to attach the word ‘isolated’ to the Scottish Winter better than Tom McCulloch. entirety of this collection, as some sort of Jim Drever is the Stillman, the distillery inevitable result from the poet’s home and worker who looks after the nine copper-pot upbringing, is to banish Campbell’s work stills and creates the perfect whisky in his to dealing only with so-called peripheries, ‘meditation of machinery’. A middle-aged denying it (and islands) the possibility to be man marooned in the Highlands who drinks their own centre. It is interesting to note, and smokes too much, he is bored with his then, how it is only when the poet writes life and his wife and baffled and alarmed outside an island-context that we witness by his children. His son is at the complex, any hint of isolation, such as in ‘Le Penseur’, morose-teen and constantly iPoded stage where a language barrier sees the poet at his and the other is a soon-to-be-married-to- most alone, or even ‘An Introduction To The a-dork, fashion-conscious, more than a little Gods of Scotland’, where it is the cities of ditsy, daughter. Jim is a Scottish male in a Scotland that are presented as legendary gods, masculinity crisis. distant and strange. Moontide is a honed and Relations, both industrial and personal, are poised debut, filled with islands and the scope also chilly with his workmates. A strike looms of the sea; but you will find nothing remote amidst flurries of ballot-papers and unsubtle or insular about them in these pages. n canvassing, and our still man remains a man apart, his mind elsewhere, his life increasingly Bones & Breath enmeshed in lies and deceits as he plods By Alexander Hutchison through drifts and watches his breath freeze Salt Publishing in the bitter still night. Review by Sally Evans And suddenly we are in Cuba! Ridiculous temperatures, useless air-conditioning, The first thing I want to be told in a review multiple Mojitos, rusty Ladas and 1950s (if I don’t already know it) is what kind of Pontiacs, crumbling grandeur, seedy bars poetry this is. Alexander Hutchison’s work and reggae, lush vegetation and bottles of however is different from any type. He has Havana Club. Tom McCulloch does stifling pulled virtues from many international shimmering Cuban heat as well as he does sources, including Auden, for verbalism and the Scottish chill. The descriptions of this dry wit, the outdoor poets of the Americas beautiful country forced into self-reliance and for narrative adventurousness, and Kleinzahler literal self-preservation sing like the Buena perhaps for American rhythms. The language Vista Social Club, full of old men with their doesn’t at first strike one as particularly cigars, memories and dreams, and the young Scottish, apart from 5 poems in Scots which racing ahead on their mopeds, bouncing along mainly relish their own robust and sometimes pot-holed highways, open shirts flapping, obscure vocabulary. The idiom and style of eyes screwed up against the sun with the past Hutchison’s English is Anglo-American, but forgotten. the interest, content and drive of the poems The Stillman is a highly accomplished being both masculine and economical, they novel of intense contrasts; heat and ice, the do undoubtedly suggest a Scottish mind at monochrome, snowbound roads untreated by Moontide together,’), the drowned climb ashore to seek work. Bear and dusty technicolour Caribbean dirt By Niall Campbell shelter in nearby dwellings (‘drying out their Hutchison’s book lives in the space tracks, the living and the dead. The heart of Published by Bloodaxe lungs, that hang in their chests’), and even between free verse and metrical, and is full Jim the Still Man is a barometer tapped by Review by Roseanne Watt across the Minch, Scotland’s cities become of phrases looked at again, set in a new light, circumstances to register change, turning to their own gods. from the first words of the first poem ice, warming, melting and breaking. I first chanced on the work of Hebridean Campbell’s poetry does not shirk away from For can we ever truly forgive the dead poet Niall Campbell a few years ago, tradition, either, and openly wears its influences Well, here we are again for abandoning us, and is it possible to live thumbing through the pages of The Salt Book from the likes of Heaney, Burnside and Jamie. to the end of the book a decent life if we cannot forgive? ‘How do of Younger Poets. In an anthology with a fair Campbell displays a deep understanding of What’s yours wont go by you. the pieces of a life fit together?’ Jim asks at few meandering poems, I was immediately the poetic interconnection of nature and the end of the book and of course there is struck by the discipline of Campbell’s work. myth, as well as a deft mastery of turning a The majority of the poems are short- not an answer. A rare, lyrical craftsmanship easily made him phrase, making this collection a pleasure to lined and spare, though there are occasional Yet despite the winter and the drinking and my favourite poet in the book (a preference re-read. This acknowledgment of his poetic wide-lined poems which have something the stunned inertia and the marital sniping, compounded, perhaps, by the island themes of forerunners, as well as Campbell’s concision, of the character of prose poems. It’s always and even allowing that this is also a skilled his verse) – as such, I have eagerly anticipated gives only further substance to a collection the language rather than any narrative that study of loss, of shame, of history repeating his debut collection, Moontide. whose main thematic preoccupation is with counts. Not as spare as it looks, it is a poetry itself and intergenerational strife, the novel The poems of Moontide are of a quiet kind the passing of time and its influence on the of spells, repetitions and complex patterns, shimmers with humour that is dry as a Havana of confidence; never overbearing nor prone human endeavour, often realised in fleeting which switches smoothly from narrative to martini and darker than an Islay malt to easy-conclusions. Campbell’s island-roots – yet crucial – lyrical moments, such as in incantatory, with the often extrovert subject OK. Spoiler alert! Finally, out of the lend a certain mystical timbre to his verse, ‘Window, Honley’: ‘The village bell’s been matter not of primary importance. The stories ice-white bitingly cold blue we meet…no, with poems that frequently murmur on the broken for a month,/sounding a flat, wrecked of a mountain expedition (‘Camp Four’) and can’t do it. Buy it and read it for yourself. It cusp of reality and myth, and where the chime to the main hour;/ … so I’ll ask what a partial conversation with W.S. (Sydney) is beautifully and sensitively written with a presence of the sea – especially at night – time matters anyway: just light, less light and Graham (‘Setting the Time Aside’) are not convincing and clever ending that startles and particularly resonates: here, beached whales given directly but in the concomitant detail, rr

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 19 REVIEWS r the slipstream. Tell it slant, Emily Dickinson’s Cracknell’s goals vary. There is an homage or commoners) acquire an equally special and the sneer of Mrs Saunders at Woodstock famous line and the name of Glasgow’s to a Norwegian war hero, and a daughter’s significance. The principal subject of Robert House, a children’s home in Edinburgh. new poetry bookshop, could be a slogan for quest for the lost father to whom the book is McLellan’s drama was the Scottish people and Framing this story-strand is a contemporary Hutchison’s work. dedicated; there’s a familiar walk home among their history, their lives and their language. narrative which places us in a care home with A belief in the importance of poetry The Birks of Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, and a History, like theatre, is a mere construction Maggie, who now suffers from dementia and comes over strongly in this book. The slow descent to the Northumbrian coast with but the achievement of McLellan as a dramatic is visited by her son, Tom. This is where – for purpose of these poems is not description or a new companion. And there is solidarity writer of the first rank lies in his ability to me – the novel becomes less convincing. In entertainment, it is to pick up on rhythms and among women, and liberation from footwear, infuse his plays with memorable characters part, this is because Tom never comes into sounds and repetitions to find a music in the in Kenya. Each ‘necessary adventure’ becomes who, whilst they are free in the space of the full-focus as a character but, much more language. ‘a story retraced and given words out of stage, are trapped in their historical time but so, it is because the stories of both Maggie The two paranarrative poems mentioned silence.’ are liberated from it by the skilfully gestic use and Tom are given in second-person. It’s above comprise two of the five sections of All of which suggests much contemplation of the muscular beauty of the Scots language. a delicate technique and using it for two the book. The last section is Tardigrade, a and poetry. In Doubling Back Cracknell is Robert McLellan’s dialogue is a stage poetry different characters is an issue, as it leaves scientific conceit which has nevertheless at her most contemplative yet in print, and of rare effectiveness. In the tradition of Lorca you slightly disorientated every time you are proper narrative and is, intentionally, the she could not write an unpoetic sentence and Brecht he was a poet who was drawn to addressed because it takes you a moment to major poem in the book. Of the remaining if she tried. On her way from Melrose to the theatre because of the visual and physical place exactly where you are meant to be and short poems, I like best ‘Tod’, another at first Lindisfarne, ‘flashes of sun scratched bright acoustic the stage could bring to his work. In whose shoes you are supposed to be filling. simple narrative of an urban fox, sneaking the wide ribbon of the Tweed…’, and each of fact, in plays such as The Flouers o Edinburgh The majority of the narrative, set in the predictably down the stairs of the Mound her settings-out, whether in Switzerland or and Young Auchinleck, language and the 50s, is written in close, third-person, though, in Edinburgh, but then taking the observer Spain or here in Scotland, is ‘the realisation political power and status associated with its and it is not only well-handled but evokes a on an unexpected and faintly surreal visit to of an obsessive curiosity’ which seems ‘to use, supplies the narrative with its energy and great deal of sympathy for the matter-of-fact the National Galleries in the city centre. This have chosen me, rather as stories choose drive. Maggie, whose slightly curt manner is easy to poem ends to be written’. She calls, for contemplative Yet as a playwright McLellan’s other warm to if only because she is recognisable as company, on Jessie Kesson and John Bunyan, primary concern was for his audience which an authentic Scotswoman – brusque but not Tod takes a turn or two closer, on Thomas the Rhymer and Rabbie Burns, was a much more popular and populous brash – forced into a difficult decision and on elderly relatives and family friends, and audience than the theatre enjoys today. He then struggling to regain a degree of control edging in, you can sense it, her totem, she searches out, in the ground beneath her made his characters accessible to his audience in the face of a set of traditions – religious soon to be gone again, scarcely there, feet, some of those who have trodden these through the language they used. He employed and secular – that allow little leniency. paths before – drovers and saints and other language to undermine the assumptions of the Butlin’s short, sharp writing style echoes this in the faintest smirr of Egyptian blue, ‘adventurers’ – with a nod, on home ground, powerful and to empower the disenfranchised. pragmatism perfectly and there is something a shadow on the polished parquet floor, to ‘the fit-looking couple in their early McLellan understood, as Brecht has made reminiscent of Jon McGregor’s So Many seventies who pound up and plummet down plain, that ‘in poetry morality resides not in Ways to Begin not only in the back-and-forth completing another low turn, claws, brush, daily. We always exchange greetings and grins indignation, but in truthfulness.’ structure of the narrative and the examination tucked in, falls soft and sound asleep. of recognition even though I don’t know As fellow playwright and poet Donald of a mother-son bond, but also in the precise their names.’ Campbell puts it in his vivid and vigorous and tightly-woven prose. This is where the poetry sings most, and in In Doubling Back, Linda Cracknell asserts ‘Appreciation’ (which acts an introduction Butlin characterises in a phrase or two, ‘Tardigrade’: ‘Milky green clouds of hydrogen that each of us walks ‘in our own small to the book), of seeing Duncan Macrae play rarely more, as with Maggie’s love-interest, sulphide/off the coast of Namibia kill fish allegory’. The same walk, repeated, like the the title role in Jamie The Saxt at the Royal Michael, who she first encounters in those aplenty,/but the birds rejoice that feed off same story re-told, is never actually the same. Lyceum in 1956: ‘Entertaining as it was, Jamie early Stornoway passages: “She kept expecting their/ carcasses. Look further out, and deeper The hills do indeed tremble with promise. n The Saxt gave us something more than mere him to blink to clear his vision, but he never in. n entertainment –it gave us liberation.’ did”. His blindness comes to define him as Robert McLellan: Playing Scotland’s The theatre – whatever else it is - is a a character. For the most part, this sparse Doubling Back Story community of intention as well as of people. approach is a positive – it keeps us clipping By Linda Cracknell Collected Dramatic Works. Until Scottish theatre follows the lead given along at quite a pace – but it does mean that Freight Books Luath Press to it by recent groundbreaking dramatists some of the fringe characters can feel a little Review by Stephen Keeler Review by George Gunn such as Byatt, McGrath and Campbell himself, on the flat side. instead of increasingly adopting the gate- Elsewhere, Butlin has spoken about the There is an inconspicuous sentence in As Scottish theatre continues to suffer from keeping, cultural managerialism as instigated book being inspired by a real-life story and it Following Our Fathers (an earlier, slim volume shallow vein dramaturgical thrombosis this by James Bridie, as is the case now, then the is apparent that the main focus is Maggie and of two essays which have been included volume of Robert McLellan’s plays acts as an plays of Robert McLellan will be denied the struggles that she undergoes as a character in Doubling Back) which seems to suggest exercised palliative to the cultureless narcissism their rightful oxygen of performance and the in post-war Edinburgh. It is very readable something of Linda Cracknell’s deep-rooted of what appears on most contemporary people will continue to be culturally mis- for that and, indeed, feels well-judged in motivations: ‘The hills tremble with promise.’ Scottish stages. The fact that only two of served. This welcome book – one of the most that the reader is asked to side with Maggie Inconspicuous perhaps, but each time I have these important plays, which are included important to be published in Scotland since rather than to pity her. The fracturing of the read it my attention has snagged on it like a here, have been produced professionally this the year 2000 – goes a good way in putting mother-son relationship, both in the 50s and burr snags on tweed for it is characteristic of century – and one of these in London – the work of Robert McLellan back into the in the contemporary narrative, is observed the rhythmic serenity of Cracknell’s writing graphically highlights the tension McLellan’s public imagination where it belongs. n beautifully and the sentiment carefully which induces in the reader a concomitant work has generated in Scottish theatre and controlled and enhanced by the double calm – the heart-rate slows, the breathing the importance of this timely book, edited by Ghost Moon timeframe, carrying us through to a gentle, settles… “the burn cackles, calling walkers Colin Donati, which at last makes available to By Ron Butlin understated conclusion that underlines the to follow it upstream. And, as usual, I submit the general reader the dramatic achievement Salt Publishing lyrical quality of Butlin’s writing. n to the deep embrace of the wooded gorge”, of this major – although scandalously Review by Liam Murray Bell and although she doesn’t spell it out – this neglected – Scottish writer. The Touch of Time is nothing so crude as a walker’s manifesto His thirty four year creative span from Butlin’s fourth novel, Ghost Moon, is set By Stewart Conn – there is always the suggestion of a ‘why- Jeddart Justice in 1933 to The Hypocrite in 1967, mostly in post-war Edinburgh and there’s Bloodaxe Books I-walk’ subtitle, to ‘explore how the act of encompassing nine full length plays, four a pleasing note of Muriel Spark in the way Review by Stuart B. Campbell walking and the landscapes we move through one act plays, three verse plays as well as the that the main character, Maggie, searches can shape who we are and how we understand Linmill stories (reissued in a separate Luath for a change in attitude – a modernisation I’m going to have to make a confession: I the world’. volume in 2007) and the occasional poems of rigid social structures – that would allow once had a pleasant conversation about poetry The book’s actual subtitle, ‘ten paths trodden along the way, represents a dramatic vision her to break free of conservative traditions. with a nice sales assistant in a local bookshop in memory’, also suggests motivations. Here which captures epochs as units of lived time As an unwed, expectant mother, she journeys when I realised that she thought I was Stewart are simple journeys with ultimate goals, walks where the various levels of the superstructure from Edinburgh to the Isle of Lewis and back Conn. To save her any embarrassment (and to which are ‘a means of renewing lost parts of have a special relationship to one another (the again, but finds only the closed cottage door not appear a total sucker for a compliment), ourselves’ often by retracing one’s own steps comedies, the tragedies, the history plays) and of family friends, the Callanders, in Stornoway I didn’t let on. Any time after when she’d or those of significant others. Ostensibly, where the central characters (either Kings ask, “Are you still writing your poems?”, I’d

20 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 REVIEWS just say, “Oh, I’m still working away.” I was cleverness, here was poetry that could work ‘sun shining on the sprouting wheat’; ‘a flock MacIlleBhàin’s poetry is highly allusive, with sure I wasn’t misrepresenting Stewart Conn’s magic. It was poetry that was memorable, of cranes in a field of tatties’). And also there one eye on a Gaelic mythical background literary endeavours; The Touch of Time, his New honest and vivid. Conn’s poetry, to me, has are a few cheeky jokes (‘the school of hard and the other scanning the poetic horizon for & Selected Poems, backs up my assumption always seemed rooted in reality (including Knox’; ‘lost in the myths of time’). styles, influences, forms and themes without about his poetic output. the inventions of ‘Roull of Corstorphin’ and The narrative moves back and forth limitation or stricture. MacIlleBhàin draws Along with thirty-two new poems, this ‘The Luncheon of the Boating Party’), but through time from the middle ages to on a compendious knowledge of European volume contains work drawn from his ten gifting us a rejuvenating perspective on life. the present. Things one has heard of are and world literature to inform his work, both previous collections, from the last fifty years – The publisher’s blurb describes this book as elaborated on – eg the Hanseatic League, in terms of subject-matter and, especially, in a considerable and significant contribution to a ‘retrospective’. Sure, it contains work from seen by some as a forerunner of the single form. Niall O’Gallagher contributes an essay, our culture. The collection is presented in ten the past, but, even if some later poems are European Market. By the 16th and 17th which is regrettably brief but characteristically sections. Although the acknowledgements concerned with the passing of the years, it centuries Holland and Sweden became more insightful. state that the poems ‘tend to be grouped seems to me that the poetry looks forwards dominant and the League ‘faded away into There is something prophetic about the thematically rather than observing strict and out. The new work collected here does shadows’. The journey continues into Poland title of Niall O’Gallagher’s first collection, chronology’, it does seem to follow the time- show Stewart Conn really has been ‘working and the old city of Gdansk reduced to rubble Beatha Ùr (‘New Life’). Just as MacIlleBhàin’s line of Conn’s collections. Section VIII is from away’ crafting poems that are strong and by RAF bombs and Soviet shells in 1945. Part work has been at the forefront of innovation his 2005 Ghosts at Cockcrow, section IX from enhancing. n of Gdansk is known as ‘old Scotland’ because and experimentation over the past quarter of The Breakfast Room (2010) and X is the new of trading links in the 16th and 17th centuries, a century, so O’Gallagher is representative of a poems. Therein lies the source of consternation Europe, the Highlands and Me: Essays and later especially salt herring, many tons of current generation that is entirely comfortable for this reader. The first seven sections of and travels them every year. with the idea of Gaelic as a world literature, this ‘selected’ are virtually identical, with the By James Miller There are detailed chapters on Leipzig, relevant outside of its heartland communities insertion and deletion of a few poems, to all Available via Amazon Kindle Brussels, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Geneva and and able to engage in creative dialogue with seven sections of his previous ‘selected’ poems Review by Rhoda Michael others in between: Delft and its connection any tradition that catches their attention. Stolen Light. The acknowledgements (there with the Common Fisheries policy; That this current position is due to the isn’t an introduction) states that a ‘number It has been a special pleasure for me to have Luxembourg linked with the concept of impact and achievement of the renaissance of revisions and excisions have been made’. the opportunity of reviewing this most recent ‘capitals of culture’ – an idea proposed in generation is never in any doubt. What may So, ‘Vanities’, for instance, is not included of James Miller’s books, several of which will 1985 by Melina Mercouri. Glasgow benefited raise doubts is the extent to which some of but ‘Reading Matter’ is; only ‘Lothian Burn’ be already known to readers of Northwords from being the first Scottish city to have that these contemporary poets are fully rooted in from the Pentlands group makes the cut. The Now. His experience is wide-ranging: title. The Scottish Parliament made 2007 the the soil of the centuries-old Gaelic tradition. substitution of one poem for another, or for historian, storyteller, journalist and maker ‘Year of Highland Culture’ with millions Beatha Ùr contains 36 short poems, in some to be dropped altogether, is perhaps of connections. This is a detailed travelogue being spent on a major remodelling of Eden which O’Gallagher shows a preference for neither here nor there in the grand scheme enriched with history. As I read I reach, Court Theatre; and on Sabhal Mor Ostaig, shorter stanzas, especially of three lines. In of things, but the reason for doing so isn’t repeatedly, for my European atlas. the Gaelic college on Skye. some poems, there is little formal metrical apparent. The Touch of Time contains about Jim grew up in the Caithness Highlands There are chapters on the invention ornamentation, with the result that a few twenty more poems than Stolen Light, but it’s but now lives near Inverness. At one time he of printing and its connection with the pieces read rather like prose. Linguistically, difficult to not just assume the weeding out worked on the Inverness Courier (as, indeed, Reformation; chapters on political issues – O’Gallagher makes a good deal of use of of poems for the first seven sections was done did I in the mid-fifties; when Evan Barron such as de Gaulle’s reluctance to have the UK the past participle/passive conditional forms only to make space for the new poems and was still alive, and when his niece, Evelyn, was join the EEC. And much, much more. of the language, to the extent that this starts those from Conn’s last two collections; perhaps editor.) In the first short chapter of the book This is an entirely satisfying read which to become part of a recognisable ‘voice’. an opportunity to do something different has he describes what he calls ‘The European Me’. I have no hesitation in recommending as a This appears notably more than once in the been missed. To be fair, the publisher does He says, ‘I came to Europe late . . . the Cold bargain download, crammed with interest for phrase “nach briste”, which links to one of make it clear that the poems in sections I – War, the early years of the Common Market any Scot. n the underlying ideas in this book: that of VII “are extracted from Stolen Light”, but and the E E Community, les evenements of ‘breakability’. There are many discernible that doesn’t stop me feeling this collection is 1968, the tumbling of the Berlin Wall . . . Gaelic Reviews influences, some of which the poet points really just Stolen Light updated. If there have all happened unwitnessed by me . . .except to overtly, from English, Gaelic, Latin and been revisions to any of the individual poems through the eyes of the mass media.’ An Daolag Shìonach other literary sources. The collection is partly (short of doing a word for word comparison), Already, in this first page of the book, we by Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin comprised of a set of little poetic sequences it’s not evident. ‘Summer, Assynt’ no longer see how extensive his points of reference are. Clò Ghille Mhoire that are broken up throughout the book. has its subtitles, but I couldn’t see any obvious His focus is on those parts of the Netherlands, Beatha Ùr This is a most effective device: the collection reworking of the poems. Slight differences Belgium, France, Germany and Scandinavia by Niall O’Gallagher becomes as compelling as a short story cycle. between the two books occur, but only insofar he has ‘wandered through’; and he suggests CLÀR There are many love poems in Beatha Ùr, as some of the section breaks have moved: ‘At that his approach may be like that of the Deò and a bright, optimistic sense of love runs Coruisk’ is now in section II, whereas it was antiquarian, Captain Francis Grose, described by Marcas Mac an Tuairneir throughout much of the volume. previously in section III. By and large, the by Robert Burns as ‘a chiel amang you takin’ Grace Note Publications Another of the new poets is Marcas Mac poems appear in the same sequence in both notes’. Sùil air an t-Saoghal an Tuairneir. As a student, Mac an Tuairneir books. All of which begs the question: who He makes digressions, one of which was ed. by Niall O’Gallagher and Pàdraig was drawn to the freshness and energy he saw is this book aimed at? If you already have his father’s account of an experience he had in MacAoidh in Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin’s work, so it seems a copy of Stolen Light, £12.00 might seem WW1. His father described a running battle Clò Ostaig entirely fitting that he should have titled his a lot to pay for a book that is 70% of one involving German destroyers, of taking to a Reading the Gaelic Landscape: Leughadh own first collection Deò (‘breath’, ‘air’, ‘vital you already have; some readers might think rowing boat when their trawler was sunk by Aghaidh na Tìre spark’). Mac an Tuairneir was impressed by (justifiably) it’s good value for the new poems, German fire; and of arriving at a tiny fishing by John Murray MacIlleBhàin’s willingness to explore same- but that might be stretching it a bit, even for settlement on the island of Hevroy. Jim went Whittles Publishing sex love and relationships in his poetry, and an avid fan if he or she had the last two full on a long walk to try to find it, got a clear Reviews by Moray Watson these issues are very much at the forefront in collections. For anybody coming to Conn’s view of it across a mile of sea, but had no boat his own writing. But, in Deò, it is clear that poetry for the first time, this comprehensive to reach it. So he chose to let it remain for him Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin is a long-established a generational change has taken place since selection is probably indispensable. an island in his father’s story. Jim comments fixture in Gaelic literature, and his latest MacIlleBhàin’s early poetry. Mac an Tuairneir What of the actual poetry? Here I have that others of his father’s generation would volume, An Daolag Shìonach, confirms his is not writing about a subject he knows may to also give a personal response. Amongst also have stories to tell, thus building what he status as one of the senior figures of the post- shock his audience in the way MacIlleBhàin the psychopathic, alcoholic and shell-shocked calls a community’s oral history. renaissance generation. An Daolag Shìonach is might have been: he is simply writing his teachers I had in the early 70s, a gem of There are 24 chapters in this book, most a mixture of previously unpublished poems, experience of the world, and the result is an English teacher had the genius to give of them of 3-5 pages, but each page crammed along with a number of new ones written at once passionate yet composed, erotic and us Stewart Conn; specifically, ‘In a Simple with detail; so this review will summarise for the volume. Themes are understandably confident. Brief prose moments elucidate Light’. That poem opened the door, not severely. First a brief word about Jim’s writing varied with such a range of work from such some of Mac an Tuairneir’s background only to Conn’s poetry, but to what poetry style: it is vigorously constructed, nicely paced a span of time: notably, hope, courage, revival, thoughts on issues the poems explore, such as could do, how it could be. In a language that – the boy can write! It has passages that have and choice return throughout. The volume the redefining of contemporary ‘Gaelicness’, wasn’t fussy, or flowery and without showy a lyrical quality (‘spires like green arrows’; is arranged in four chronological parts. the way the Gaelic community engages with rr

Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 21 REVIEWS r homosexuality, and how the poet feels about people’s enjoyment of the environment itself. life for poor people are drowned out by the landscape and nature evocation and gradually Aberdeen. I must confess I kept wondering whether trivial doings of the rich and powerful. ‘Only takes us more and more intimately inside a It would be an unforgivable oversight the book’s sections on grammar would three lines for Mrs. Simpson’, a critique of family. Children’s lives, tragic loss and parental not to mention the beauty of the book as really hold the attention of readers who are media coverage of a death of a woman from elegy emerge in poems that range from formal a physical artefact. Grace Note Publications ordinarily reticent about learning these things. hyperthermia, is just as pertinent now as it sonnets to wandering free verse. There are have excelled themselves with the artistry that But Murray may be assumed to know his must have been then, and only some of the lighter notes too, such as the punctuation of has been invested in the design of the book. audience better than I do. He handles these names have changed. the volume with a sequence of cheeky ‘How From the cover, through the choice of fonts, grammar lessons well, showing deftness with to write poetry’ poems. My favourite: to internal pictures, the entire book has been explaining the intricacies of the genitive and Jim Callaghan is battered by the unions. produced as a luxury item to be savoured definite articles. My main concern with the It’s reported that the Queen has got a cold. A handful of words, and enjoyed visually. Mac an Tuairneir was book rests in the use of laymen’s phonetics Sex scandals are the rage, And seventeen syllables. mentored by the established writer Màrtainn to try to convey pronunciation. The difficulty take up all of the front page. Now you’re nearly there. Mac an t-Saoir. Mac an t-Saoir contributes with trying to describe pronunciation in the But only three lines for Mrs. Simpson. a foreword to the book, in which he states absence of audio backup lies in the dilemma J L Williams’ poems are steeped in that “This is exactly what the current Gaelic that most readers in the British Isles are not This is a collection full of voices you’ll rich language, lush imagery, sumptuous literary world needs”: who can argue with IPA-literate, but we have such a spectrum recognise, but won’t read in books from the description; sometimes disarmingly simple, in that? of accents that it is almost impossible to be mainstream poetry publishing houses. places obtuse, most often beautiful. She does In recent years, there has been a drive to able to rely on transferring somebody’s sense As well as reprinting McGrath, Tapsalterie stones brilliantly. And love. Here is the whole produce more academic literature in Gaelic of an English pronunciation onto another has produced a new collection from Calum of one poem, Nor Loch, to give a flavour. and help to create a more ‘normal’ relationship language. I found that, in many cases, when Rodger, Know Yr Stuff. It begins with a paean between text, audience, critic and author I tried to read Murray’s phonetic renderings, to the writer’s Social Ed teacher who gave him Lilac past its best, wet air (where the conversations were previously I ended up with a pronunciation that was a copy of Drugs: Know Your Stuff, which set sticky with a sick perfume. held mainly in English and thus estranged markedly distant from how I would expect him on a path of pharmaceutical exploration, from the literature itself). Niall O’Gallagher the Gaelic words to sound. This is not so presumably quite the opposite of what was Wind in sodden trees, green and Pàdraig MacAoidh have added to this much a weakness with this particular book as intended by either the book or the teacher. grass that white moths drown in. effort with their useful and timely collection it is a general problem we could benefit from This hedonistic note is pursued throughout of essays, Sùil air an t-Saoghal. The volume addressing in this country: indeed, Murray’s the whole volume, the titles of pieces The fountain flooded. contains nine essays, some of them by creative book goes some way towards addressing the ‘pleasure’, ‘sexual positions with imaginary The rubbed-out castle writers and some by critics. fact that the importance of linguistic training girlfriends’, and ‘because I am drunk’ give aching above the graveyard, its bones soaking The editors point out that Gaelic literature should not be underestimated. Like Deò, albeit a good idea of the central obsessions of the in the eidolon of water. never existed in isolation: that, like other in completely different ways, this is a beautiful author. literatures, it has constantly been in contact book, full of illustrations and including some A central obsession is no bad thing Another Shearsman volume, The Body in with other parts of the world, its writers stunning photography of the landscape. The in a poetry book, and Olivia McMahon Space by Gerrie Fellows, presents Scotland learning and adapting the ideas of their peers author is very much to be congratulated on demonstrates this perfectly in what are you through the eyes of a poet who, from New from elsewhere. They describe it as being the insight and commitment to bring this looking at me for? The book is entirely devoted Zealand, can still look at the country with the rather like the old Gaelic system of fosterage, book to fruition. I suspect that he hopes other to poems written in response to works eyes of a foreigner, yet also with the friendly which created, and constantly re-creates, the outdoors enthusiasts will, like himself, come of art from the Aberdeen Art Gallery and intimacy of a long-time resident. This five part process we come to call ‘the tradition’. And to be inspired to learn more about Gaelic Museums Collection, all but one of which are collection covers a vast amount of ground, so we read with interest about how literature once they start viewing the landscape armed reproduced. Every art gallery should have a geological time, mourning and joy. All of life from around the world has enriched and with the knowledge gained from his book: he poetry book like this. The poems talk directly seems to be here, carefully and painstakingly enhanced the poetry of Aonghas Pàdraig could very well be right. n to the paintings, highlighting things I would articulated by a poet who does not shy from Caimbeul and Maoilios Caimbeul. Fearghas not have noticed, such as what the Faithless life’s hard moments yet is also trying MacFhionnlaigh discusses how languages Poetry Reviews Shepherd is wearing as he runs away from each tell their own story about the world Tom McGrath, Sardines, Tapsalterie wolves attacking his flock: to construct and no two languages describe it in quite the Calum Rodger, Know Yr Stuff, Tapsalterie a language of happiness same way. He laments the fact that, when he Gerrie Fellows, The Body in Space, … The red stockings judge him, started with Gaelic in 1965, there was very Shearsman Books jar in that gentle ochre landscape, oblique small sidelong little access to books or literature of any kind. J L Williams, Locust and Marlin, proclaim the shame of those legs in flight. it also makes He laments, too, how reluctant we have been Shearsman Books these sudden, darting, crested shapes…’ to translate the great literature into Gaelic, Olivia McMahon, What are you looking at me There’s humour here too. ‘Study after pointing out that it is not good enough to for? Malfranteaux Concepts Pope Innocent X by Velazquez’ is written This is from a poem ostensibly about accept that it is available in English. I have an Yvonne Marjot, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, in the outraged voice of the Pope himself, waxwings, but which gestures, in the way essay in the book myself, in which I discuss Indigo Dreams Publishing horrified by how Francis Bacon has John Burnside does and as many of these Gaelic fiction’s relationship with the world Reviews By Mandy Haggith represented him and belatedly preferring poems do beautifully, to deeper themes. n outside of the Gàidhealtachd. Highlights the earlier painting by Velazquez, with its among the contributions from academics Tom McGrath’s Sardines, first published in ‘tumble of white lace that Diego painted so include Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain’s discussion 1986, has just been reprinted by fledgling lovingly… This is a fake. This is not me.’ The of Iain Moireach in the context of Albert Aberdeenshire publisher Tapsalterie, an title of the collection, what are you looking at Camus and Emma Dymock’s fine essay on inspired way for a new book producer to me for? comes from this poem, opening up the the work of Somhairle MacGill-Eain. break into the Scottish poetry scene. I think of question of what, as observers of art, we are The final book under review is a complete McGrath as a playwright, but this collection seeking, and cleverly revealing the layer upon departure from these literary works: John of writing reminds me, as Liz Lochhead does, layer of representation, from the subject’s Murray’s Reading the Gaelic Landscape: that there is no clear line between poetry own view of himself, through those of the Leughadh Aghaidh na Tìre. Murray wrote written for the stage and for the page. Does painters, and that of the poet, to our own. The the book out of a desire to help people re- it matter, if it makes you laugh and it makes collection concludes with a sequence inspired connect with, and communicate about, the you think? by a set of plates arranged around a table, a landscape around them. Murray’s aim is to There is great satire in Sardines. The piece by Ian Hamilton Finlay representing give people a rich store of relevant Gaelic TV food programme script explaining the women involved in the French Revolution. vocabulary, the spelling to be able to write delicacies of ‘Eossaise Haute Cuisine’ (Ken Historical research and a great deal of wit are the names correctly, and the pronunciation Noo Guide Tae Scottish Cookery) was clearly deftly woven into conversations between the to be able to talk about places confidently ahead of its time, and is a perfect lampoon of various characters. Throughout the book, the with native Gaelic speakers. The author’s celebrity chefs going back to basics, exploring language of the poems is straight-forward, but enthusiasm for the language comes through all the intricacies (and condiniements) of a the insight they offer into the art works is clearly, and he makes a strong case for his Glaswegian fish supper. Like Tom Leonard, laser-sharp. belief that a knowledge of the meaning and McGrath is alert to the British media’s biases Yvonne Marjot’s Knitted Curiosity Cabinet pronunciation of the place-names can enhance and snobbery, and the way tragic realities of is a gathering of poems that begins with www.facebook.com/groups/northwordsnow/

22 Northwords Now Issue 27, Summer 2014 CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

James Andrew has had two poetry books published, Stand, New Welsh Review, Poetry Scotland, New Writing Ingrid Leonard comes from Orkney, which inspires Pauline Prior-Pitt lives on North Uist. She has one of which won a Scottish Arts Council award. He Scotland, Envoi. much of her poetry. Her poem ‘Early March, Safety published six books of poems. Her hand stitched is currently writing a novel. He lives in Nairn. Matches’ was recently commended by the Federation pamphlet, North Uist Sea Poems won the 2006 Angus Dunn lives in the hills of Morayshire where of Writers (Scotland). Callum Macdonald Award. Karen Bek-Pedersen has a past as an honorary he works with words and wood. His most recent Scot. She now lives in Denmark where she does novel is Writing in the Sand, published by Luath. Marcas Mac an Tuairneir À York. Cruinneachadh Julian Ronay A’ fuireach anns an Aghaidh Mhòir. rowing, teaches Old Norse and works as a translator. leis Deò. Chaidh dàin leis a thaghadh airson duanaire an Sally Evans’ most recent collection is Poetic 20mh linn, An Tuil. Liam Murray Bell is the author of two novels: The Adventures in Scotland with Seventy Selected Poems. She Aonghas MacNeacail poet and songwriter, Busker and So It Is. He lectures in Creative Writing at edits Poetry Scotland. was born in Uig, on the Isle of Skye. He is also Kathrine Sowerby received a 2012/13 New the University of Stirling. a broadcaster, journalist, scriptwriter, librettist Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust. Dàibhidh Eyre À Drochaid a’ Chòta. Dàin leis ann and translator. A native Gael, he writes in Gaelic She co-edits fourfold, a curated poetry journal. Simon Berry recently published a critical an An Guth, Irish Pages, Poetry Scotland agus an leithid. and English. His collections of poetry have been kathrinesowerby.com biography of the poet Alexander Smith Applauding published in both languages, and his writing has Thunder (FTRR Press, 2013). He writes erotic John Glenday lives in Drumnadrochit. His most appeared in literary journals all over the world. Eoghan Stewart is a Gaelic Teacher, part- fiction under a pseudonym. He lived in Glasgow and recent collection, Grain, was shortlisted for both the time broadcaster and full time shinty obsessive. Cyprus before settling in the Scottish Highlands. Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Yvonne Marjot lives on the Isle of Mull. Her first Influences are the Waterboys, Neil Gunn, and family volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, was background from Lewis, Skye, Bathgate and Trinidad. Tanera Bryden is a freelance arts PR consultant George Gunn is a poet and playwright. His most published in April 2014. and writer. She recently moved back to the recent collection of poems, A Northerly Land, was Shane Strachan is currently working on a short Highlands from London where she worked for published in 2013. Mary McDougall lives and writes in Highland story collection related to life in the Northeast national fundraising charity, the Art Fund. Perthshire and spends time in Lewis. Much of her fishing communities. He also writes for the stage. Mandy Haggith lives in Assynt and writes in a shed writing reflects her love of these places and people. Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul À Uibhist a Deas. with a tree-top view. Her latest novel is Bear Witness, Iain Urchardan Às na Hearadh, na mhinistear aig Chaidh urram leabhar bàrdachd na bliadhna ann published by Saraband . Mandy can be contacted at Hugh McMillan is an award winning poet. He Eaglais na h-Alba. Chaidh Duais Sgrìobhadairean ùra an Alba a bhuileachadh air a’ chruinneachadh mu [email protected] is currently writing a book on contemporary tales Urras Leabhraichean na h-Alba a bhuileachadh air o dheireadh leis, Aibisidh. of Dumfries and Galloway, commissioned by the chionn ghoirid. Audrey Henderson is a 2014 Hawthornden Fellow. Wigtown Book Festival. Stuart B Campbell Poetry recently commissioned Her manuscript Airstream will be published this Moray Watson is a lecturer in Gaelic Studies to provide the continuity narrative for the multi November by Homebound Publications. Rhoda Michael began writing after she retired. She within the School of Language and Literature at the award-winning film Distilled (Hotaches Productions was editor of Northwords Now up to 2010. University of Aberdeen. http://hotaches.com/) – a documentary about the Vicki Husband lives and works in Glasgow and is a climbing career of Andy Cave. member of St. Mungo’s Mirrorball – a great network Deborah Moffatt lives in Fife. Her poems have Roseanne Watt is from Shetland. She graduated of poets. She blogs at: been widely published in the UK and Ireland. She from the University of Stirling with a BA (Hons) Jared A. Carnie is a writer in his twenties currently http://vickihusband.wordpress.com: won the 2012 Baker Prize for English poetry. in English and Film Studies. She has since returned enjoying the freedom of the Outer Hebrides. to complete the university’s MLitt programme in Stephen Keeler is a teacher and writer. He lives in Alison Napier lives in Perthshire. She has an MA in Creative Writing. PDerek Crook moved to Mull thirty years ago the north-west Highlands where he reads, writes and Creative Writing, her fiction has appeared in various and the island caused him to resume writing. He teaches creative writing workshops and courses. He is journals and anthologies and her first novel, Take- Colin Will is an Edinburgh-born poet with a is currently experimenting with traditional strict currently working on a first collection of poems. Away People, is currently seeking a publisher. background in botany and geology. Seven collections forms and following Dylan Thomas’s dictum “Cut published, the latest being The Propriety of Weeding, everything to the bone”. Coinneach Lindsay Dàin leis ann an Sandstone Lydia Popowich is a writer and artist living in from Red Squirrel Press (2012). A collection of Review etc. Na Fhilidh air Mhuinntearas aig Sabhal Caithness. She has had work published in Obsessed haibun, The Book of Ways, is due from Red Squirrel Irene Cunningham lives beside Loch Lomond, Mòr Ostaig an-dràsta With Pipework, Dream Catcher, The Dalesman and local in October. He chairs the Board of StAnza. published in London Review of Books (as Maggie York), anthologies. Where to find a FREE Northwords Now Northwords thanks all the locations below for their support in distributing Northwords Now. Special thanks go to all the librarians who put us on display.

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