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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 A is 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 www.facebook.com/groups/northwordsnow/ 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