Issue 39, Spring–Summer 2020
n these times of pandemic, the Northwords Board has decided to delay 3 Jennifer Morag Henderson on women to the fore in Highland crime writing main publication of the current issue in I 4 Poems by Robin Fulton Macpherson and Iain Twiddy print until we can be confdent of a modest level of distribution. At present, all our regular 5 Afore the Mast – Story by Suzy A. Kelly, Rising – Story by Amanda Gilmour outlets are closed. However (at the risk of stating the obvious 6 Zen and the Art of Catching Birds – essay by Chris Arthur, to all of you now reading this on a screen), a Taklamakan – Prologue by Ian Tallach full version of this issue (No. 39) is now online. 8 Horse Loch – Marion McReady in the waters of Loch Eck This includes a .pdf of the whole publication, and – as begun last year – archiving of each 9 Poems by Lynn Valentine and Karen Hodgson Pryce work under writer name. 10 Spuds – Story by Hamish Brown There’s exciting content within these virtual pages. This includes new work from 11 Poems by Grahaeme Barrasford Young, Petra Vergunst, Gillian Dawson internationally renowned poet and translator, 12 Back fae da Edge – poem sequence by James Sinclair Robin Fulton Macpherson, an in-depth interview with Kapka Kassabova, and a major 16 Setting On – Story by Craig Aitchison new poem sequence in Shetlandic by James 17 Scrying – Story by Nicola Madill Sinclair. As you’ll have come to expect if you’re a regular reader of Northwords Now, 18 Poems by Lydia Harris, Lydia Popowich, Ingrid Leonard, Gail Low there’s also a wealth of other new prose, 20 Places in Mind: Kapka Kassabova talks to Nick Major poetry and non-fction. The principal contribution we can make, 22 Poems by Imogen Forster, James Andrew, Clair Tierney, Marka Rifat as global sands shift around us, is to give both 23 A Whole Lamb and a Cigar – Story by Rachel Carmichael readers and writers a boost. We hope to do Pup – Story by Carey Coombs this by continuing to cultivate and expand our online presence as resources permit. To 24 Kelly and the Whale – Story by Heather Beaton begin, this is our largest issue yet, with 40 25 Poems by Nikki Robson, Julian Colton pages, rather than the previous 32, plus the annual ‘Tuath’ supplement of new Gaelic 26 Poems by Sharon Black, Amelia Graham writing. Over the next few months, we’ll also 27 Poems by Derek Crook, Robin Munro, Paula Jennings be exploring ways, including with advice from our funders – Creative Scotland and Bòrd na 28 Scotland in Space – Paul Cockburn on Scottish SciFi Gàidhlig – to further enhance our online 29 Haiku by Barry Graham, poems by Evelyn Pye, Edith Harper, Heather Beaton, Pip Osmond- presence in ways that will make Northwords Now even more enjoyable and useful to Williams, Graham Turner writers and readers across the north. 30 Belongings – Story by Mags Wallis Thanks for visiting us, and so being part of 31 Poems by Isabel Thompson and Peter Godfrey the unfolding Northwords Now project. 32 Shattered Dreams – Story by Hazel Urquhart Kenny Taylor, Editor Dust – Story by Gabrielle Barnby The Lamp – Story by Ricky Monahan Brown 33 Chartin his wye hame – Story by Isobel Rutland 34 Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1587 - poem sequence by Anne Pia 35 Reviews – including by Valerie Beattie, Ian Stephen and Cynthia Rogerson on fction, Kenny Taylor on non-fction and Ian Stephen on new poetry collections 39 Shoormal – conference report by Lesley Harrison 40 Contributors’ Biographies, the story of the cover art
n 9th January 2020, Tain- her descriptions. An audience member based author Helen Sedgwick asked if the authors at the event ever Olaunched her new book When felt squeamish when writing, but Helen The Dead Come Calling in Inverness with Sedgwick remarked that writing When a rather unusual event. Helen began by The Dead Come Calling – despite semi- reading a short extract from her crime supernatural birds pecking out people’s novel to celebrate its publication day, but eyes – was some of the most fun she had she then introduced four other writers ever had as a writer. Others were less she had invited to join her for a discussion sure, with Barbara Henderson pointing on ‘Highland crime writing’. out that in her feld, children’s fction, The fve authors represented the wide there were limits to the sort of violence variety and vibrancy of crime writing that could be shown. coming from the Highlands today, with Barbara’s children’s novella, Black Water, Helen herself presenting a book that is also historical, based on an incident in mixes crime fction with the supernatural, the life of Robert Burns, and specifcally S.G. MacLean showcasing historical written for schools doing projects in the crime fction, Margaret Kirk giving a lead-up to Burns Night. Burns appears sneak preview from the unpublished not primarily as a poet, but in his day manuscript of her third DI Lukas Mahler job as an exciseman, solving a smuggling novel, Barbara Henderson representing mystery alongside a child protagonist. the burgeoning ‘children’s crime’ scene, The genre of children’s adventure and and me, as biographer of ‘Golden Age’ mystery is not new of course, but it has Highland crime novelist, Josephine Tey, been a growing feld over the last few providing some historical context. years, with a new wave of children’s In Helen Sedgwick’s new book, DI crime fction led by Robin Stevens and Strachan, an incomer in a small village, her Murder Most Unladylike series set in a investigates the murder of a psychotherapist girls’ school and rifng of the Golden Age. against the simmering resentment of the Robin Stevens is a Tey fan, and it locals, and the undertows of the older, would be strange to talk about Highland haunted history of the land. Mixed-race crime without mentioning Josephine Georgie Strachan’s background in North Tey, the subject of my own biography. Carolina is lightly sketched-in, with the One of the original Golden Age crime personal focus on her marriage with up if she strayed too far away from reality the themes, and the importance of the novelists, Tey was and continues to be Scottish husband, Fergus, but Helen in the policework – but that she would mash-up of Celtic myths, further in the both critically-acclaimed and bestselling, talked about the constant background of then add extra supernatural details. following books. and her work has been hugely infuential, contemporary discussions around racism, Talking about her forthcoming book, Research seems to be a constant theme not only for Scottish writers such as Ian homophobia, misogyny and Brexit. Margaret Kirk revealed that it is to be for crime writers now: the trend towards Rankin and Val McDermid, but further Originally from London, Helen has set set between Orkney and Inverness: a increasing forensic detail means writers afeld to American Stephen King or her book in the north of England, but reminder that the Highlands and Islands have often done very specialised reading. Japanese mystery writer Akimitsu Takagi. said that the location was made up from are diverse.The northern landscape is often Everyone approached it diferently: Many of the themes that were discussed a patchwork of places, with the book used as a dramatic backdrop, particularly although Helen liked to make up a in the panel are things that Tey started full of the sort of racing, wind-swept, in classic Golden Age crime fction, for a composite setting, S.G. MacLean talked to talk about in the late 1920s. Tey was changeable skies we see on the beaches chase or hiding sequence – but nowadays about visiting the places where her books writing almost a hundred years ago, but around the Highlands. Margaret can also write about some very are set. As a historical writer, this often all the ingredients are already there: what The Highlands is a place, but there urban crimes in Inverness. meant a visit to a nice tea-shop at a castle the Highlands and Scotland are; who lives are also the people who live here: the While Margaret’s DI Mahler has his – but the imagination came in thinking here and what it means to come back here physical landscape interacts with the need fair share of family problems (including a herself back to the past. With a PhD in after going away; the way the people and to move away from small places to fnd sick mother), Helen said that she wanted 17th-century Scottish history, for S.G. the landscape interact; the way that times work, infuences the type of people who her DI Georgie Strachan to have a happy MacLean the time period and the place are changing. Tey was always very sharp then move in, the ideas of newcomers marriage and fewer personal problems came frst, and the crime element of the on the negative aspects of Scotland and and returnees – and a sense of belonging. than the average fctional detective. books second. S.G. MacLean currently has the Highlands – though she was quick These are abstract themes to discuss, but Georgie’s Scottish husband struggles two crime series, set in diferent locations, to disagree when others criticised her they also bring up practicalities, and the with moving to a small English village, with schoolmaster Alexander Seaton in home. A crucial part of Highland identity other writers on the panel immediately however, particularly as he can’t fnd the north-east, while Cromwell’s agent can be the need or desire to travel and started to draw out parallels with work there. There are some very modern Damian Seeker works mainly in London. live elsewhere, the tension between an their own work, and bring their own scenes from their marriage as Fergus S.G. MacLean said the move south was independent life and family ties, and the knowledge to the discussion: Margaret debates taking money out of their joint partly at the suggestion of her publisher, contrast between home and away. All of Kirk pointed out that setting a crime account, while Georgie worries that but that she always particularly enjoyed these provide a rich seam for stories. novel in the north of England instantly Fergus’ unemployment – and increasing writing about Banf, where she had The event was a confdent start to the made more research material available attraction to the mysterious standing lived. new decade for Highland crime writing, for a writer wanting to make the details stones – will stop the locals taking her S.G. Maclean’s latest novel The Bear showcasing the current strength of the of the legal system believable. There are seriously. The insider / outsider clash sets Pit features a gruesome scene with a writing scene in Inverness, with fve big diferences between the Scottish up some nice tensions for the policework hungry bear. Much of the action happens women writers coming together to discuss and English legal systems, and Margaret side of the story, but this is very much of-stage, but the visceral physical reality their myriad interests. Hopefully, some herself beneftted from discussions a story from the incomers’ perspective. of early modern life, not only the of our enthusiasm was conveyed to the with a friend in the police force. Helen Helen’s book is the frst in a planned violent crime but also as a time before audience. Our conversations continued explained that her editor would pick her trilogy, and there is scope to explore modern medicine, is conveyed through long after we left the stage…
A Day in my Life Apple-tree leaves Equate Iain Twiddy Early in the day He looks thinner than last time. I met myself in 1939. In his dense garden there are now spaces February day, a day like the way He stood in the driveway and his left hand soon wide enough for winter to move in. no one ever says February fully, was resting on a Cocker Spaniel´s head. a dusting of snow in the gravel garden He looked up but I couldn´t say for sure There are apples to reach for, so it’s hard to tell the snow from the stones, if he noticed me. to twist of, ripe bitter Discoveries. Each nudge sends down still green apple-tree leaves. and the heaters smacking heat at the head Later in the day in the empty-chaired living area, I arrived home and struggled with the door There’s plenty of space between them in the air, where the fre would be snapping if it was real; In a North Sea gale. The words I said were plenty between on the ground. and there’s no click by which she might recognise «White horses on the fjord. The door blew shut.» but the voice that spoke the words was father´s me; I may be just as much a mess of ice not mine. as a man she sculpted, I mean nourished, washed, Hawthorn taught to read and speak, and let exhausted sleep; she doesn’t know my name, doesn’t know she has sons, I pause in front of the hawthorn tree. Still Loch The hawthorn pauses in front of me. doesn’t know what the sun is, why it sheets Each of us seems to be on the way so widely in the late afternoon, as it slips, The midges and the sucking peat-holes, somewhere. doesn’t know it will slide up again to light the shrinking of the remote parked car - icily the shelves with the never-read books, did the water-colouring lady The last time I saw the hawthorn tree joke about sufering for her art? he looked more than old. I was seven. the bowl cerealed with marbles, as the earth He never got round to telling me rolls like the slowest ever polished marble The waves she painted haven´t moved since. his age. it wasn’t enough just to touch, you had to own; The Loch Arichlinie she painted and in turn, I don’t know, if dementia a life-time ago is dead nature. We seem to pause beside each other The waves she painted are still moving. as if one of us were still alive is a shrinking, a sour, why it should seem and one dead. We have so much to say like the wildest desertifcation, The paper oblong with dried colours but don´t the brain deciding to have its machine-gun has followed my life, living its own, shootout in the moony bunker of the skull; from wall to wall, decade to decade, say anything. We have time enough. a private passport checked only by me. The wind in his leaves and in my hair I’ve lifted that from a book I read once, seems unlikely to tell us to hurry as a kid, an accidental German pistol; ever. so I have no idea if it happens, if bullets keep on ricocheting forever, Kjell Espmark reaches ninety no idea how, fown in from far east Japan, His poems can see a long way of, North Train how we two can be in the same room – reading remote hills like small print, I who was once lodged cosmically in her womb, and a long way back, lïstening to Bogies no longer dismantled drinking her in – and still be nowhere near, words fresher than Genesis breathed are as new rolling quick and dead from lips centuries gone - as when over Drumochter, over Slochd. and yet so approaching her condition, twenty years from here, when I will know this we look south from Achavanich Pines by the Tummel, left behind inside-out, though every trace, every fbre, today, and four thousand years but not. Gorse by the Shin, also every atom of her will have perished; ago, hearing rufed hazels to be left behind but won´t be. just as Ava must have heard them almost as if the catty nib at the pad while catching sight of the distant Manse walls never tire of waiting. writing late on a hard February night pyramid outline of Morven. They were passed on decades ago. were at the same time shredding it into snow. The Raeburn is and it isn´t.
A bad dream will come and tell me how round that kitchen table I am the only one left alive.
A good dream will come and tell me how spruce, birch and hazel still fow past train windows.
y bones, my aching bones. boy did not fy up the chimney like they All the way home from the promised. Neither was our real boy, our Minn, I wanted to do nothing blood child, returned to us from some else but fall into my chair by the freside. lonely otherworld. By morning, the As I eased into my seat, I gave the wife a Story by Suzy A. Kelly mound of charred ‘fairy fesh’ had stopped cheeky wink as I watched her scowl out screaming at us from the iron grate. From from our wedding frame. I sank into the ✯ that day to this, I have felt cursed. headrest, determined to enjoy the last of Every time I take a dram, I dream my whisky glow, and took pleasure in the myself back afore the mast. I long to sail simplicity of warming my socks by the into the mountainous, black waters and hot coals. Peggie would have had a ft if be baptised by the salt spray. Only at sea she’d seen the holes in them. was ruggan afore the mast, pressing my windows, all the hard memories started can I escape the noise and the guilt. I still miss her, even her tuts and her back into it as I navigated safe passage to return. But Peggie was resolute; her, the fnger-wagging. Especially her barley through the swell. In those few heartbeats, You see, they told us that only a fey midwife, and the herring girls. Their way broth in the winter. I found my sea legs again and it gave me child - a demonic, blood-driven beast - was the only way. Well, I’ll never see them ‘Archie, what in the name?’ she’d cry a sense of purpose. The air I breathed felt could swallow brose like a whale and still or my boy again. No Maker can hold whenever I stoated in worse for wear. right again; good, fresh salt air; not the dwine in health. So, after much discussion me to account. He doesn’t need to for I I closed my eyes to try and remember stale breath of a landloper, corralled by and lamenting, choices were made about already live in my own private gaol. But her voice. I heard nothing but the creak stone walls. I don’t want to be that person the skinny child with the pale, wrinkled now I am ready to speak out, to confess of the cottage as it shuddered against the I became when my son, that fair-haired face and the limp arms, the one born with my wrongdoings. Atlantic wind. It seemed like the whole stranger, passed away. two front teeth. Peggie was adamant that So, leave me to steer the cottage for a house was being uprooted from the With the boy gone, the wife needed she’d heard the child say he wasn’t ours, while longer. Allow me to imagine one clifside and blown out to sea. me home and so I held Peggie’s thin and who was I to argue? last lift and crash of the waves, feel one The sea. My true home. hands while she wept over that little boy Old Dunbar said to fll eggshells with last gouster of salt air on my face. Then, I still tasted the salt air on my lips from who never danced, or laughed, or really rainwater and that this would somehow tomorrow I will scatter my son’s ashes. I the long walk home tonight. I imagined loved us. Soon after, Peggie’s heart gave expose the evil that had infltrated our will fnally do right by him and tell his the house swaying with such violence out and she left me here alone to bear home. It was thought the curious being story to the authorities. that it left the land and joined the ocean. our losses. would follow the line of shells onto the My heart. My aching heart. It was as if the house bobbed and rolled I gripped the armrest as a few rogue hearth, and then, with a little parental (Story inspired by Robert Rendall’s with the power of the waves. It made me tears escaped. As waves lashed the cottage help, straight into the fre. But the stories poem, ‘Saut i’ the bluid’). feel like a proper skipper again. There I - and the storytellers - lied to us. The fey
few seconds later. I freeze. Will he know tyred car that has been static for weeks, I poured it down the sink? Retrieving and disappears into the party house. the shawl, I spread it over my knees Sliding my hand into my pocket, I pull out ready to receive Anna. After swaddling a card for the women’s refuge. Outside, Story by Amanda Gilmour her in generations of warmth, I ft her two discarded crisp packets waltz with into the crook of my arm. We both start the wind before blowing along the street. ✯ as the front door slams. Anna screws her I tap the refuge number into my phone face but I shush and rock her as I move and as I wait for an answer, my gaze rises towards the window, looking out onto above the estate, resting on a sprinkling uffled music drifts from an ‘I’m seeing to Anna.’ I unwrap her rows of dank terraced houses. of stars. all-night party across the road. from the shawl, leaving it on the bed. Across the road, Innes passes a fat- MBeneath me, the mattress Lowering my head, I inhale her milky sags, pressing my bones hard against the scent then lay her in the Moses basket. peeling wall. A slice of moon provides My hands move at speed, swapping a night-light as I cradle my suckling nappies, despite my aching wrist. newborn, Anna, whilst my fngertips ‘You’re always fussing over that bloody trace the pattern on the old shawl she’s baby.’ He throws of the duvet, spilling wrapped in. The repetitive movement the shawl onto the foor. soothes me, as it did when I was a child, ‘Please, the shawl…’ until I brush the edge of the cigarette ‘I’m sick of hearing about the shawl! I burn and my hand recoils. Outside, the said I’d fx it, didn’t I?’ party noise is amplifed as a door opens. My mouth opens to respond, but a Glass shatters against tarmac and the door fash of red followed by tapping on glass slams shut. Beside us, my husband, Innes, stops me. A robin hops around on the groans. He’s shaking already and it won’t outer sill before taking of again. stop until he’s had two or three whiskies. ‘What sort of mother leaves needles Sometimes, like today, he needs alcohol all over the place?’ he asks, staring at me, as early as fve am. unblinking. I lower my eyes, focusing on ‘I need a drink, Isla.’ the pinch-grab pattern that circles my ‘But, it’s Christmas morning. Can’t wrist. Then kneeling, I pick up scattered you—’ contents from the sewing box, but I can’t ‘Don’t start, OK, I’m ill!’ fnd the sciss— I unlatch Anna and push back the A ferrous slicing flls the space. Innes duvet, lowering my feet to the bare has the shawl and his shaking hand guides foorboards, wincing as my post-birth the scissors around the charred circle. My stitches tug. My heel catches the edge of mouth falls open. my sewing box, toppling it. Scissors land ‘Fixed!’ he says, discarding the shawl with a thud and needles tinkle onto the on the foor and stomping out of the foor. Anna lets out a mewling whimper. room. ‘Are you getting me a drink?’ ‘Where’s my whisky?’ he shouts a
“How many words do you need to Perhaps it’s the contrast it ofers with describe a woodpigeon?” essays. Instead of having several thousand This is the title of one of the essays in words to play with and enormous freedom my last collection, Hummingbirds Between about how to craft them, haiku demand Runs up, down, around A leaf-breath movement the Pages. Like most of what I write, it’s the discipline of a precisely defned Treecreeper on pale ash trunk Eye-stripe, stump-tail, blended browns: concerned with the extraordinary nature formal structure of exacting concision: More bark-mouse than bird Wren – completely there of the ordinary; it points to the astonishing three lines of fve, seven, and fve syllables. dimensions that lie cheek-by-jowl beside No more. No less. “How many words do Snail shell confetti Here in the garden the commonplace. In this particular piece, you need to describe a woodpigeon?” As Around the thrush’s anvil Meeting of diferent worlds I was looking for a way of conveying on an essayist, I can use as many as I want. Slaughter prettifed Robin on my hand the page the incredible cargo carried by But for a haiku the challenge is to operate something that seems straightforward, within the tight constraints of seventeen Blackbird sentinels Who could guess how blue even uninteresting: a pigeon pecking its syllables. Their calls at frst light and dusk The hedge accentor’s egg is way across my garden. Unusually, because According to Kenneth Yasuda, “the Punctuating time From its dull plumage? I’m better at posing questions than number of syllables that can be uttered answering them, the essay concluded in a breath makes the natural length of Three ancient scarecrows A single jackdaw that “I could exhaust my word-store haiku”. Traditionally, seventeen syllables Cormorants standing on rocks As bedraggled as I am completely without ever catching more in Japanese are reckoned to fll one breath. Wings held out to dry Caught in the downpour than a fraction of what’s there.” Whether the same holds true in English From the point of view of remains a matter of debate. Whilst I’m Hospital garden Standing on pondweed commonsense, this may sound ridiculous. open to allowing as haiku verses written Two magpies scolding loudly As if walking on water Surely a woodpigeon can be described in in English that contravene the strict The last sound you hear A drinking goldcrest a couple of sentences. But it’s a conclusion rule of three lines with 5-7-5 syllables, that becomes unsurprising – indeed I prefer to impose this discipline on my Suddenly the swans Seems only a speck inevitable – once we start to look beyond own eforts. In rendering haiku from Dirty canal made regal Skylark, suspended so high – the routine simplifcations we rely on the original Japanese into English most White epiphany Huge downpour of sound and see what’s really there. Beneath the translators – thankfully – give primacy to vocabulary with which ordinary diction conveying the spirit rather than forcing Stretched like elastic Startled morning walk labels, limits and dismisses things, there it into the seventeen syllables of an alien Defes gravity then – snap! – Almost at my feet the snipe are chasms of time, mazes of connection, language. Kestrel’s hover drops Explodes into fight richly complex intricacies of structure There’s something about the poised and function. austerity of haiku, their rejection of Unheard for so long Clif-nesting fulmars One of my as-yet-unrealized literary embroidery, the economy of their few Its call sounds unreal at frst Land on a ledge, launch again ambitions is to take all the bird-related lines, their self-sufciency and lack of Cuckoo are you back? Perfect manoeuvres essays out of my eight published anything elaborate, that makes me think collections and present them together of them as a peculiarly northern form – How far it’s fallen A heron fying in a single volume. Such a book would no matter how easterly the direction of From high above the carpark Prehistoric, angular include essays where gyrfalcons, their origin. And of course, this northern This red kite’s feather Grey crick in the sky waxwings, sparrowhawks, kingfshers, resonance is reinforced by Basho’s classic oystercatchers, corncrakes, woodpigeons travel sketch The Narrow Road to the Deep Resplendent goldfnch Sudden low contrail and other species feature prominently. North, written in a style known as haibun, Beyond words’ dreary plumage Glimpsed just above the water But despite the avian theme, it wouldn’t which combines haiku and prose. Haiku Its bright perfection Dipper fies upstream be an ornithology book; I doubt it would seem to ofer a way of travelling to a far appeal to birdwatchers. Although the north of expression. Their pared-down Two ravens fying Over mute black rocks essays crystallize around birds and are to simplicity can carry sparks of meaning Listen! Their vibrant croaking A bead of sound and colour some extent about them, they’re more far more intense than their modest scale Unzips the silence Lone oystercatcher about what they point to and suggest; might suggest. In a way, haiku are like what an encounter with them brings to a verbal equivalent of the inuksuit that Curlew’s sad piping Wagtails on the grass, mind. The birds act as portals into mazes dot the arctic and act as what Norman Tunes my sense of loneliness Their name fts them perfectly of meaning, time, and association beyond Hallendy dubs “silent messengers”. This desolate place Nothing more needed the mundane world of appearances. So my Inuksuit are signs left in the landscape by a boyhood sighting of a fock of waxwings deliberate arrangement of balanced stones. Signature wing-clap Almost out of sight feeding on cotoneaster berries occasions In The Idea of North, Peter Davidson calls As if applauding themselves Sky-buoys marking the thermals a meditation on the complications them “minimal interventions” involving Woodpigeons take of Three buzzards circling attending memory; kingfshers become the “slight but moving rearrangement symbols that cast light on synchronicity of what is already there.” They act like Look! Gannets diving Sure sign of summer and loss; oystercatchers prompt an elemental signatures, inked in the very Spearing the sea with themselves Scythe-dark shapes harvest the sky investigation into the nature of a moment; substance of the earth, that indicate places Deadly projectiles The day the swifts came a corncrake provides the vocabulary to or perspectives of signifcance. They lament environmental degradation; a blue potently convey meaning from those In among the ducks Heard more than it’s seen tit becomes an unlikely icon for death who made them to whoever passes the A solitary moorhen The name alone a haiku and the question of when we should same way and comes face to face with Welcome diference! Listen – a chifchaf introduce children to the fact of our – their haunting presences. and their – mortality. Here, then, are some of my experiments Plum-soft collared dove A yellowhammer As well as writing about them in my with verbal inuksuit, haiku that are Hit – as if by a missile – Beside me as I cycle essays, I’m interested in trying to catch minimal interventions in my encounters Death by sparrowhawk Flits along the hedge birds using a very diferent kind of word- with birds. They use just a few shards from trap, namely haiku. I’m not sure why I fnd what’s already there to leave a marker of this minimalist verse form so appealing. the moment:
Haiku demand a fensing away no other qualifcations are needed.” combine luminous literary lyricism with of what’s unnecessary. As R.H. To some extent essays and haiku ofer a rare depth of frst-hand experience and Blyth puts it in his infuential diferent ways of doing the same thing; considerable ornithological knowledge – (and highly eccentric) Haiku in they sing the same song – but in diferent J.A. Baker’s incomparable The Peregrine, Four Volumes, they “take away as registers. Leaving their marks upon the or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, many words as possible between page they act like verbal seismographs, or James Macdonald Lockhart’s Raptor: the thing and the reader.” I’m tracing out the pulse of what moves and A Journey Through Birds. I admire many drawn to such radical abstraction intrigues us. of these approaches and often draw on and the distillation that it seems Of course, there are many ways to them in my own eforts. to ofer, the burning of of try to catch birds in words, essays and But I know that neither my essays and extraneous matter to get to haiku are by no means the only options. haiku nor any of these other modes of essentials. In origin, haiku are Some people prefer a scientifc approach catching birds in words can ofer more infused with the Zen sensibilities and opt for the kind of language and than a few fugitive glimpses of what’s of Japanese culture, particularly highly specialized focus that’s found there. It’s what escapes the words on the as these found expression in the in journals like Current Ornithology and page that keeps me writing rather than form’s great founding fgure, Avian Biology. Others adopt a more any deluded sense of being able to catch Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). wide-ranging perspective, like Frank it. But I like to think that, every now The Zen aesthetic is one I fnd Gill’s magisterial textbook, Ornithology. and then, whether in a haiku’s seventeen appealing. Its emphasis on direct There are popular descriptive feld guides syllables or in the thousands of words of experience, immediacy, paying to help with identifcation (such as an essay, there’s a hint of the astonishing close attention to the present, R.S.R. Fitter & R.A. Richardson’s ever realities that fascinate me with their getting to what’s beating at the popular Pocket Guide to British Birds), and bounty of meaning. Though of course heart of a moment, seems close monographs that focus on single species, they fail to catch what’s there, I hope my kin to the qualities needed for like Ian Newton’s The Sparrowhawk. words at least point in the right direction, efective essay writing. There’s Poets ofer some memorable cameos: manage to convey a sense of a few stray surely more than a hint of such Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of feathers foating in the empty space an aesthetic in Graham Good’s Looking at a Blackbird”, Ted Hughes’ of an electrifed absence, testimony statement that “Anyone who can “Hawk Roosting”, George Macbeth’s to what was so astonishingly present, look attentively, think freely and “Owl” for example. And there are those dense with the mysterious gravity of its write clearly can be an essayist; idiosyncratic works of brilliance that being.
The desert can break out, engulf and bury. Whole villages obliterated overnight. Yes, a perfectly sane person might be unfortunate enough to fnd themselves adrift. But the most compelling reason for venturing in of one’s own accord is By Ian Tallach not rational. For some, looking out over that ocean of dunes there is the Pull. And human figure emerges from the for a few others, the lure of nothingness. morning half-light. Less than a ✯ Akilometre away, it struggles up Higher up is steeper. With the a dune. White linen billows. Some of determination to press on, a ridiculous the brightest stars can still be seen, but notion takes hold: climbing this dune is the sky has begun to shimmer with the pursuing destiny. At the top, the view is anticipation of day. To the east, an orange breathtaking. But straight ahead, there is glow on the horizon. Above it, a swathe another, higher dune. of indigo. It’s a wonderful feeling, running, In an instant, sand is ablaze. A scimitar sliding, tumbling down the concave of light is followed by a wedge of sun. side. The next one is easy to begin with. The camels look west. Silence, but for the lisping of feet. Before The fgure re-appears on the next long, though, it becomes a struggle. This ridge, then descends again from view. would be a good place to turn back. But After another ffteen minutes, it can be turning back doesn’t feel right: one could seen again, but its edges are blurred, lost almost be persuaded that the promised in haze. land lies over the ridge. On the third dune’s crest it stops. A Cruelly, the experience soon changes – gold fash from a nose-ring – female. Her from having lost oneself, to a realisation of outline fickers, then becomes clearer, lostness. Abandon to abandonment. Fine more substantial. But reaching for her sand falls from an angry fst. To think that seems to snuf her out. poetic words are used for such a sky. Ha! A futter in the chest, the taste of For this extremity of blue indiference, sweat, the urge to follow. This is no place there should be other words. to just sit. ✯ ✯ Who can live with their own A space between places. They say this insignifcance? When the lights are of desert’s name translates as ‘you can enter, and all distractions are removed, it can be but there is no way out’. hard to bear. The desert ofers no relief. It Of course, there is an infnity of ways is a wasteland and it speaks of waste. out. But who can bear an infnity? Still, there is a paradox. From the The thought you must remember to earliest times, those fortunate enough to forget is that your chosen route might stumble out again have told of facing their lead you further in – the thought that insignifcance and fnding it wanting. can terrify. They claim to have found God.
Horse Loch (After Child Ballad 233) I dream also of the loch, fsh foating to the surface. Marion McReady Their white bellies glittering mica schist. Across the loch, hills slope like the backs of whales.
Prologue I emerge in the morning, uncurling as from a snail shell. A dead tree is a headless snake rising up next to me. I am moving beside the loch There is a fre burning inside of me, yet sitting still. While rare powan breed; artic charr, trout small fames lick my wooden body into a blaze. and salmon swim within. The continental drift My hair is smoke entrails. Invisible sparks shoot of around me. drifts beneath us all. I have become a strange object to myself.
Loch Eck crackles in the morning sun... No – I bite my lip to know that it is mine. Loch Eck straddles the morning sun. Loch Eck, your body is the body of a muscular horse. In the blue hour Loch Eck is a woman with a corkscrew head. Loch Eck is a double bed, covers pulled up to her neck. I stand among jetty ruins and summon the Fairy Queen steamer back to your shore. Loch Eck is a couple embracing in a bath, lichen skin thickening around them like blue crystals. 3 I, Tifty’s Annie The late spring wind grows tough hands on the back of the water. I, Tifty’s Annie, met him by fresh water. The pale sky makes a girl cry, My skin became as the leaves futtering under the cool breeze makes another sparkle of his touch. Is this love? in spite of herself. No one can answer but every day now I see him in stolen pieces of water between trees. 1 When he touched me, the loch moved inside of me. Loch Eck My head is heavy, it foats on my body My hands are sleepy cats wakening into life. the way the stone and tree crannog foat on Loch Eck. Loch Eck, I peep at you between the trees. Police ribbon caught in the shallows speak of accidents. You peep at me. Little gatherings of stones mark your shore. Tonight the loch has turned purple. Purple rhododendrons mark your shore. My body is oil spilling, snaking into the water. I am so close to you I am sinking. My arms move among the reeds. I make waves The jetty enters you the way he entered my mind unasked for. where logs dream and rocks sing. One look, and Loch Eck, all seven miles of you The darkness at the heart of Loch Eck is the black collate an image of me. pumping heart muscle of a strong horse. You preserve it on the bed of your drowned glen. The crannog is an island in the air, an unlit funeral pyre, Today your lapping waves are a series of serene smiles. ink blot on the water. I look into the purple face The whitened tree branch, the glower of Beinn Mhor of a rhododendron. I see his face everywhere - welcomes me. Watching you is like watching the world’s in the hanging valleys, the Paper Caves, frst motion picture – Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene. even in the slick body of a cormorant. As you pass by with your jagged movements I come to the loch to summon his full lips, his soft hair. I think of Sarah - Le Prince’s mother-in-law,
dancing in her garden, 1888. 4 Two seconds of her turning, a solitary waltz preserved on flm. Welcoming Spirits Ten days later she was dead. I am a boulder on the shore of your narrow water. I am visited by stones. 2 Black shadows make fat statues on the bottom of you. Fairy Queen I name him, I conjure him by the light of water on wet stone He entered my mind like a loch. and twisted tree. The mouths of the reeds draw in A few seconds of his movements (like Le Prince’s mother-in-law) deep breaths of lit air. My arms ache, he is not here. plays on repeat. I want to gather up the loch in my skirts, The way he said hello then moved sharply past me. let the fsh encircle me. He has been sent away from me. The way his eyes mirrored me My father, Tifty, he beat me; my sisters scorn me. in a million silver halide crystals held together my brother is coming for me. by electrical attraction. I came to the loch to explore my scars. In my dreams he is a cat I’m chasing in the dark My bruises bloom in the shape of common birds. forever keeping one step ahead of me.
At Hallgrimskirkja The chill of the fresh water is in my bones. Lynn Valentine Purple harebells ring in the hills...they ring for me. The loch is unbreakable in the hard sunshine, I’m there again under a cool stone roof, my doppelganger Hildasdottir sipping kaf after in the still air. I am not unbreakable. service, saying hallo to replicas of herself - My brother has broken me across your rocks. faces of blue eyes, upward-slanted cheeks. Loch Eck, I have travelled the length of you. I imagine myself tied to Magnus, Jon or Margret, a belly drumming under my best woollen jumper, My last sight of you is between the fragile branches of a birch. the fush of newly-wed love snug inside. I fold you up in my mind, a gift to myself, Later we’ll stroll down shuttered streets, and smile as the wind moves snigger at tourists as they stagger from boats - sick after eating shark, watching whales. across your quivering haunches. I think of Le Princes’s mother-in-law, We’ll head home in the jeep, over ice-felds turning and turning forever on flm. and lava, past lagoons that shine too bright a blue. We’ll tend to the horses, eat cinnamon buns, Then I’m thinking of him, arriving before me pretend that this island is real. over and over. The hills are smoking, the morning mist drifts towards me like welcoming spirits. Nina Lynn Valentine
The frst time I met her she slipped from how are you? To yarnin lik dat, the shape of 60 degrees imprinted, hard-wired.
My head had to bend, ears pricked, a lean into northern keening, the harsh vowels, the ringing of wind and sand.
Landscaper Lynn Valentine
This is his work, the slow heaping of soil into a grave. He digs the shape of a life, stands well back while mourners seed the ground with tears. Afterwards, a nod to his mate, the push of earth against wood and air, the flling in, the fattening. In summer he tends the fower beds, talks to roses, watches each pale petal fall.
Omissions Karen Hodgson Pryce
In this photo my eyes dissemble the lived moment. Our words die on my lids. Reveals little but
a prickly always, a barbed and. No smell of wood-smoked wool or poached-pear bake on tongue. No votive touch.
It does not say I looked everywhere but your face that day. Everywhere. It omits utterly to mention last chances.
am almost certainly the only person details of frst ascents – except, we were to know anything about Spud, at all convinced that the name Spud allowed Ileast outwith the bothy and climbing us to record for frsts was fctitious. (It setting where he was landed with that was!) Those knowing eyes, that ready wee moniker. Potatoes and a certain island Story by Hamish Brown smile...he gave nothing away, toyed with malt began the connection. us, dominated us in a strange way. We all Spud was already at the bothy – our ✯ accepted each other after all, and you bothy – so much our bothy that most don’t rope-up with someone you didn’t other gangrels gave it a wide berth. I’m fnish of the spuds. Weirdly, we thought, he always brought feel happy to trust your life with. Two not talking about Jacksonville, though “I aye thocht a spud wis jist a spud,” potatoes, so the nickname was apposite. or three years passed before I discovered there were similarities. I have to choose Jimmy said to me as we were watering the To most of us, as Jimmy had put it, “a the true Spud, and was sworn never to my words carefully or I’ll be in trouble rushes by the east gable before turning in. spud is a spud” but “yon mannie mun be pass on what I knew to the rest of the with my clannish mates, even though, “Yon wis a revelation” – which just about creatin the things” for, indeed, there was bothy boys. They thought me a bit of an these days, we are all on life’s long summed up our satisfed feelings, feelings a range of textures and tastes and even intellectual anyway. I taught Latin at what downclimb and bothy nights are rare. I which had been well complemented by colours, some not very appealing. We they called “a posh school”. arrived frst that Friday night. Iacta alea the mannie passing round a hip fask were highly suspicious of purple tatties, Jimmy was a painter, Graham a postie, est. which contained a certain island malt. In and that experience had me calling-in to Willie and Joss (Joseph) ran a garage, The top half-door was open, so I the whole evening, I doubt if the man the library on George IV Bridge to fnd Colin (‘Red’, from his hair, not politics) expected one of the gang was already in, had spoken more than six words. out more about the potato. There were and Ian (‘Fidel’, for his politics) worked and was surprised, on entering, to fnd In the morning (gold as a Turner all sorts. They came from the Americas for the Council, others I’ve forgotten. The a stranger. He stood up and nodded. watercolour) the man was up and away originally. Our wives thought us daft bothy had united us, climbing inspired Over six foot I reckoned, thin as a broom while we still lay cosily in our sleeping when we started to make demands about us; who we were was of no importance. If handle, fne features, tidy hair. Only bags on the bedshelf we’d built the year the humble spud back home. Spud was a “secretive bugger”, so what? much later, when we were all having a before. We watched every move. He had We were never to learn much more The bugger could climb! And provided dook in the loch, did we see why he so muesli, something which you only saw about spuds, or Spud, who remained as potatoes irregularly regularly all through easily outstrode (and outclimbed) us all. in a delicatessen at that time, and into monosyllabic as ever. He was a benign, those years and, as inevitably, a taste of He seemed to have no torso; he was all this he chopped a banana and an apple, if mysterious, presence in the bothy and, another island malt. Twinned memories, legs. As Jimmy quipped: “his legs sterted and yogurt, another new-fangled foreign once he’d done all the Munros within a now. at his oxters”. gimmick; (we had porridge soaking day’s hike from the bothy, soon became as Spud always arrived at the bothy I could hardly order the man to shove overnight.) He packed-up efciently and, hooked on climbing as we were. With his early and went ‘home’, however late, on of, but certainly remained unsociable after snubbing the bottom door, gave us spider’s legs and arms, he was a natural, the Saturday night. We assumed he had and silent. This seemed acceptable; he a smile and a wave over the top and was and before long was far the ablest of us. a Sunday commitment – maybe church was not a talker, it seemed. There was of. If I mentioned the names of routes he – though not appearing a holy Willie. something of a smile about his lips, his Jimmy called out, “Come again was to put up on ‘our’ mountain, I’d be In that, we were more or less correct, I eyes sharp, a man at ease, in control. In – Spud!” giving away secrets – so I won’t. It’s our found out. our bothy! Hell! Jimmy arrived an hour So that was how he received his hill – our bothy – our Spud. I’d gone to a performance of The later and then Willie and others of the name, which he accepted with a laugh Bright readers will no doubt be looking Messiah at the Usher Hall and, being a bit crowd. All were equally put out at the next time, for he did come again. And at the guide book for that particular hill, hard of hearing, sat near the front (bloody presence of a stranger, though they tried again. Spud became one of the gang. thinking they’d get his name from the expensive seats!) and there, singing his hard not to convey their ill-will. The heart out among the tenors, was Spud. stranger, I may say, was dressed every bit The incongruity almost made me laugh. as down-market as we were. Not a new- I had one heck of a time at the weekend gear ninny! He had a wee primus on the not to give away what I’d learned. (He table, a Dixie, and not much more than a had not spotted me in the Usher Hall bag of tatties. We were six in number that – I think.) Later, I knew Spud sang in a night and Graham, our nominated cook, cathedral choir, hence there were Sunday was soon onto supper preparations: his obligations. I was also to fnd out what he wife’s home-made soup (still half frozen), did on Sunday afternoons. Turkish merquez sausages and couscous, At half term, I visited the National and a tart (Tesco’s). Our days of humping- Gallery on the Mound, that exquisite in tins of baked beans to bothies were collection of which one never tires, long in the past, you’ll have gathered. We having something by everyone it seemed aye grumbled at heavy rucksacks, but still and, of course, frm favourites. I’d been carried coal to the howf. Rewards have paying my respects to the Velasquez to be earned. Once we’d cleared up a bit, (so diferent a work to ones like Las we watched the man start his culinary Meniñas) when I heard someone talking proceedings. to a group in front of a Flemish painting The golden-coloured spuds were all in the next room. Always happy to learn, of a small size, as if graded. They went I joined the group – and found myself into the Dixie to boil, while he chopped face to face with the speaker: Spud! I up a wee – purple – onion with the rapid knew I grinned, mightily, but he, apart strokes of practice and added that to the from a brief raising of eyebrows, never Dixie. Over succeeding minutes, as the paused in his – fascinating – talk about spuds boiled, he then added goodness- the Flemish-Dutch realist fower-painters knows what; the only thing I recognised of the period. Session concluded, the was a big dollop of butter. We were all group began to disperse. There were mesmerised by the surreal performance. many ‘thank-you’s’, some hand-shakes, (“I thought he was an efn chef” and an American tried to put a note Graham said later.) Some of the spuds, into his suit’s breast pocket – and then with what was now a sauce, were tipped we were left there, together. Mine was into the Dixie lid used as a plate, and not the only grin. Keeping the secret eaten with obvious content. We could from the bothy gang was an intolerable have applauded - we certainly had our imposition thereafter. So often I wanted saliva glands activated – and then he held to ask questions about Art, about lots of out the pan to us and gestured for us to things.
We crossed Princes Street and went Graham would, at the bothy, be talking night, the last big paw-shake from Jimmy, them to England, and on through to up the stairs to the Brown Derby Tea about football. with “We’ll miss your spuds, Spud” then, modern cultivars. As the class was leaving, Rooms (now a Costa) and more words Professor So-and-So (Spud) and I met turning to us with: “Noo we’ll nivver I complimented the boy on his talk and followed than we’d spoken in the years periodically after that in Edinburgh (you fnd oot about aw they tatties”. Well, I asked how he knew so much on such a since the frst bothy meeting. “Why so could hardly not) and later he admitted did, but I couldn’t be telling them now, recondite topic. The answer: his father ran silent?” I naturally wanted to know. He what a strain our friendship was when could I? But it’s a nice wee coda to the the Potato Research Centre at Longniddry just smiled that he wanted one part of keeping up his bothy- weekend Trappist story of Spud. in East Lothian and he often went there his life to be more solitary, undemanding, pose. He might once have slipped up. One period a week at school, I took on Sunday afternoons. “I found it sort of and without always explaining, discussing, We had completed a new route in a class for what the head called “Audible interesting, Sir.” become involved. As I’d seemingly not darkness, well - sort of darkness - for a Essays” and the Timetable marked ‘Free “Mm; and was there by any chance a bothered about his silence on meeting, he full moon fooded the landscape and the Speech’, where boys (we were not co-ed Professor So-and-So there?” I asked. just continued the pose. “You’ve no idea etched peaks rose strangely lit and black- then) had to spout on some topic that “Oh yes, Sir, he’s one of the volunteers how refreshing it is to be free for those shadowed. “Caspar Friedrich, eh?” he interested them. I’m amazed at the facts and a real research expert. He makes new precious, stolen days away from the thrum grinned at me, and quickly looked round; that an enthusiastic lad can acquire and kinds. You’ve no idea Sir...” (he paused of life.”; (as a teacher, I had a fair notion but we were alone. absorb about anything, never mind sport. for breath) “It’s him told me everything myself). “I’m so heavily involved with We were all sorry when he, briefy, said On this particular Friday afternoon, one and, Sir, because I was keen, he gave me a people, so often such fatuous twits, that he was having to move to London. “I’ll boy began to hold forth on the subject of nickname” (he looked at me). “You won’t my escapes are absolutely vital.” We then miss the bothy. And you lot” was quite a potatoes. You can imagine how I sat up tell, will you Sir?” (I shook my head.) “He lost ourselves in talking about paintings, speech, for the bothy. (He was heading for and listened. He gave an excellent spiel, called me Spud.” with as much enthusiasm as Jimmy and a top job at the Tate.) I recall the same about their Andes origins, the story of I think they were rather proud of their quiet smile when he left that Saturday Walter Raleigh supposedly introducing nicknames.
Beginnings Descending Schiehallion Lyrical Grahaeme Barrasford Young Grahaeme Barrasford Young Gillian Dawson
Eight swallows wavering on wires Where peace begins, I’m raked from sleep by the rough quaver the Fifth against a clear sky. music of the rookery down from the slice and din All that’s left, such accident? of frozen gale, stumbling this ragged orchestra tuning never-to-be trusted drift, to corvid concert pitch - only so many muses in one life; as tumbled ptarmigan firt with us, wine too soon stops what it begins; a dance troupe of their beat, brusque airs and strains poverty is only available to the poor; that last mile of slither, joyous excoriations divine ecstasy no longer fuses, smoke-free hell has lost its threat. all movement stops. their euphony A bit of smoulder, no fair – my unbelonging Amber-shackled by late sun Bring on decline – except a still hawk haunts dusk.
eight swallows imitating art Pastoral two-fnger decline far into touch, Gillian Dawson six-hit it out of stadiums; Coal delivery dropped by startled passers-by, Petra Vergunst If I squint, the towering trees it breaks. are transformed Still, frost hangs on this morning back into pylons, but at your front gate dafodils all angular branches. have already raised their heads Beginning late, fnishing later you snap one, warm spring in your hands Low sun slanting Grahaeme Barrasford Young through briars becomes The coal delivery should have called in yesterday a warehouse security light Thirty years, or more; a year of light but failed to turn up grazed by wire thorns. (some days of night) to get this far. and when you phoned the sheds had been empty Crows’ black crosses Walking in, walking out, never time enough sky reverberating along the slices of the ridges’ fetch. You plant the dafodil in a vase with jet noise. A fock and watch how the strengthening sun These hills are brown, or bright with winter. blows its trumpet gathers in the shadows. From where I look, distant ranges The shepherd will sleep lightly, Your chair against the east facing wall listening for the crisp clip I might not walk are insubstantial, shadow wraps never pale or blue. All that is real as a dark ghost around you of falling leaves startling is the sea-washed summit pebble You can’t shrug of your lack of coal I found for you. and can but watch and wait into breaking glass. the sun brightens spring cuts still
By James Sinclair
A sequence of Shetland dialect poems as an interpretation of the ill-fated voyage of the Hull whaleship Diana, trapped in the Greenland ice over winter 1866-1867. We hope to soon add an audio fle of James reading this sequence, from an interview he gave to BBC Radio Shetland before publication.
Aa rodds head Nort da laand o da skraelin Laevin Hame a pinnishin o frost. My name is Jeemie Androo, sam as me fedder an his faider afore him. Wir fock ir bidden i da sam twa hooses apo da hill at Setter Back Fae Da Edge fur as lang as ony een has da mindin. Da hairst o 1865 wis wan o poor paekins An iron blue ocean, mooskit lift an a starvation dat held fae afore Yule an laand med oot o sharny broon an sabbit strae till da second week o March. Aabody wis black-fantin. drifted intae view trowe da haar. Me, I towt dey wir nae idder Low haerts, neebit, sprang fae dir lang sleep. for hit but ta mak fur da toon o Lerook Wir we in a dwaam or wis dis da mieds o hame, an try me luck wi da Davis Strait whalers, or did da mellishon hae ee mair trick up his sleeve? see if I could fll wir empty purse wi siller. staap wir stengted bellies wi maet, I micht Wir we laek da phantom crew o da feein Dutchman, even hae a shillin ur twa ta mak an honest woman o Annie o da Daeks a feyness set ta drift apo da oceans o da wirld, an as shu held me haand I felt her haet pass trowe me. wi hit’s rancid currents an foul bitin winds aa wir days? So wi strict warnins ta come back hame in ee piece, I haeved me kist apo me back an med wey on ft Yet da hills an high banks grew i wir ee, by vye an by voder ta da steep lanes o da toon. an wha wis able, riggit a jib ta steer wis bye atween Galti Stack an Ketilgill head We hed kin dat pat me up fur ee week dan annider. Ivery moarnin till mirk I wid staand at da hiecht o da Knab, inta da boasie o dat muckle Ronas Hill i da hoop o catchin a tall ship makkin for port. an in trowe da raem-calm waater o da voe. Dan ee day laek hit or no, risin piece by piece Someen said, “ Dere’s Heylor boys, wir med hit. “ abune far horizon, a skeleton o masts an spars. Thick coal black cloods o reek wir spewin fae da stented belly o da baess, Da local men rowed af ta wis an clamb aboard. an I wis da frst een rowin oot ta meet We hed damn all ta say an coored fae dir luiks. dat fne riggit whaleship, da Diana, as shu drappit anchor. Dir een said aa dat hed ta be said. ( Da fricht, da fricht, ) Set atap da gaet post fur we wir nae idder as rag bags o banes. he leaned his black sails i da breeze Wir skien sookit ticht ta wir skulls. an birled up itill da cloods We most a lookit laek demented wraiths.
Da fock, dey wir kindness hitsel, comin wi waarm blankets ta hap aboot wis, an maet. Mellishon Some o wir eans fell apo dis da sam as baess. We cam fast i da ee o da baess, Stappin as muckle i dir mooths as dey could, catched up i da spiral spoolin wis doon. dan curlin up itil a baa whin da cramps grippit, Da gless as low as he’d seen, faain asound, niver ta waaken more, athin da sicht o hame wir skipper wrestled da spokes o dat wheel, a man fechtin lonabrak an spondrift. Wi nae guid itill his haert Muckle lumps brook apo aa fower quarters, da corbie tore at ribcage dingin wis aboot laek a cork. da krang o da lamb spret Masts bucklin afore da gale, ft ta snap, wi da sails reefed ticht ta da spars, da Jib an a sma sail aft ta steer wis bye. We pitched hiedicraa in ta a waa o waater, dat A’m sure guid richt trowe wis We ran fae port ta starboard, checkin dat aathing wis lashed ticht an mannin da pumps fae frst licht ta mirk, day eftir day hammered dis wey an dat. I listened ta wir Anne whisper itill me lug “ Hadd dee course my boy, du’ll be fne. “ An at last apo da moarnin o da fourth day a watery sun brook trowe, an da dark ean ran oot o breath.
Don’t du shakk dee knave A’ll joost bide me time fur du’ll fade, du’ll waeken
Shaestin wir Prey Honest Graft
Ower da side wi guid, settin wir erses apo da taft. Wi ten men apo da capstan A weel practiced shiv wi da boathuek an wan aesy swing o da derrick, an wir af, slidin da aers i da waater. wir catch laanded wi a dunt apo da daek. Dan hit began, da slash an cut Shetlan men weel wint wi da pull an pech, o da fensin knife as weel wint haands fayed baetin wir ft apo da tilfers ta keep time blubber laek muckle slivers o butter. as we slippit an grippit da waater time an time again, We gaddered hit itil wir scurts laek feet skippin ta da fddle player’s tune - an flt da boilin pot ta lipperin. frst ta two step, back step dan da Foula reel Gurr melted doon itil a stinkin brö. makkin grund aa da time wi a swing an a lift. Da cooper plied his trade, knockin taggider barrel staves, afore he slippit Dan wir lugs could mak oot da brak o air, da spoot o wind. da iron baands aroond an shappit dem doon. Da killer, stood stock still i da focsle slippin go his harpoon wi wan practised swing. We flt barrel eftir barrel as day kerried on trowe nicht. Da sun wis niver laek ta slip oot o sicht, Da barb wis gone, coils o ropp jimpit an whin wir labours wir bye wi, an aathing stowed, oot o da locker amidships. A yell “ Wir fast “. da maister opened da rum ration Da skipper in wan aesy move turned a bite apo da cleat, an geed wis a double tot ta celebrate. an sat back at da tiller, haddin ticht. A accordian appeared an a tin whistle. Da ropp geed a snyirk, takkin a dunt, I towt Johnny fae Nestin layed da bow across his fddle. dat da boat wid brak in twa as hit spanged bar ticht. We sang sea shanty an ballad alaek. Someens performed a jig airms i da air as dey jimpit fae side ta side. We med full tilt as we wir towed fat oot I girded me loins an back-steppit ta Johnny’s Shetlan reel skeetin oot o control across da waater. Dan wi ee roar me haands apo me hips an me heels clickin, we aa dug wir aers i da waater, slammin on da brakes, as da sun climmed ower da yard airm. an though we heard not a peep Beady een, black pearls I shivered wi dat silent skirl, surveyed aa afore dem minded a sail flt wi a gale o suferin. empty as far as da ee wid reck.
Lang an curved gunmetal clackin scimitar blades rive, dey taer at carrion
Shaestin a Feyness Makkin a Run Fur Hit
Trowe hiecht o simmer inta hairst, We waakened i da moarnin ta clear waater aa roond, we most o sailed a million miles free fae da grip o ice. Da skipper shouted his orders. fae da Southermost point o Prins Christiansund. We unfurled ivery inch o canvas as we med guid speed Dan up da coast fae da fjiords o Sisimiut ta da Suderd, sailin herd afore a Norderly breeze. ta Nuuk an on ta da far Nort o Narsaq We covered mile apo mile, dodgin ta port an dan ta starboard an da laand o da skraelin. roond aboot icy-blue bergs an snowy-white fats.
Wird fae da sudert, wis dat fock wir haerd Lookin on past da boo da ice wis gadderin fast afore wis.. o groups o fsh wirkin dir wey aroond da coast. Da order wis geen ta licht da boiler. We clambered below Da skraelin held his tongue. He wis keeping stuum. an owsed da last o da coal shivel by shivel in trowe da boiler door. We sowt da baess here, dere an aa wey - Bricht yallow lowe jimpit an sparkit afore wir een. ta da Aestard o frst Devon dan Bafn island In nae time avaa we wir cled itil wir bare backs, swaet an coal dust Runnin wi da trade winds, we shaested mirlin tides. runnin doon da valley o wir riggy bane ta da crack o wir erses. Een stared oot da craa’s nest fur ony late wird An whin da coal cam fnished wi balled in in ivery voe an geo, a spoot o wind, da swirl shappit up aers an new sawed spars. o fn an tail. Hit med you winder dat dey’d laerned ta braeth under da waater Pistons shot back an fore, drivin a muckle fywheel Ur wis hit a fact dat da last graet Nordert whaal roond an roond an roond. Da shaft below wir feet lay packit in barrels itil da howld o da Diana. spun in a blur as hit forced da blades o da propellor roond an roond an roond. Wir faces glowed redd I can snif dee oot i da glöd o da fre. I’d niver felt dis haet in aa me days. da smell o da eart da stink o fust an rot An whin we did hit da ice, I towt da Diana wid spleet in twa. Astarn we guid at graet pace, dan cam ahead at full speed duntin wis clean af wir feet. Back an fore we guid joost ee muckle batterin ram, tryin da hammer wir wey trowe. Lost Sowls Da mate cam doon da trap his face trippin him We aedged closs in ta da foe an telt wis aa ta whet. We wir stuck fur da winter. an fur sic a sicht as hit med. He left wis ta sit, wir heids in wir haands an tak Hit lookit laek dey’d joost set dem doon in da last haet as da embers brunt doon ta ess. fae dir moarnin’s wark, teen a braether. Da Corbie raise his heid Dey wir twa lifeboats kummeled heidicraa, streetchin wings wide an hiecht aers riggit in craa’s taes, he blackit oot da sun wuppit roond wi canvas sails, kists an barrels an packin cases.
Aathin laid oot dere, apairt Trappit Fae da ship hersel. An whin you lookit dat bit closer ,you could see dir blackened sken Grippit apo aa sides ticht, da fankled shaeps o dir airms an leegs muckle clumps o icicles fastened. Ony minute micht be wir last, laek da graet puppet maister as we wait fur da spleet an splinter hed cut da strings, hed gotten fed up o boards an da on rush o waater, wi da game he’d been playin makkin ta sook wis straicht ta da boddam, an waandered af i da ice, laevin his toys ahint. as invisible currents push an shiv whaariver da notion taks dem. Me neb preenks an preens fedders wi boot polish sheen An as da sun maks ta fnally da neb dat’ll takk dee een slip awey ower a Suderd horizon, we still get a day back an fore whin da lift is a clear an royal blue as far as da sicht o da ee micht streech - dat bricht, hit maks you glinder. i da distance icebergs shimmer laek da golden spires o a ceety dir biggins close enoch ta reach in an oor or twa. da fock weel wint an welcoming, layin graet plates o maet apo da table fur wis aa ta fll wir rumblin bellies. On a day sic as dis, dir canna be ony idder place apo dis aert sae boannie.
Wi da lift drawn doon du has naewhaur ta geng wi da herd grip o frost
Mirrie Dancers An dan me towts ’ll tak a darker turn, da boadies itil da howld, prime frozen an maet apo dir banes. Man, I canna mind da sicht o da sun. Da lang pig, dey say hit tastes o saat pork. You loss aa track o da time o day. Could we raelly hae a feed af o dem? A roastit leeg Is hit been weeks, months ur years? or a braised rack o ribs, kidneys, liver an heart. An dan da clawin cowld turns you numb, maks you waant ta close your een an niver waaken. I spy fesh towt he I dunna ken hoo, I feel dee lyin dere Annie wi da scraepe o taes on rock an I swear da haet o dy skien is apo me back. sharpened his claws
But ivery noo an dan da lift pits on a fjanna, a licht show, a hansel fae da nordern gods. Or micht hit be da ill-natured ean playin wis fur fòls. Lang Lippened Sae mony shades fae green ta aquamarine glittrn siller starn, boannie vari-orm Slippit at last, ficker an dance, jig an reel, trowe a winter’s lift. wis dat wir left, waakend ta grey waater an shattered ice. Hit maks you winder if hit’s aa bye wi An da lift drawin doon wi dark clood. an you’re passed ower ta da idder side. A Norderly breeze shivved wis clear. Da cowld wis slippin hits grip. Blue-fnned is joost my style We moved aroond da daek in slow rikkity steps. reekin o daeth Nane o wis ft ta oag up da riggin. A’ll shun clean up eftir dee So we raised whit sail we could, wir feet planted apo da daek, strent spent. An as da Diana brook clear fae her anchor howld apo da ice Loss an cast af da chains o imprisonment we left da Davis Straights in wir wake Da Skipper took ta his bed an ran fae da very jaws o Hell. wi da lurgy an he niver lifted him more. Lyin dere, gettin waeker an waeker Don’t du dare turn dee back by da day, his life blòd ebbit awa. hit’ll be da last thing du does Wir faith slidin in ta da mirk wi him. croaked da corbie
Whit fate wid come ta wis aa? Dir wis nae hoop an whit peerie coarn o charity, lost aboard wir foatin kist. Ony, dat hed a peerie bit, gairded hit Slippin Awa laek a wild baess, ill-vynded an cornered. Der’s me set afore da fre i da Nort Hoose o Setter An if someen sood pass ta da idder side, lang lived an spent, baerd streetchin ta me belt. da rest wid descend apo dir belangins Dir’s been mony a turnin o da tide laek corbies apo da cast oot lamb, fae we set wir ft apo dry laand at Heylor. dey could barely wait fur da braeth ta laeve dem. Da owldest boy, frst mate apo da clippers, wir Mary bidin in Weathersta wi a screed o bairns An eftir da doctor hed read fae da guid book, an Jeemsie still wirkin sheep i da Setter hill, we sang da hollow wirds o a hymn inta da emptiness. his Ina keepin hoose an hame, an me boannie Annie lang since geen ta her maker. A’ll paek oot dee een an cloor trowe dee leeg Neebin here, I feel da cowld climbin up me leegs I can feel me belly rumble an da points o me fngers loss aa feelin. I shout on Ina ta stoke da fre, to bank up da grate wi paet eftir paet. Fur aa hits lowe, I canna shak da starvation. Starvation Fitful I slip in an oot o sleep, draemin I tink A’m losin me mind. Da ony wye A’m stood dere apo da daek o da “Diana.” ta tak me towts fae starvation an cowld, Her masts riggit laek new, yarnin awa wi da skipper is ta mak da fnest denner itill me hied. an da bosun, sayin hit’s a fne sudderly breeze, An whit denners A’m hed, graet plates o maet, guid sailin wadder an da sails abune blatter i da wind. fried haddocks an livers wi foury taaties, Wi dat sam me boannie Annie comes oot o da focsle plate eftir plate o reestit mutton tattie soup as fne a smile as A’m seen lichtin up her face fresh baked bannocks clerted in kirn butter, an her blue een sheenin, sayin… lumps o fried saucermaet an deukes eegs, “ Come du Jeemie, hit’s time du slippit da ropes. “ poorin da fat oot da pan ower da leftower tatties, clooty dumplins foo o raisins an spice an cinnamon, hame med hufsi washed doon wi cup eftir cup o sugary tae.
he single-track road had got looked down at her hands – lamb in one, narrower and more rutted, then skin in the other. After a moment, she Tcrossed a cattle grid and became reached out the hand holding the lamb. a gravel track before the car splashed ‘Take this,’ she said. through a dark puddle and into the Story by Craig Aitchison Armstrong bent down and took the farmyard. When Armstrong parked, she lamb in two hands. Mrs Rutherford ficked on the wipers, which scraped, ✯ placed the skin on her knees. smearing the window before cleaning it ‘Hold it. Here,’ she said. and revealing the view. In the foreground, Armstrong held the squirming lamb a feld of sheep and young lambs, some He paused for a moment, as if waiting grey skies. No lambs born on the farm. while Mrs Rutherford pulled the skin feeding, some gambolling – that was the to be excused, but then climbed onto the Armstrong making sugary tea in the over its head and lifted its legs inside so word – the hills sloping down to the quad bike and started the engine. A collie farmhouse kitchen. Brian looking at the that it ftted like a jacket. Then she took village below – the kirk steeple, the sun dog jumped up behind him, perching mug in his hand as if wondering what it the lamb from Armstrong and walked glinting on the river, trafc on the road; behind his seat. As he turned to drive was. Mrs Rutherford saying the lambing’ll away, lifting it into a closed pen and laying in the background the blue of distant away, he lifted one hand slightly in an no dae itsel. Her husband dead under a it on its feet, the jacket ftted tightly over hills. Maybe she shouldn’t be here, but she awkward farewell. Mud sprayed from the sheet. most of its body, only hanging a little wouldn’t be long. Better than being stuck tyres. Now, in the pens, lambs suckled at loose over its rear. The lamb wobbled a in the ofce. She walked into the shed, feeling the ewes. Mrs Rutherford stood up, wiping bit and let out a little whine. In response, She reached into the back seat to grab warmth captured by the corrugated roof, her hands on the front of a wax jacket the ewe in the pen came towards the a shopping bag from which she pulled picking her way through the stalls, until already covered in brown streaks. ‘There’s lamb, looking from it to Mrs Rutherford, a pair of wellies. It was important to be she found Jenny Rutherford, sitting on a never a good time.’ then back to the lamb. Mrs Rutherford prepared. She always kept them in the car, small stool, head bent over a dead lamb. ‘You’re very busy.’ leaned on the fence of the pen, watching. because she never knew where she’d be Armstrong cleared her throat. ‘Mrs ‘I am.’ She lifted her head so that The ewe got closer to the lamb and sent. Usually, when she arrived somewhere Rutherford?’ Armstrong could see the lines around her dropped its head, while the lamb nuzzled like this, it was for a more typical rural ‘Just a second,’ she said and ficked eyes, the wisps of red-grey hair that came in underneath towards the sheep’s dugs. crime – stolen machinery mostly - and open a blade. from under a faded John Deere cap. She The ewe shufed, then pushed its nose once a stolen bull that turned up two towards the lamb’s rear. months later in Wales. ‘Come on,’ said Mrs Rutherford. ‘We Her boots were spattered in mud from can talk for a wee while. Then I’ll come the last time she came here. The time they back and see how these two are getting found the dead body of George (Dod) on.’ Rutherford, lying on his back beside the Mrs Rutherford led the way out of the overturned quad bike, blood trickling shed and into the yard. Walking behind out of his ear. Today she could tell Mrs ‘It seems strange though.’ Armstrong her, Armstrong took her phone from Rutherford that the coroner had released her pocket to check for messages. After the body. Accidental death. fve o’clock. Mike would have collected She unbuckled her shoes and replaced pushed back a lock of hair that had Archie from childcare. She should pick them with the wellies, then put the shoes up something nice for dinner on the way on the back seat. It was hard to keep the home. A bottle of wine maybe. car clean – she used it for work, getting blown across her face. She’d started now, Mrs Rutherford leaned against a gate the shopping, dropping Archie here and and looked into a feld of grazing sheep there. Maybe on Tuesday, on her day of, and lambs. Armstrong stood beside her. she could give it a clean. she had to push on. ‘The quad bike ‘Just a few questions Mrs Rutherford. She got out and walked to the Formalities. You know.’ house, lifting the heavy door knocker ‘Aye.’ and banging it down three times, then tipping, him hitting his head like that.’ There was the noise of an engine and stepping back to wait. No answer. Armstrong looked up to see Brian’s quad Armstrong walked around the side of bike on the crest of the hill. the house, following the bleating of sheep ‘It was your son that found the body.’ and the mewling of young lambs. ‘He did.’ In front of the shed was a quad bike Armstrong waited, watching the young with a small trailer. Brian Rutherford man dismount to open a gate. was steering a sheep into the trailer with ‘I was in the shed, helping deliver a a crop. Son of the deceased. Armstrong lamb that had got itself the wrong way watched him – competent, focused. He As Armstrong watched she made a slit forced a tired smile. ‘But you’ve your job round. David was in the top feld.’ tapped its arse, then used the crop to through the skin along the side of the back to do as well.’ ‘How did Brian fnd him?’ push the sheep onto the low ramp. The legs then set her knife aside. She wiped her ‘Thanks. We can talk here. If you like.’ There was a pause, a clearing of the sheep stumbled over a tiny lamb at its hands on the thigh of her trousers. Then ‘If you could give me a hand. That throat. ‘I told them this. The other one, feet, almost falling forward into the trailer she stood, took hold of the lambskin and would help.’ the man.’ which Brian shut closed. Brian wiped tugged at it, until the skin caught at the She looked at the skin in Mrs ‘I know.’ his brow with the back of his hand then head and front legs. She took up the knife Rutherford’s hands. ‘Of course.’ ‘He hadn’t come back for dinner. It wiped his hands on his olive waterproof again and cut around the neck and front ‘Grand. It’ll just take a second,’ Mrs was getting cold. He never wore a watch, trousers. Ruddy cheeks, close-cropped legs until a small woollen coat came free. Rutherford said. She stood, picked up but he knew when it was time to eat. I brown hair, nearly six feet tall but still a Then she pushed the blade of the knife the little three-legged stool then walked sent Brian to fnd him. He’d probably lain laddie in the way he moved, the nervous into a handle that looked like it was made away. there for a while.’ smile on his face when he looked across. of a ram’s horn. She laid the skin to the Armstrong followed her to another ‘And he brought him down.’ ‘Hello.’ His voice trailed of, unsure side, lifted the lamb’s pink carcass and of the pens where a ewe lay on its side, ‘Aye. Brian righted the quad bike and how to address Armstrong. dropped it into a hessian sack. breathing heavily. Two lambs slept on the lifted him onto the back. He thought we ‘Hi Brian.’ She closed the distance She lifted her head to face Armstrong. hay. Mrs Rutherford put down the stool could revive him. It was too late.’ between them. ‘How are you doing?’ ‘Now. What can I do for you?’ and unlatched the gate. With one hand, she A silence came between them. In the Brian wiped his hands on the front of ‘Mrs Rutherford. I’m DS Armstrong.’ lifted one of the sleeping lambs, turning it feld two lambs leapt, springing into the his jacket. ‘You know. Busy.’ ‘Aye. I mind.’ over and looking at it, then nodding. The air. A woodpigeon gave a throaty call. ‘Yeah.’ Mrs Rutherford bent to tie the sack ewe lifted its head weakly, then dropped it Armstrong turned to face Mrs Brian tipped his head back, indicating that contained the dead lamb; Armstrong again. The lamb whimpered a little. Rutherford. ‘How is Brian?’ the shed. ‘She’s in there.’ watched. Ten days ago, a day of clay- Mrs Rutherford sat on the stool then ‘Fine. Coping. It’s a busy time, the
lambing. We just have to get on with now. The other one would struggle with scared or when the other boys at school Mrs Rutherford. ‘Even if they’re born to things. He’s a good lad.’ two. Just a gimmer.’ called him names. I taught him how to sheepdog stock. You never know.’ Armstrong put her foot on the gate, ‘Gimmer?’ tend the sheep and I encouraged him A look passed between Mrs making the chain that held it closed rattle ‘Sorry. Two-year-auld. First lambing.’ to do something else. To get away.’ She Rutherford and her son. Armstrong tried a little. ‘I see.’ gestured with her hand to the entrance of to understand what was in that look. A ‘I think they’ll be releasing the body ‘Sheep toughen with age. Like the rest the shed and the hills beyond. pact of silence? Her desire for Brian to soon.’ of us.’ ‘Away from the farm?’ leave? The work that needed done? ‘So there’ll be a funeral to organise,’ ‘I see.’ ‘Mrs Rutherford lifted the cap from ‘Thank you, both,’ said Armstrong. ‘For said Mrs Rutherford. They watched the lamb feeding, its her head again, looking into its grimy your time.’ ‘There will. I saw the autopsy report. throat welling with milk, the skin it wore rim, turning it in her hands. Mrs Rutherford just nodded, and she Blow to the head, consistent with a fall.’ hanging a little loose. Armstrong heard a ‘It’s a hard life. And his father…’ and her son turned towards the house. A crow landed on a fence post nearby, hum that got louder, a buzzing sound that ‘Didn’t they get on?’ Armstrong went to her car. She took sunlight picking out a purple sheen in its became the noise of an engine coming Mrs Rutherford pushed her hand her phone from her pocket, opening her black feathers. closer. into the pocket of her jacket. The knife. contacts and scrolled down to the direct ‘It seems strange though.’ Armstrong ‘Have you got children, Inspector?’ Mrs Armstrong stepped back a little, thinking line to the station. She should phone, pushed back a lock of hair that had blown Rutherford looked beyond Armstrong to of the way she ficked it, slit the skin, speak to DI McPherson about what across her face. She’d started now, she had the entrance of the shed. smoothly, no fuss. ‘Ach, you know. Fathers Mrs Rutherford had told her, the doubts to push on. ‘The quad bike tipping, him Armstrong put her hand in her pocket, and their sons.’ she had. Her thumb hovered over the hitting his head like that.’ clutching her phone. ‘One. A boy. He’s She pushed the cap back onto her head number. They both stood watching the crow three.’ and turned to a noise - Brian coming into She’d better let Mike know. If she turn its head left and then right. ‘And you’d do anything for him. If you the shed, slowing at each pen to look in. phoned McPherson she’d need to go into ‘Aye.’ thought it was the right thing. Anything. ‘He’s a good lad. But he still needs the station and that would mean getting Armstrong thought that was it, end of To protect him.’ looked after.’ Mrs Rutherford’s voice was home late. She opened his contact, the conversation. The crow few of, across the Armstrong thought of Archie. She almost a whisper. ‘I’d better get his dinner profle picture a photo of Archie, holding feld, out of sight. Then Mrs Rutherford should have picked him up from childcare on.’ up blue paint-covered hands beside his stepped back from the gate. ‘Bad luck. - it was her turn, but she’d phoned Mike, She brushed past Armstrong, walking blue paint covered face. The paint was in The weather last year, all that snow and asking him to go so that she could be towards her son, taking his arm and his hair too. That boy. February, the beasts we lost. That lamb in here. Archie would be at home, drawing steering him out of the shed and back McPherson was probably at home by there, stillborn. It’s part of life.’ a picture in big colourful swirls while into the yard. now. Even if he was still at work, what Armstrong turned to face Mrs chatting about his day. Armstrong followed, shielding her eyes would she say? What did she really think? Rutherford. ‘And death.’ ‘I would.’ from the sun when she stepped outside. What was the point? Mrs Rutherford nodded. Armstrong ‘He wasn’t David’s you know. Brian.’ Mrs Rutherford turned. ‘Would you Better to go home, make dinner, give felt as if she was being appraised, sized up. The rattling of a gate outside. ‘I didn’t like to come in? A cup of tea?’ Archie a bath, read him a story. The case ‘Let’s go in, see if that lamb’s set on.’ know.’ ‘No. I’ll need to go.’ was closed, the day was over. She put the She turned to walk away; Armstrong ‘I had him young. His father left. Well, The three of them stood for a moment phone back in her pocket. followed her back into the shed. he still lives in the village. But he left as if each waiting for the other to say After a moment looking down the Mrs Rutherford stopped by the pen me.’ something more. The sheepdog nudged valley, listening to the gentle bleat of lambs, where the lamb was suckling at the teat Armstrong looked to the door, making at Armstrong’s calf and she reached down she turned the ignition and reversed the of the sheep. out Brian, collie dog trotting at his heel. to stroke its head. car, looking down at her wellies as she ‘Good girl,’ Mrs Rutherford said, ‘I never thought of him as having a ‘Yours, Brian?’ changed gear. There was already a streak nodding. father. Not David. Not… Not anyone. ‘Aye. Not much of a sheepdog. More of muck or shit on the black car mat. ‘Success?’ Just mine. I fed him and looked after him of a pet.’ She’d book it in for a valet on her day ‘Aye. Better for all concerned. The lamb and comforted him when David lost his ‘Sometimes they don’t take to it,’ said of, let someone else deal with it. Too late will get fed and that sheep’ll be happier temper. I was there when he was ill or now.
shall come closer for this. To the bell told if I would be pretty or if I would be weight of its coldness and the mirk rich, as her head hovered above my hands, Iof its planet. To the soft scalloped eyes peering into my palms and creases. clouds, the creases of skies and its marble The grey roots on her head became a thick walls. I see dust from galloping Story by Nicola Madill forest clearing. I wondered if she saw a horses with light balanced on top. Then phantasmagoria of trails of wanderlust smoke from high school experiments ✯ footsteps or best-selling records or gigs billowing from small fngers and faces packed by the hundreds or tent-skinned disappeared. Even closer to the veins of villages of ancestors waiting to meet me at the parchment, the beryl of its skin. a ruby-red sundown. Instead she told me: I used to own one. A friend turned But what is it about them that enchants When I was a child, I used to lie on You will be married…You will mother… up with it one day, something about a so many of us? Is the now not enough? the old brown carpet in the living room, You will make your own destiny, while customer paying for spectacles with gold- Time without illusion? Perhaps not, bathing in a warm parallelogram of sun. my money piled up in fast smoke. crested canes and oils, and he hoisted it when today we spend so much of our Hair brushes becoming centipedes, chairs As I look into my refection during a into my cupped hands. It stood proud time peering into glass screens. I think becoming ladders. bedtime now ritualised, a blurred body on its balustrades in my living room. The back in time, to when Druids consulted And sometimes now, I feel as though of post-it notes foats in my peripheral eye of the wizard. My boiler broke that with clues and messages morphing from I am a multi-souled person living in vision, each furled like rufed feathers year, then my shower, then my washing the marbles of the throats made of glass. one being; turned down pages, my keys carrying messages from my younger self. machine. In the darkness, doors slammed The very essence of prayer. become hidden, fresh cups of tea. It sends I can see the moon in my window, veiled shut, radiators swallowed their hesitations, In the music fantasy flm Labyrinth, me spinning, returning to moments I by ribboned skies. I come a little closer tears dripped from the taps with no David Bowie twists orbs through his thought were understood to fnd deeper to the mirror and sweep the cotton over comforting hands. fngers like a magician rolling coins. truths. Continuing to learn that my life is the skin, around my right eye, tightening I didn’t take any money for it. In What the viewer does not see are the not one straight line, but a serendipitous my face. When I take my hand away, the front of a yawned open boot and its arms of juggler, Michael Moschen, who curve back to memory and people: an skin falls and a hairline mountain stream mouthful of treasures. Caution-flled is standing behind Bowie, manipulating eternal return. is captured, glistening silently in the dimly eyes in exchange for stroking hands and the objects. Camera trickery provides When I was younger, I visited a lit room. the mouth of a child. the deception. fortune-teller. I waited patiently to be
How I take a new mother Salon Structure 8 (the workshop) Lydia Harris Lydia Popowich Ingrid Leonard
You know most of it already. Asymmetric is the new black, she purred Chert, fint and fagstone, I wash my hands, lay down my gifts, into the forest of mirrors, a rainbow cobble-faked tang, open the curtain. Janus, her two faces receding into infnity. Kate was so blown away by herself, it hurt knives smashed from beach-pebble, But walking on Boxing day traded wolf fang, she enters my feld of vision. in the forest of mirrors. A rainbow beyond the rain-tumbled glass arched scrapers, mace and arrow-heads, She is Theotokos. a January sky, the crumbling walls and soot, ash, bone She wears new gloves for diferent kinds of grief. For Sale boards of a deserted Main Street. Her toes snout moss. egg-white, haematite, Beyond the rain-tumbled glass arched chippers, carvers, sanders Her gift is a small stone vessel for crushing grapes. a customer, bobble-hatted and doubled She recites the blessing to be said against the wind like tumble weed rolling cutters, bufers, polishers, when going on a journey. towards a make-over with 15 percent of. axe-haft and adze
We meet my own father in the garden. A customer, bobble-hatted and doubled mallet, spade, needle, He carries a warm loaf, his feet are bare. in need of a break-fx miracle-treat curl gut-cord, strip-leather On the table he has laid two dishes. please height-riser mega-sleek moisture me rich airy-builder with no yellow matrix. bone-pin, hide, clay, shell – He jumps a stream, running. tooth, rusk, rain, fre. My new mother scoops a handful of water, In need of a break-fx miracle-treat curl blows into the surface, Kate unholstered her scissors, quivered one bubble swallows her. her combs and twizzled her natural bristles. On hearing of Sue’s new marble jacuzzi The Early Dead Ingrid Leonard Kate unholstered her scissors, quivered, Charm to re-assemble a jam chopped, snipped and razored Sue’s golden Two-year-old twin boys, darting jug, from fragments of beach locks to the foor and with a chameleon smile between tables at a bring-and-buy sale like lambs. “Asymmetric is the new black”, she purred. Their mother had dressed them in velvet suits leam that matched their hair, dark and close-cropped. Lydia Harris Days later, hers was singed at the temples along with her skin, she’d fed a burning caravan (stoneware jam jugs: too commonplace Testament with her boys still in. to be in need of description… Lydia Popowich …made of lame or earthenware. A Fenton) Jackie Skinner at 60, borrowing a book God is the fzz/pop of a failing light bulb. from my mother, fresh as the June evening By the ring, God is Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. he’d cycled in on, like a student home by the sticky ring, God is a warning sign on a sharp bend. from college, a feck of summer light the jelly-fed ruby ring, God is a shoe salesman in a designer shop turning out on his bike from Tormiston. the raised ring on the shelf or an invisible splinter in the sole of your foot. My Dad saw blue lights as his own father in the Hammers passage. God is the knot in your umbilical cord. wheezed, how could any of us know that death comes in By the ring on the shelf of the passage between God is one segment of a chocolate orange threes? stove heat and beast heat, between lamplight and or an ice cube in a shaken not stirred. moonlight. God is a teaspoon of honey in your hot toddy. I dreamed of my new-dead Da on the faces of God is butter melting on toasted crumpet trolls By the ring on the shelf made of sea drift, or an onion on the chopping board. that jumped out from the roadside, leering; the ring on the shelf made from the side God is a sandwich cut into tiny squares. their ears were gnarly and peach-coloured, of a fsh box from the Starry Maria, stranded God is the steady drip of a leaking tap in their mouths, his smile turned mocking. at Berstness the night feldfares drowned. or a pair of curtains that gape in the middle. There was the country crossroads, the clean God is an old phone in the back of a drawer stone path to home, but the dial was fxed: By this ring I summon or a set of cookie cutters in fancy shapes. in wake or sleep, I’d be afraid of the ditch. these pieces of leam to click-clack God is a dandelion clock on a windy day, one to the other, the scent of wet earth in a forest. to rub edge against edge, God is a daub of yellow paint on blank canvas. to nudge point into gap, God is a game of truth or dare. to soften, to yield this scrap to that one. God is a broken windscreen in the fast lane or a hit and run on a dark street. By the nick-notch grooves scrambling God is the black rain of Chernobyl, the sides, by the sneaked-out drool, a lone wolf in the Carpathian Mountains. the dribble, the trickle from the spoon, God is a white feather on your path, runs to the wood of the shelf. the gardener who prunes hard every winter.
By this ring, curl lip to shoulder and the elegant groove of your neck. Stand and be flled, spill sweet jam down your sides, form a ring. By this ring…
Timefolds Gail Low
Reading the archive is one thing; fnding a way to hold on to it is quite another. (Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives)
Yesterday, an email invitation came to look at Dundee’s history in archival scraps ‒ logbooks, letters, jottings, photographs. Come and see... MS 418, a black-paged album mounted pictures by Valentine of Dundee, photographic studio. Under protective tissue, curious images: high beams, railway sleepers and iron girders, a city of labouring men, bolting piece by piece, Meccano-like, grey columned piers. Near the album’s end, cheeky boys gathered chins pressed against stone, agog‒ viaduct magic, a supple arc making landfall, all toil and industry disappeared.
An adjacent box held odds and sods; MS 254, a foating factory in black and white, sales receipts, a sailing diary. In 1836, careless of life, seventy men on two ships died, ‘one hundred fatherless children’ left behind. Hazardous winters, penal labour for proft, acts too of will and skill; ships‒ ‘Narwhal’, ‘Victor’, ‘Dee’‒ with hard muscle men and whaling talk: ‘spectioneer’, ‘skeeman’, ‘harpooner’ ‘baleen’, ‘fense’ and ‘kreng’. From masts pendulous fruits hung, bodies turned inside out. Right whales were so called because they were the right ones to hunt. Sea-going leviathans barrelling through oceans with easy grace, with a blowhole memory of land, breaching acrobatically, hitting water gloriously, (with a thunderous clap to no applause), or hanging suspended in deep sleep.
A cold smirry Tay morning, wet seeping into clothes, soaking skin. A St Ayles skif heads upstream, oars slap water, each rower stretches to catch and pull, catch and pull, driving backwards in time, shearing an air ribbon wake. This tear in grey silk once healed is traceless. Still lives, distant voices; nothing to see now, only old brick stumps.
an Shepherd has a these women are a part of me and I’m lovely line in The Living a part of them.” Her grandmother was a “NMountain: ‘Place and remarkable person. Anastassia was a poet, a mind may interpenetrate till the nature journalist and a scriptwriter for Bulgarian of both is altered. I cannot tell what this national radio. Kassabova compares her movement is except by recounting it.’ I to Demeter, the goddess of harvests. “In guess – ultimately - that is what drives me times of poverty and tyranny, she [her too, this fascination with how place and mother] and my grandmother had passed human beings interpenetrate each other.” on extraordinary gifts to me: a love of Kapka Kassabova is sitting cross-legged language and literature, people and places, on the foor of her study, talking not - as emotion and expression, independent you might think - about The Cairngorms, thought and anti-conformity.” But what but about Europe’s two oldest lakes. motivated Kassabova to write To the Lake Lakes Ohrid and Prespa are “embedded was a desire to understand why “the two diamond-like in the mountain folds of women I had loved and who had so western Macedonia and eastern Albania,” much going for them (including caring and seen from above, “the pair look like husbands) had become tragic Furies; why eyes in an ancient face.” The description we were martyrs to an unknown cause.” is an apt one. There is no scientifc Much of Kapka’s early life was consensus on their precise age, but they unsettled, in place and mind. Even in could be three million years old. the womb she “revolved ceaselessly, Ohrid and Prespa’s natural and human and emerged from my mother nearly ecology are the subject of Kassabova’s sufocated by the umbilical cord which I new travel book, To the Lake: A Balkan had tied into a knot.” She is the “fourth Journey of War and Peace. Lake Ohrid has generation in a female line to emigrate.” been a presence in Kassabova’s life since Near the end of the Cold War, her family childhood. As she writes in her sparky upped-sticks and moved to New Zealand, and insightful 2008 book Street Without and later, Kassabova emigrated from New a Name, about her childhood growing up Zealand to Scotland. In her books, she in communist Bulgaria, Macedonia was is a peripatetic presence. Twelve Minutes her “frst real encounter with the outside of Love (2012), about Tango dancing, world” when she was nine years old. crosses continents, from New Zealand to Ohrid, the lake’s main town and namesake, Buenos Aeries. She has moved through was the birthplace of her grandmother, the literary forms as well: novels, poetry Anastassia. She is a central fgure in To and the essay. An early poetry collection the Lake, which examines “how families is even titled Geography for the Lost. But it digest big historio-geographies, [and] and is narrative non-fction that best suits her how these sculpt our inner landscape.” met fre-worshippers, border guards and Border and To the Lake form a neat style and writerly temperament. A certain I last met Kassabova two years ago in dancing priests. She weaves these into Balkan triptych of captured stories, ripe restlessness, of course, can be good for a this very study, which is split between a kind of folk history and a meditation for preservation. But, in another way, her writer, but it has a dark side. two rooms, one designed for refection, on borderlands and their afect on the story-addiction is simply part of her modus In To the Lake, Ohrid and Prespa one for hard graft. The study is adjacent human psyche. It won her a host of prizes, operandi. Andrew O’Hagan once wrote come to represent the uncanny doubling to her cottage near the Beauly river, including The Saltire Scottish Book of that it was important for him to leave the and paradox of the human psyche. in rural Inverness-shire. Born in 1973, the Year, The Highland Book Prize and desk behind, venture outside and “test the Ohrid is the lake of light. “Prespa is dark, she arrived in Scotland when she was the Stanford-Dolman Travel Book of the weatherproof nature of one’s style.” And and located on the fringe of Aegean 30 years old and felt immediately and Year. so, with Kassabova. To the Lake moves Macedonia, where the traditional colour “inexplicably” at home here. She lived in One of most intriguing aspects of from the deeply personal to encompass for women has been black. When I saw Edinburgh for seven years, but this has Border was Kassabova’s near-insatiable big political changes in Balkan history those black costumes, and photographs been her base for the last eight. Her study hunger for stories. At one point she was (the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the of peoples’ mothers and grandmothers sits atop a garage, and looking up at the warned by a mountain ranger “not to get rise of nation states, for instance). A glance always wearing black – even as children, dark wooden panelling on the outside, addicted to story-hunting, because it is at the bibliography reveals the amount of but only the women – [they seemed] I was reminded of a description in To like climbing. It only takes once…” From desk-work, reading and research it took. born in mourning. I feel that a lot of the Lake of the enchanting “handsome this perspective, it is useful to understand Yet, Kassabova says, “it would have never women born in the Balkans are already wood-clad houses that hoard their secrets her in the folklorist tradition of song and been ok for me, being the writer that I in mourning. I was interested in teasing in towering stacked-up foors” along the story collectors. In Scotland, one thinks am, to sit here in my study and theorise out those themes, which have been streets of Ohrid’s old town. of Walter Scott and Robert Burns. In about all of this. For me, it had to be once central to my life, but I wanted to do it Back in 2018, we met to discuss her America, Alan Lomax, the wandering again an experiential journey. It’s a kind with a light touch, precisely because it book Border: A Journey to the Edge of ethnomusicologist. In the Balkans, it’s of reckoning on the internal level, but felt so heavy. I didn’t want this book to Europe (2017). Border was about another the Miladinov brothers, born in Struga, on the external level of encounters with be a burden on the reader. Ultimately, frontier, a tripartite border zone between a town on the shores of Ohrid. The people it was a very peaceful experience, I wanted to understand the burden, and Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. During the pair travelled throughout the Balkans in which I think has something to do with ideally, to shed it. And a lake is a good Cold War, it was a militarized, forbidden the 19th century and “gathered an epic the lakes and their particular character.” place to do that.” area. Hundreds of people lost their lives collection of folk songs.” Many are still That “internal reckoning” concerns In the hands of a lesser writer, To the trying to cross it, looking for a long sung today. an “unnamed menace” – “a malaise” Lake might have become an exercise in way round to the west. For that book, Every age needs writers like these, or “indefnable sorrow” – that has self-pity. But this is no misery memoir. Kassabova travelled around this region those prepared to collect and preserve dogged the maternal line in her family. Far from it. She does eventually locate collecting human stories, some of which what otherwise might be lost. Thought “I think this is a book I have been – in the source of the “unnamed menace,” spanned centuries. Along the way, she about this way, Street Without a Name, a way - assembling all my life, because but only through an outward-looking
voyage of discovery. The Balkans are often exit from the European Union, for misunderstood in various political and example. geographical ways. Ask someone where Yet, there is hope that through art we the Balkans are and many will point to can maintain a true understanding of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, European life and identity. One way to and Kosovo, those states at the centre of look at Kassabova’s book is that its very the wars and ethnic confict that dogged structure - a matrix of stories - resists the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But the idea that one overarching narrative of Balkans extends much further south and history can take precedence over another. east, and the actual Balkan mountain Does she agree with this perspective? range which gave the peninsula its name “Yeah, again, this happened organically. spreads fan-like across Bulgaria. As for As with Border, the structure, the form the two lakes, their existence is hardly and the diferent registers of the book common knowledge. had to refect aspects of the place as I Kapka has spoken to people who’ve experienced them. I was aware of the travelled to Ohrid, but did not know balance I wanted to keep between the Prespa even existed, let alone its twin, family story – which is a portal into the Little Prespa. “I didn’t know anything wider story – and the polyphonic reality about the natural or environmental of the lakes and their true history. Their aspects of the lakes. I didn’t know they true history and present are polyphonic. were connected through underground still, Islamic caravanserais and dervish always felt there is something Balkan about Even when you are wading through miles rivers. I hadn’t explored Prespa before, monasteries appeared.” the Scottish Highlands, and perhaps that’s and miles of subsidised beans in northern which is Ohrid’s hidden twin. It’s higher Despite the erasure of much of one of the reasons why I love living here Greece, it is never truly a monoculture. (850m), but oddly enough it has a warmer this cultural tapestry, Lake Ohrid “is a so much. I’m not just talking about the There are always other species. The water temperature, which is why all the repository of everything that has gone physical similarity and wilderness. But also, other is coming through, woven among birds migrate there. It is one of Europe’s on, and so with the collective psyche. It marginality and the relationship between the bean plantations, and among an major birdlife sanctuaries, especially for holds and conserves, but it also hides. It the centre of power and what’s perceived ethnically devasted population there are the Pelican. But Ohrid has this incredible is glittery on the surface, but if you go as a political or cultural periphery. I think still remnants of the old tapestry.” story of the Ohrid eel, which travelled all deeper there is this black water of depth the Highlands obviously at one point The Naum Springs, which Kassabova the way from the Sargasso Sea. Then, in and secrets, illusion and nightmares and were a romanticised topos and are now visits at the end of the book, are an the early years of Tito’s Yugoslavia, they pain.” Kassabova visited the last remaining - culturally - getting away from that. I example of one of these remnants: a site dammed The River Drim, during an era Dervish tekke, or lodge house, of Ohrid feel that very few who don’t live in the of worship from early paganism to the of grand industrial communist projects.” town. The caretaker, “Slavche, one of the Highlands actually understand the place. present day. “Communion with clean Of course, the region is not terra local matriarchs, immediately not only There is a lot of projection going on. water is humanity’s precious link with incognita. Many well-known writers remembered Tatjana – my dead aunt – but Projection is one of the themes of my eternity – even when all else is lost.” Back have travelled through and written entire scenes from her funeral and from book. The old project on to the young all in Scotland, Kassabova has been surprised about the beauty of the lakes and their her life and her mother’s life emerged their neuroses and fears. The great powers “to discover how many healing wells there polyglot peoples, writers like Edith and shared them with me on the spot, project on to the smaller ones.” used to be in Britain. It is about what Durham, Henry Brailsford, and Rebecca almost as if she had been expecting me. I This all circles back to Kassabova’s survives. There is no question that water West, who documented her trip in the think that is a quality of the lake. The lake central quest at the start of To the Lake: worship was practised across Europe, well-known Balkan travelogue Black afects people’s psyches.” Slavche relates to fnd the source of that “identifable it was just part of how people lived. In Lamb and Grey Falcon. The Bulgarian her conversion to Islam after falling in sorrow” in her matrilineal line. As it turns Scotland, in the Highlands, a lot of it has novelist, Dimitar Talev, created a famous love and the consequences this had for out, it concerns the subtle interplay of been erased. The healing springs have literary matriarch called Sultana who is her family life, and through this we learn the personal and political. After World closed up; they have retracted back into closely associated with the lakes. She is about the Balkan Suf tradition and its War One, the “great powers” parcelled up the earth because there is no human story central to his quartet of novels set in the wider unorthodox history in the story of - Balkanised - the Balkans into mutually any more. The lakes and mountains of my national revival period. The 19th century Islam. hostile territories. A region of no borders book have been through the devastation illustrator and poet Edward Lear travelled Like concentric circles, the stories was suddenly full of sharp dividing lines and of war, but many of these beliefs and the on horseback through the region as Kassabova collects spread out over nation states with populations claiming a interactions between human and non- a landscape painter. He wrote a diary wider and wider historical waters. But unique identity and language, then came human still go on, and there’s something of his travels and produced a wealth of each storyteller who has brought their the Cold War and Communism, and rich and precious about that.” exquisite drawings and paintings. The voice to the region, has also brought with each new reality, “the psyche of the Since I frst read Border, two years ago, landscape, with its mountainous peaks their own prejudices to bear on it. Only people had taken a hit…the cumulative one line in particular has stayed with and troughs, its wild cherry and apple Edward Lear, concerned as he was with loss ran so deep that the prospect of any me; it seems to capture something of gardens, caves and monasteries, seems like imagery and landscape, is the possible further loss, no matter how small, had Kassabova’s writing. “Perhaps the story of an artist’s ideal dreamscape. “In his Ohrid exception. Writers like West, Durham and become intolerable.” all our lives is the story of what’s lost and watercolours men loiter at corners, dressed Brailsford “had one thing in common: “We were colonised rather than how we go about looking for it.” What’s in long woollen capes, fezzes, baggy the knowledge that they were from the colonisers. I think that puts you in a lost can be a healing well, a monastery, a Turkish shalvar trousers, or traditional ruling race…that their people ran half very diferent paradigm. You are forever landscape, a memory, an idea, a people, a white Macedonian or Albanian kilt-like the world, that the governments in their trying to recover from having been the way of life. With Border, To the Lake and fustanellas over trousers.” great capitals called the shots even here.” colonised, at least in your own mind. This her other books of narrative non-fction Lear found the lakes surrounded by I mention the Scottish travel writer John is one of the complexes of the Balkans. Its that are her preferred form, Kassabova has a colourful blend of civilisations. The Foster Fraser, who travelled to the lakes people think themselves victims long after found a perfect way to search for what area has a rich classical history. Since at the turn of the twentieth century for they are no longer anything of the sort. is lost, and to unearth the real stories of the Medieval Bulgarian and Byzantine his book Pictures from The Balkans (1906). The victim mentality, this competition of history, in all their multifariousness. era it has been known as “the Balkan He compared the Albanian mountains sufering, remains. I ended up calling it a Jerusalem.” A melting pot, it has always to those of Scotland, which Kassabova cult of sufering. A cult of war.” Of course, been a multi-lingual place. At one time, thinks was “a Byronic projection on his the post-war construction of nations also there were allegedly 365 churches on part.” Nevertheless, does Kassabova see saw the rise of a strange form of nativism the shores of Ohrid. The Egnatian Way, a any parallels between the region and her - ethno-nationalism - which infected major Roman road, runs past the lakes on home? all the Balkans. It is still alive today and its way from “Dyrrachium on the Adriatic “He [Foster Fraser] actually travelled is a reminder that dangerous forms of To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War to Constantinople on the Bosphorus. along the same road that I travelled with nationalism are on the rise throughout and Peace is published by Granta Books, Later, Orthodox hermitages and churches my cousin into Albania…For me, there Europe. No country is immune: a vapid £14.99, and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of were hewn into the limestone, later are no straightforward parallels. But I have form of nationalism precipitated Britain’s the Week in February this year.
Clif at Noss Night-drive, Deer Minor Comedy Unit Imogen Forster James Andrew Marka Rifat
They say this wet rock reaches Headlights peel back black And who would expect to essay as far down into the sea to show more road ahead a variety routine as the clif stands dry above. as trees stand, bright. to prove one’s marbles intact?
Staring into the drowning dark, A pair of eyes scintillates Rushed from the accident, I have no ID, under the glassy slip and swell from a spindly statue no one in uniform believes the age I give, of its elastic skin, I see what with ears pricked upwards they suspect my wrinkle-free insistence could be plankton, ocean-drifters, before the quick turn smacks of concussion, name-kin of the wandering planets. and change into darkness. so my audition begins while ofcial verifcation starts Or might this be no more ofstage. than a fne land-dust, endlessly Beyond this passing light, falling through unbordered black? there is only that. The germ-free curtain opens with a spotlight to make my pupils dance Does the clif drop sheer, a mirror I pass with an entrechat. picture of its twin in upper air? There is no applause. Or is it loose, stepped and slabbed, Before the Play at Uig Hall On to the clowning and my tongue bottoming in a shifting rubble feld, Clair Tierney must produce a pomp rock leer. tide-stirred, worked smooth by storms? A quick nod, then we progress to Groucho Marx. Before the play at Uig Hall I waggle roguishly, even alternating left and right – Gannets, safron-smudged, two fowery lasses create wakes in puddles nurse ticks, non-committal. A tough gig this. their tails as stif as whittled wood, backwards skipping by the Echaig Now infate the cheeks and hold. bank on ink-dipped wings, hang I am Dizzy Gillespie, becoming dizzy, as if strung on wires, plunge Silt sides where wellies sink as, in audience participation mode, in arrow-showers, seeing what Rapids under the bridge she tries to push my jazz bulges in. I cannot see: the silver-fashing Leaves to let fall, switch, and watch The audit reaches its fnale. shoals, rock-anchored urchins for on the other side “Now smile.” I produce an Otto Dix rictus and soft incurled anemones. and win the coveted part of It is a conversation the river speaks the un-concussed. Each bird rises from its narrow babblings and sputterings. Exit minor injuries unit, stage right, ledge, dives, a sea-forager, That I could swim in that river Chastened, bruised, feeling so much older than I look. returns and dives again, next season when the rain’s been water and air its single element. that trout brown bend ‘neath peaty clears, a pale belly glimpsed. Dad Dancing Marka Rifat Leveret Before the play at Uig Hall Imogen Forster two fowery lasses create wakes in puddles Beer bellies bouncing backwards skipping elbows jabbing and fapping, Walking up the lane I almost tread on it, thick-soled shoes hitting the foor lying on one side in a patch of crusted to random rhythms, mud, grey, hairless. The eyes are shut, hefty hips swinging, the visible ear folded back into a pink sweat fying of broad brows, petal, the soft underside motionless. then he steps out, takes his rightful place in the maelstrom, The legs lie straight, feet the size of pigs’ and holds out his strong hand. trotters made for a dolls’ house kitchen. I stare, sure that it’s dead. I daren’t touch, I battle through and, fngertips locked, not fearing it will be cold, but that intact, we smile. This is our time, immaculate, it may still be blood-warm. our silent dialogue begun once I could stand and nurtured across the years, A pinhead belly-button tells me grown into elaborate displays it breathed through this soft nostril, for our pleasure. sucked milk with this blunt snout. I hear a tractor, and so that it’s not His lightest push and I spin, burst open under the high roaring wheel dip, move in and back, I shoe it into long grass, seeing it now curl into his protecting arms as itself, this hare, fve inches long. and twirl out into space to be caught once more and a new set of moves begins. He is a boy in the dance hall, A young man at his wedding, a father with his daughter, all in one beat.
The Highland Book Prize Duais Leabhair na Gàidhealtachd Presented by the Highland Society of London Short Story by Rachel Carmichael Moniack Mhor Writers’ Centre, the Highland Society of London and the Ullapool Book Festival Moniackcongratulate Mhor the shortlistedWriters’ authorsCentre, for the the Highland 2019 Highland Society Book Prize.of London Unfortunately, and the in Ullapoolresponse ✯ Bookto COVID19, Festival our congratulate event at the 2020 the Ullapool shortlisted Book Festivalauthors has for been the cancelled. 2019 Highland The result Book of the Prize,2019 Highland to be awarded Book Prize at will the be Ullapool announced Book online Festival on Saturday on 9thSaturday May. Please 9th May follow 2020. us on social media for updates. Details of the 2020 Highland Book Prize will follow in May 2020. he hears the phone ring, and then stuck in some Tupperware so that her husband stumbling out of the she wouldn’t eat them herself. They got Sbedroom and down the stairs to the freezer after the last big case, nearly answer it. She drifts of again for a minute two weeks’ overtime from that one. or two, then he is back in the room, Maggie says you can get a whole lamb, dressing in the dark, knocking something butchered, for £11. Maybe she’ll speak over. to him about that when he’s back. What’s happening? she asks him. It’s still early. There was little on Called out. A wee girl. the morning news: searches continue, She wishes he hadn’t told her. She concern is mounting. She turns of the falls asleep again anyway. radio, too cheerful and trivial. The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to When the alarm clock goes, she has The house is tidy and clean without the Channel by David Gange (William Collins) forgotten that he’s gone until she turns on him in it. She used to laugh at this, the light and sees a pile of clothes and the his disorderly conduct. She sits for a Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie (Sort of Books) collapsed stack of football programmes on while with a cup of tea and her library Spring by Ali Smith (Penguin Random House) his side of the bed. That’s more for her to book, but a romance feels wrong in the tidy up today. She goes to the next room circumstances, and she thinks she might Moder Dy by Roseanne Watt (Polygon) to wake the girls. The room is cold, the have read this one before. The street storage heaters are useless. Maggie next outside is quiet, children at school or READER COMPETITION: Would you like to win a copy of all eleven books door is getting central heating in time for kept indoors. She writes a list to take to on the 2019 Highland Book Prize longlist? Can you help us to read for the 2020 Christmas, but Maggie works. There’s no the shops and thinks about phoning her longlist? Recommend a friend for our Volunteer Reading Panel for your chance to job that she can do, with the girls to look mother. She puts her fnger in the zero, win at www.highlandbookprize.org.uk/call-for-readers/ after, with his shifts and the call-outs in turns and releases it. By the time it has the middle of the night. clicked back to the bottom of the dial she @highlandbook1 Supported by the William Grant Foundation She watches them each morning has imagined her mother’s voice asking as they walk along the pavement and questions she can’t answer, and changed disappear round the corner, the little her mind. one stopping to pull up her socks, then A key turns in the front door and It’s Thursday. School. I’ll be outside for a few minutes, he running to catch up with her big sister. footsteps thud up the stairs. Water runs in Right. says. They haven’t really noticed. Sometimes the bathroom. He comes into the kitchen He picks up the newspaper, glances at He takes a cigar from a drawer, the older one asks if Daddy’s still at in jeans and a jumper and sits down the back page. grimaces at her as he wiggles it in front work. without a word. He looks tired, older. He Anything to eat? of his mouth. She thinks about what they’ll eat smells diferent. She doesn’t know what It’s all frozen. I can thaw something It’s the only thing that takes away the tonight. In the freezer she sees the three to say to him. for you. mortuary smell. She’ll have to take his dinners that she’s made for him this week, Where are the girls? he says. suit to the cleaners.
he dog’s a bitch.’ I said. mind a fve-year-old blackie tup. So the Derek, I think, heard pup got dropped of at my house. Partly ‘Tme. The windows of his then, my own fault. I wouldn’t swap her pick-up probably wouldn’t open now anyway. Part of the family. I can’t more than the inch at which they Short Story by Carey Coombs imagine me saying that! already sat. If the well-used exterior I like it up here. I like the solitude. I was an indication of a well-used like the wind. I like the rain. I like the electrical system then I knew that ✯ cold. I like that spring’s a bastard. I like the the wiring looms within the vehicle grass not growing when it should because would be in a similar state to the door it’s too bloody cold. I like that my ewes handles, bodywork, lights and bumpers- slow and unsteadily increasing inebriation well as another bitch who is a bitch want to die, and if I’m not on their case tied up and stuck up with twine and had been an attractive proposition. But and another dog who is a dog. The dog day after day after day, they do die. I like tape. Roadworthiness in these parts is a only if the immediate euphoria of the who is a bitch is only four months old it because I have to deal with it and I like subjective assessment. Roseanne, his wife, loosened inhibitions, entwined with the so does deserve some consideration. that I have to swim against the tide. I like waved cheerily from the passenger seat, camaraderie and bonhomie of newfound The other two deserve a little also. A the fght here better than the fghts I have probably fushed with world domination intimacies and confessions, could sense of responsibility has not suddenly won and lost that have banged me up for from within the industrial tent. Her outweigh the dark, painful, morbidity materialised within me. I’ve always cared, weeks or months. Coke highs and petty world. Derek himself mouthed words and paralysis of being, that would surely other facets of my character usually got in theft, temper-driven fsts, drink and drive. that were probably meant to indicate unfold over the ensuing 24 hours. Once frst though. I like a clean fght. that he couldn’t stop now, but really he it could have. Yesterday it might have. But I needed another dog, but when I said The dog and the bitch and the dog wasn’t running away, just hastily exiting a today it didn’t. dog, I meant dog. If I’d wanted a bitch I’d who is a bitch greet me. Great to be showground ready to head home. North That’s the blessing of being on one’s have said bitch. I prefer dogs. I need the greeted. and then east. own. I could deliberate on my own power and strength of a rough-around- We’ll watch the mist roll in, the rain I pondered my own imminent departure, or otherwise. No friend or the-edges kind of hill dog. Derek had beat across the glen, clouds scud, the sun departure. I had studied with interest the partner to ask, or consider. No-one to always had good hill dogs. None of your break through, night fall, dawn break, mist Blackface sheep judging, briefy taken in negotiate with over meals or mealtimes. sleekit, creeping, shy little triallers that rise, sun shimmer, snow turn to slush. the suckler cow and calf competition and No human partner that is, because I had wouldn’t say boo to a goose, should they “One life,” I say to the pup. neatly sidestepped the bar. An afternoon of the dog who is a bitch to consider, as have the misfortune to meet one, never
from the whale itself. She’d never seen elly danced across the sand, a live one before, and she wasn’t sure if singing under her breath as she she wanted to now. But here she was, Kmade her way towards the shore. kneeling next to the great animal’s eye, The whale didn’t move, but she was used looking into something that was looking to that: whales beached here regularly Story by Heather Beaton back at her. and this one looked like just any other. “Hello?” she whispered, “I’m sorry to A deposit from the sea that didn’t mean disturb you, but I just wanted to see.” much, but this one was recent and fresh, ✯ “Yes,” came a whisper back at her, “I and it was these she liked best, before they understand. I am glad though, for I think got smelly and rotted onto the sand. I need some help.” Once upon a time the beachings would the sun would be setting before she got they meant a good surprise, or a bad one. The whale was lying slightly tilted have been a rare occurrence. Kelly knew hungry. The long walk back across the Adults, sometimes, were hard to read. towards its left-hand side, mouth ajar. that from the mutterings of her mum and sand wasn’t a nice experience in the dark, Once she reached the whale she It was a sperm whale: Kelly knew that dad, above her head, about there being and her parents, in their worry, would completed the obligatory walk round much. They had the big heavy head, and another one down on the shore, and it make even her homecoming unpleasant. clockwise, eyes averted to not ruin the the teeth like bowling pins. She had a wouldn’t be long before there was none She’d not been caught out by the surprise of examination while entering tooth sitting on her bedroom windowsill left in the sea if it kept going at this rate. darkness yet this winter, but this was the into her latest adventure. Someone had alongside other treasures. Her dad had Kelly wasn’t sure what it was, and didn’t frst whale for a couple of months and once told her that to walk clockwise told her that they used to cost a lot of really mind: life was an adventure, and the there was a lot to explore. around something for the frst time was money. They don’t any more, most people beach was a playground, and the whales As she danced light-footed across the good luck, and she’d made sure to walk have one or two as the beached whales were just another treasure that became sand she tried not to look too closely at clockwise ever since then, especially with have become more frequent. part of a game where the carcasses acted the whale. Her imagination had already the whales. Using the time to complete “What should I do?” Kelly asked, as supporting characters that regained life started piecing together the story that the story, once the walk was complete her voice only slightly louder than her as a prop for her imagination. she’d enact out, and too many distractions she would be ready for her imagination breathing, her heart stopping with fright. Wrapped up warm in her pink were no good: it needed to be right in to take over. This time, however, was When telling her about whales, no one unicorn jacket, woolly gloves and wellies front of her before she could commit to diferent: the whale was still alive. had ever told her they talked back. that cast a red light onto the wet sand as the whale and to the story. An only child, As she’d approached she’d thought The whales voice seemed to come she walked, Kelly was ready for adventure. Kelly was used to spending lots of time she’d seen movement out of the corner from somewhere deep inside Kelly herself. She’d brought her bucket and spade, just by herself. This was changing though, of her eye. A gull, possibly, making early The vibrations came through the sand, as in case digging was required, and her her mum was heavy and slow with a investigations into the carrion. But the deep voice whispered through her. parents wouldn’t expect her home until full belly: a ‘surprise’, she’d heard her without even having looked directly at The whisper was a soft, melodious cry, tea time. It was early winter, though, so parents describe it as. She had no idea if it, Kelly knew that the movements came
aching through millennia, a last call of a the whale damp, trying desperately to lift hands and feet, while trailing a line of the whale out. The sand parted where the species heading towards extinction. the deadening weight of its heavy, water- netting behind her. whale rested, allowing the whale to access “There’s something inside me, right requiring bones. The whale burped, and malodourous the canal and knowing now was the time down deep and I am slowly starving to Half of Kelly’s life was lived in a fumes followed Kelly out of the whale’s to leave, the whale exhaled its thanks as death. Remove it, and I think I’ll be able daydream, and now her reality was equal mouth. the sea pulled it home. to get of the sand. The tide has turned, it to the wildest of her dreams. Perhaps that “There’s a wee bit more, would you “A million times, thank you,” the won’t be long before it reaches us. If you was what enabled her to remain calm as mind?” asked the whale, and kindly whale sang in its deep, melodious voice, are quick, there might be time.” she walked towards the gaping mouth, opened its mouth for Kelly to climb back “I was near to death, and you, dear girl, The whale lay in place and continued and crouched down to see in. Then, in. Kelly this time slid down without have saved me. I will be eternally grateful, to slowly breathe through its still wet apologising for being clumsy, and heavy, hesitation, and carefully prodded and thank you, thank you.” blowhole, moving as little as possible. It and weird-tasting, Kelly climbed past the pulled at the remaining blockage to “Glad to have helped,” said Kelly watched Kelly through its blood speckled teeth into the whale’s large mouth, and lay remove everything that remained. She brightly, waving her plastic spade in eye, the weight of the world seeming along the tongue. The tonsils were larger had to climb in and out four more times farewell. “I’ll take this plastic with me and to get heavier and heavier with every than her head, the oesophagus huge and before getting the last of it, tying a line put it in the bin for you. Please don’t eat breath. gaping. The smell of fsh, of digestion and around her waist each time and climbing any more.” “Please.” It begged, and Kelly, kind- of something sourer and wilder than both up and walking straight out the mouth “I’ll do my best not to, thank you hearted and young enough to not have of those things rose from inside the whale. to release the foreign materials onto the again!” and with fnal words of gratitude, learnt the word ‘can’t’, couldn’t bear She covered her nose as well she could, sand. On her last visit, she took an almost the whale sank into the water of the seeing the animal in pain and nodded her burying it into the collar of her jacket intact plastic bag and picked up the wee canal and made the short journey to sea. assent. and shifted forward so that she could bits of debris that stuck to the walls of the Kelly watched as the whale swam out to “Now I think this is how it’ll have reach down, before slipping she fell into oesophagus: the crisp packets, the balloons, the deeper waters beyond the rocks and to be,” the whale whispered, as Kelly the whale. the cotton buds, the cigarette ends and waved frantically as it blew, and then with crouched next to its one visible eye: “can “Whoops,” she heard the voice from the straws. The whale waited until Kelly a dramatic pause, breached, landing back you climb in my mouth, and reach down somewhere outside where she was, “You was out safely, before coughing, then on the deep water with a splash that could my throat, and take out all the stuf that’s might need to climb out now, but grab coughed thrice more, relishing the release be heard back at Kelly’s home. stuck in me?” something and bring it with you, please.” from plastic and feeling instantly brighter Her parents looked out the window The cold winter sun looked down Kelly looked at where she’d fallen. and healthier. and saw the wee fgure of their daughter and watched with interest as the wee Everything was almost dark, and she must The water was almost fnished marching about on the beach, still wearing girl worked away to save an unknown be on the way to the whale’s stomach, but working on the channel, which was now her pink unicorn jacket, tying a large pile creature’s life. The sand shifted, eager to there was something there, stuck, and as the depth and width of a canal, and just of plastic – which in the end consisted have the weight of its back, and the water she looked below her feet, she could see right for a whale stranded on the sand. of one fshing net, three lengths of rope, worked on creating a channel through it was plastic fshing net, tied and twisted The sun continued to beam down, trying one length of strapping, numerous plastic which the whale could extricate itself. and tangled. Easing a corner free, Kelly desperately not to set, and hoping to make bags, plastic cofee cups, gloves and myriad The mountains cried with the wrongness tied it around her waist, and clambered the events below as pleasant as possible other small pieces - together. Bemused, of the whale on the land, and the particles back up through the whale, using the for both girl and whale, and the west they looked at one another, shrugged, and in the air fzzed with intention, keeping ridges within the oesophagus for her wind died right down to prevent drying went back to their respective tasks.
Canticle on the Wild Rockpool Border Hills Atlantic Way Nikki Robson Julian Colton Nikki Robson She’s a swig of tranquil ocean, Now I have more space cupped between her capture and the rescue she implores. These lines of pencil grey hills Holy Mary, Mother of God, she’s in the Rockery. Come into focus. In her temporary state of tamed and stormless, Sandstone gleams gold at the feet of the Virgin, bids you kneel with needle whelk and hare And given more time upright in a cofn with Snow White glass front, and laps your ear as if it were a shell, It will be the same for you nailed in from wind sweep and horizontal squall. You will realise murmurs calmly, then wheedles with magnetic pull. Blue-cloaked and resplendent, she’s eager for founder, The tide comes in and numbs your legs The places we walked craves lobster, wild salmon and pollock and trout; so you can’t feel the graze and gash All the loving words we talked interned mediatrix, she faces a wall. of basalt scraping skin. Had real meaning
She yearns to be bedded instead in the Chancel, When you realise her whispers gale A signifcance to nose past the gable to the foot of Sliabh Liag to wild Atlantic roar you’re in too far. Beyond mere idle dreaming so her wide eyes can pilgrim immeasurable seas. The current’s strong, you can’t break back And bricks and mortar. all cries are froth – Entombed in the garden, her gaze on a sparrow, there is no salvage now. When walls fall to ground she twitches for feathers or sticky petunia, What lasts and surely remains – a sand-scratch or salt-snif from coves far below. These lines of green hills
Ave Maria, Our Lady of Sorrows. In all seeing eyes Her half-smile strains stony, Refected by your soft hand indignity shrouding beatifed bliss. This love and these hills.
Gardener FISH Sharon Black Amelia Graham
A young man in a greenhouse Last night I dreamed I was a fsh, brushes down a shelf, a cloud of soil settling slipped a knot twice around my wrist and let myself at his feet. Seedlings wait in small black pots. slide, toe frst, into the silver, rocked A tall shrub stands in terracotta. and overgrown water where He wears a blue hat, blue overalls I eventually shrank to a scaled and slippery size. and a tidy calm expression. Like salmon in a river’s belly, waiting to fash I used to want to be a gardener – back against the peaty gold fow, to spend my days pressing life down into soil I found and tugging life out of it. Once, in my river I harvested potatoes, sank my hands to my surprise to fnd the nesting clumps that same want to fll and raise them to the surface, to return and satisfy that overwhelming- each one a brimming golden fontanelle – to go home. we laid them out in rows: they looked like infants in a nursery, curled and sleeping. So I pushed against the stream’s awesome load, I used to want to love like that. These days weighted against me my hands are clean. They busy themselves full of stones and spawn knocking on a keyboard: see the rows and charging thick foam to fnd the place where it all started long ago, of inky shoots and tendrils pushing up back when I let the river stream me from some mysterious gloom. The gardener’s face down towards the sea and out into the world. is creased in concentration as he stacks his trowels and markers, forks and shears, Salmon travel out to sea and return carries a potted shrub again by instinct, need. across the lawn, out of sight. We return, when we are worn, to some old family home ‘a pool of one’s own’
The Inner Isles This morning I book the 11:00 am train from Sharon Black Kings Cross to Inverness, and call my mother on the phone. Someone withdraws a faring match from the stout red candle Thoughts of my returning surface as a smile. and slides it, pink-tipped, into its box.
I gather the gifts I brought and tuck them into my case; swing the door Butterfies closed on a freshly made-up room. Amelia Graham
I feel suddenly at home, I had never seen so many of them before. blow salt air and chip fat over Baile Mór, stride backwards onto the ferry It was as if they had all come home and settled after some great migration, but then and stand upstairs to watch the island of course, they couldn’t settle; receding, my frst sight of the abbey they were newly born. swimming from view. There were so many that they began to burst through the cracks of the house I hand a prawn-stufed sandwich and flter through our rooms, and a bag of garlic mussels to the girl behind the counter. My broken As if freedom was an interior thing, Searching for the next cocoon. suitcase wheel rights itself on Oban station platform So often, within each of those panelled rooms, they became and I tip the book I’ve just fnished onto a table, crushed and dusted by my cat’s paws, Her hot mouth expectant for them, hurtling towards Glasgow, a week of R&R For one to come through a window’s seam and fitter like an unread letter at my back. towards that bulbed light in the hallway I miss the island, miss my friends, I left on after dark. Blindly batting against a false heat. miss the stout red candle, the scallops I didn’t eat, the rest of the wine, In those summered nights, I would listen to their fumblings, the huddle at Columba’s Bay, the time, Until I couldn’t hear them moving anymore; and I would know that she had got them all, one the time I’m running out of, cooling by one, like the air vent at my feet. Their small bodies arching for one last bit of sun, As I let them die amongst the dark.
Jack’s Shires St Blane My Final Inverkeithing Derek Crook Robin Munro Paula Jennings
Such elegance they had, Ertha had a son. Travelling backwards on the Edinburgh train, those massive horses. They blamed a spirit from a well soft foldings of felds south of Dairsie I marvelled on the frosty morning but blame was not her feeling rise through steep woodland to Blebo Craigs. when I frst turned up for work. as the life force grew. Then broad beaches at Burntisland and Kinghorn, sand-ruched and silvered with pools, Together they calmly galleoned into the light She named him Blane. give way to modest birches gilding the edge from the black shed that held their mooring, We hear tell of them cast adrift, of the diesel-blasted track. Nearing Aberdour Jack between them, a coracle, a well turned boat his hands high a rounded myth. I look out for seals that bask on rocks at low tide, to hook his fngers in their bridles. their fat packed tightly into dappled skins. Seven years of course Then trees too fast to be anything but generic They minced across the frosty cobbles, then ‘home’ to the care of Catan. become alders, their roots in a murky burn pale feathers tossing over Catan and his nephew Blane, as the train slows on the approach to Inverkeithing delicate and heavy hooves the South end named for them. where the platform is shorter than the train that struck metallic thuds and we are warned to take care when alighting. on the uneven stones. Bute or beyond, we are all adrift in a frail craft And I’m looking back down my familiar tracks, Four enormous haunches, directed by wind thinking of that short platform and my shortening years two black, two brown, informed by the spirit of a spring. and what’s ahead, that fnal Inverkeithing, and gleamed richly in the rigid light I can see myself stumbling through a darkening train as side by side they sipped from quiet coach B, through the vestibule to coach C icy water from the rusty trough. where the platform is neatly aligned and a voice, Both tilted one rear hoof Legend that has been waiting all my life, orders me to alight. like dancers asking for a pump to be inspected. Robin Munro
They raised their heads together, I thought I heard muzzles dripping and moved with dignity over the Kerry Kyle Looking Out towards the craft they’d mastered. a dead dog bark Paula Jennings from the other shore Every day more words elude her. a shepherd’s dog They march ahead like giants Jessie who swam the Narrows with far-of piccolo voices. Derek Crook to his man’s Kilmichael grave Sometimes she can barely catch up. in a tale Jessie clumped down her steps, I like to believe ‘You…listen…and… her body heavy with fesh, you…have the pleasure… her mind with drugs. love over water to go out…’ over death. Her doctors could not help She wants to go out. her body lose its fesh My own dead Ben but they could help her barks sometimes in the night for me. I explain about safety, about seizures, keep some imitation of a mind. I let him be about not being a nurse, not being allowed. She picks up a teddy bear, shakes it. The shy smile came quickly but was not focussed on my eyes. ‘You are not…going out. Something pharmaceutical You are… staying here. was greeting me. Who are you?’
She did not see the day was nice She laughs bitterly, stands it on its head. but peacefully agreed with me that it was nice. Somehow I list the advantages the niceness of the day of this benevolent detention: wasn’t with me any more. meals cooked, laundry done, art classes in the morning, the fddle player from Edinburgh. Bute and Beyond Robin Munro ‘Is it enough to keep you going?’ I ask foolishly. This way the genes insist ‘No’. this hefted Island way Her veined hand gestures the length of the outside world, a ‘Brandane’ which measures the same as the conservatory windows. planted in that ‘loveliest of Mays’ to navigate this crazy life branded with the Brendan faw: wanting for all our wandering, Bute and beyond, those journeys never made.
Christopher Priest to Jef Noon and be on the ascendant. Which is surely apt; Robert Rankin, show little difculty might not the SF novel be a better vehicle setting their work in England, relatively for exploring a world where our lives are few Scottish SF or fantasy writers have increasingly enveloped by science and actively chosen to set their stories in a technology? recognisable Scotland. Interestingly, when It’s impossible, of course, to speak they do – for example, Andrew Crumey’s of Scottish Science Fiction without Mobius Dick and Sputnik Caledonia – they mentioning the late, much-missed Iain receive signifcantly more mainstream Banks who, for many years, alternated literary attention than their supposed between writing equally successful Science Fiction peers. ‘mainstream’ and Science Fiction novels, Nevertheless, the “visionary thread the latter supposedly (but not always) woven through Scottish story-telling” distinguished by the additional middle noted by Neil Williamson and Andrew J initial ‘M’ (for Menzies). Wilson – the editors of that 2005 Nova Having an author of Banks’ Scotia anthology – has frequently expressed commercial success and standing itself “in a sense of the otherworldly”. undoubtedly encouraged a generation of Admittedly, authors such as James authors — many linked through Science Hogg and George MacDonald drew their Fiction fandom and long-running inspiration chiefy from Celtic myth and writers’ groups — to focus on the genre Border ballads—the latter’s Phantastes: exclusively rather than firt with it like ost of Scotland is Scottish ancestry”. John W. Campbell A Faerie Romance for Men and Women their predecessors. The result is that many ‘rural’, yes, but a sizeable and Edmond Hamilton, of course, had (published in 1858) in turn infuencing of the most notable English-language “Mswathe of it is very clearly Scottish surnames, while E E English fantasy writers such as J.R.R Science Fiction writers of recent years defnitely urban; and over the past two ‘Doc’ Smith and Jack Williamson came, Tolkein and C.S Lewis. In more recent – such as Gary Gibson, Leeds-born and a half centuries the contributions respectively, from decidedly Scottish- times, this strand of Scottish literature Charles Stross, Finnish-born Hannu of Scots to science, engineering and sounding Presbyterian and Southern US could be said to have peaked with Rajaniemi – are based in – or have strong industrialisation have been enormous.” So State backgrounds. Alasdair Gray’s Lanark; yet, like Jekyll connections with – Scotland. wrote David Pringle, in his introduction There’s an attractive simplicity and Hyde, Lanark’s status as a modern Last year, Ken MacLeod – arguably to the 2005 anthology Nova Scotia: New to Pringle’s theory, except that – of literary classic also means that we often Scotland’s leading SF writer – contributed Scottish Speculative Fiction, published by course – it fails to recognise just how fail to recognise that its sections set in an introduction to the recently-published Mercat Press. many Scottish writers, from the late the dystopian Unthank are undeniably anthology Scotland in Space: Creative Visions However, one thing puzzled the 19th century onwards, did at least Science Fiction. and Critical Refections on Scotland’s Space former editor of Interzone, the UK’s occasionally write what we would now While no overtly Scotland-based Futures (Shoreline of Infnity). The book longest-running new Science Fiction and term Science Fiction. Curiously, Pringle writers in the early 20th century could brings together new Science Fiction Fantasy magazine: “It has always seemed in his introduction, dismissed claims for be said to have wholly embraced the rise short stories and science fact responses, to me that there should have been more Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of ‘scientifction’, there were defnite all created in deliberately-nurtured Scottish SF writers, especially in the light of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which he felt exceptions—David Lindsay’s 1920 dialogues between authors, scientists and of the recurrent ‘modernising’ tendencies was “more horror fantasy” than science debut novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, with humanists. in Scottish history […] when Scotland fction. Yet surely the same could equally its vision of a man seeking physical and At a basic level, this collaborative has shaken of the dead weight of its be said of that other alleged founding psychological transformation on an process simply highlighted how, as the past and bounded ahead in certain vital text of Science Fiction, Mary Shelley’s alien world, remains infuential, not least astronomer Alastair Bruce pointed out, respects.” Frankenstein? (again) on Tolkein and Lewis. there’s “no reason your imagination can’t Until the explosive literary arrival of Such literary defnitions are Nevertheless, some critics were still get some of the physics right”. More Iain M. Banks, and then Ken MacLeod, problematic, of course, given that the surprised when Naomi Mitchison, who importantly, though, it contributed to however, Pringle suggested that notable likes of Shelley, Stevenson and his had used SF tropes for great allegorical imaginative explorations of how Space – Scottish writers of Science Fiction Scottish peers (such as J M Barrie and afect in many of her short stories, fnally and, in particular, the planet Mars – were simply didn’t exist; this, despite the Arthur Conan Doyle) were largely produced an overtly Science Fiction novel actually of genuinely ‘Scottish’ interest. country’s immense contribution to writing before current genre categories (in 1962) with Memories of a Spacewoman. A new take on ‘Clyde-built’, you might Britain’s industrial revolution. ‘Clyde- had become entrenched in both our Yet, while many 20th century Scottish say. built’, for example, had long become a bookshops and our minds. Yet it’s fair to writers at least dabbled in Science Fiction As MacLeod points out in his globally recognised indicator of quality ask why James Leslie Mitchell, arguably – several of John Buchan’s supernatural introduction: “We really are now building technology and engineering. And yet: Scotland’s nearest rival to H G Wells, isn’t tales are arguably SF (not least Space—in spaceships on the Clyde. Scotland’s space “so much of the culture of Scotland, remembered now for his two fascinating which a mathematician trains himself industry is booming, and sites from especially the literary culture, does seem (if somewhat naive) Science Fiction to perceive higher dimensions) – they Machrihanish to Sutherland are boosted backward-looking and anti-urban, mired works – Three Go Back, and Gay Hunter remain either isolated within the context as future spaceport sites.” If nothing in Celtic mists,” he suggested. – but rather for his A Scots Quair trilogy of the writers’ wider careers or, as with else, the stories published in Scotland in So where did they go, all those ‘missing’ of novels, written under the pseudonym Jekyll and Hyde, so successful that Space at least conceive of Scotland as a Scottish SF writers? Pringle had his Lewis Grassic Gibbon? their infuence upon, or debt to, SF is place where the cosmic can genuinely own theory—Scotland’s SF writers had Snobbery? Or is it simply because, obscured. happen. always existed, but their antecedents had particularly during the 20th century, Science Fiction, despite what Pringle been part of the country’s long history Scottish literature’s genuine struggle to might have thought, has long been Scotland in Space – Creative Visions and of emigration. As a result, the country’s be taken seriously in contrast to British Scottish literature’s Hyde: shadowy, Critical Refections on Scotland’s Space ‘frst wave’ of SF writers appeared not – English – culture, had encouraged glimpsed, often reviled, yet devilishly Futures, edited by Deborah Scott & in Scotland, but America. As proof, he an innate association between literary hard to separate from its accepted face. Simon Malpas, is published by Shoreline noted that the four leading proponents ‘relevance’ and social realism? After And, just as in Stevenson’s novel, Scottish of Infnity/The New Curiosity Shop of ‘Space Opera’ were “probably all of all, while English SF writers, from literature’s Hyde side would appear to (2019).
Seven Haiku Rodden Tree The Amazon Woman Barry Graham Edith Harper Pip Osmond-Williams winter morning — Fan Ah wis a quine there wis a rodden tree There is silence on these islands now, daylight arrives cooried in the lee o the auld grey wa. save for the skua call. Brief are the days without a story A swing wis made o strang raip an timmer and still I miss the parliament, harsh an hung fae a thick, stracht beuch. soil taunted by the lore of trees, blood snow plunges Aside the tree blumed a laylock bush. yolk of the gannet’s bed, salt spill from tower block ledges The touch o ma bairnheid wis roch sisal from the pufn kill, the rancid stench like falling bodies an laylock wis the scent. of fesh in cleits. All the blind and An the sang o ma bairnheid wis the raips gut reminders of a life, lives, duckling left behind craik oan the beuch, an the scif what it is to be still living. paddles to catch up o ma feet oan the grund. with mother and siblings In purple mornings An in a dwam Ah swung the days awa with earth’s funeral smoke children playing in ruins of mill an dreamed mony dreams, till they a became ane curling up the crags of Boreray, me 40 summers ago wi the touch an the scent an the sang. I picture barefoot circles of blackhouse girls, walking by today That quine’s lang awa but the dreams their linen dresses stitched with blood, are aye there, swingin an swingin running from the moon-mouthed boys, young woman pushing pram aneath the rodden tree. split lips licked in mustard and salt. bruise beneath her eye Sometimes I follow them, morning rain try to tuck their splintered skin into the curves and folds of Gleann Mor, zazen together, one breath Wishbone try to warn them of the smaller wars, 4000 miles but Graham Turner of love lodged under the scalloped edge, no distance between us mother tongues in the mouths of caves, “Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, loss breathing life into diferent shapes: winter street — destroys even more: the belief that any the bell curve of a diving bird, dog turd on pavement pattern exists. But we cannot, I think, the space of the wave between. shape and colour of autumn leaf survive without such belief.”– Julian Barnes There are places that I will never know. They left with backs and shoulders Do like the Etruscans: stroke of fint and stone on the Harebell don’t break she says away from Oiseval. The Butterfy Efect to preserve and share Evelyn Pye not pit the hopes I use my time wisely now. of each against another I pluck honeysuckle from rocks In the fower power sixties, a futter honouring the mystery of to learn about exposure. I have of butterfies fashed black-rimmed wings this elastic clamping found new ways to tolerate salt. — tiny stained glass windows of the clavicles I think of them often, often. that alone permits Some nights I wake, believing that I grabbing sunlight, a kaleidoscope the awe of fight – have only dreamed the mountain still. of peacocks, adonis blues, red admirals, fesh and blood Skuas take fight, diving in ribbons purple hairstreaks, orange tips. feather and branch through the sky’s white line, sinew and soil the scavenge for wreckage of This abundance is no trick of memory wormgift and windlift – forgotten life, some small secular airbrushing childhood summers as we hear you at devotion to the day, another day. — its decimation recorded the kitchen sink share Gaelic psalms for half a century by volunteers that calmed the Minch who squatted in damp grass and believing in bones The Birks o’ Aberfeldy counting absence on clipboards. believing in up Heather Beaton we hold again Sensitive to changes in climate again Here’s the place where the world ends in our warmer winters, the adults emerge in the wishful clinch. Here’s the rock where the water falls from chrysalides too soon, cling on Here’s the hole where the otter sleeps. Hear the roar, the cries and unable to fap their frosted wings the tumult or suck nectar through straw tongues Hear the sigh of pleasure deserved die rigid as sugar confections. Molecule, molecule, angel after angel, tumbling and twisting We decide to order a cup of caterpillars It’s only pleasure and pleasurable pain. and three weeks later, release The water, teasing, tickling, gently fve painted ladies. In chaos theory, the rocks And the rocks, exulting in the agonies, one butterfy can fap its wings, And the otter, the spirit, awakens, turn a tornado in Texas — stretches, who knows what fve will achieve. And becomes water again.
“Thanks for the lift!” No, we can’t have arrived, silly. The train’s Alan swings his rucksack onto his still moving!” shoulder, and slams the boot shut. Not fast “You wanted to check your suitcase.” enough to block out his father’s habitual She looks afraid. “Oh dear. I am being farewell, thrown out of his mouth as he Story by Mags Wallis a nuisance again. Just coming.” moves the gear stick into frst and pulls She bounds out of the seat, grinning down hard on the steering wheel. ✯ her head of again. Duncan shakes his Tyres veer away, car disappears. head. Alan stands on the platform, his “That smile,” he says. “If it weren’t for father’s words echoing like the cold call Shutting his book, he settles back read it to my son. And of course, before that smile!” of a curlew. in his seat. Her face is turned towards that I read it myself. They navigate the corridor - she in Train lights appear through the his. A big open smile. He fnds himself The Road goes ever on and on front, Duncan shufing behind and dimness of a November morning. The reciprocating. Opposite, the man has Down from the door where it holding on to the hem of her cardigan. train creaks to a halt, the yellow button his head down, as if reading his paper began...” Alan slides over to his seat and pulls out a lights up, the doors open. Alan stands intensely. She recites the whole verse in a magazine from his bag. aside as two cyclists ease their bikes of. “Yes - it is a big book. Third time I’ve dramatic voice. Twenty minutes later, they return with The carriage is busy. He rearranges the read it.” “That’s impressive,” he says. “How tea in lidded cups. Alan is left undisturbed suitcases to make space for his rucksack. “Can I see?” she asks. She turns it come you remember all of that?” as they chat about their bed and breakfast, With a smaller pack and guitar in hand, over. “Ah well,” she replies, “that’s one of and their plan to meet Isobel’s sister. he squeezes down the aisle, trying to “Ah, The Lord of the Rings.” She my fortes - remembering verse. Don’t ask The conversation tails away, and Alan make sense of the seat numbering. beams back. me to remember anything else though.” is aware of Isobel’s fngers edging over on 23F. Where the hell is 23? Already he’s The smile disappears. Her hand shoots She looks over to Duncan, and they to his side of the table. had to apologise for messing up someone’s across the table. hold each other’s glance for a moment. He leans his head against the cold of hair with the neck of his guitar. “Duncan!” she says. “Duncan!” Duncan takes the role of spokesman. the window, and squints at her. Ahead of him, two elderly people She’s leaning out of her seat and “We’re travelling down to Perth. Just a “You must have got on at the last sitting opposite each other. The window grabbing his arm. small holiday. We both need a break.” stop.” she comments. seat adjacent to the woman is empty. He “My suitcase! Where is my suitcase? I Isobel leans out of her seat and grabs Alan has no ready answer, but she is reaches over and pulls out the white tab. don’t have my suitcase!” hold of Duncan’s arm. unperturbed. Yes. His seat: 23F Carrbridge “That’s an elf!” she exclaims. “Isn’t – Edinburgh. it?” The woman’s face tilts up. She grins. Pictured in his magazine is a wood elf “Excuse me. May I get into my seat?” - dressed in warrior clothing, a golden Alan asks. He hates it when his mother uses cape round his shoulders, a spray of Her long fringe sweeps over the rim blonde hair cascading down his back. of her glasses. She wipes it away with her emoticons. He hates it when she “I used to paint elves, “she said. index fnger, smiling in his direction. “You used to paint elves,” Alan repeats “That’s my seat at the window. Could sends him a sad face. He hates it that slowly. you let me in?” Her eyes are ferce. “You paint elves, In one agile move, she leaves her own he hates it when she sends him don’t you? I can tell.” seat and settles into the one beside the He turns away. That old fear churns in window, still grinning. As he opens his a sad face. his stomach. What if he fnds out? What if mouth to object, he catches the look of he does? Then another voice. Alan! This the man in the seat facing. The woman is is an old lady! She’s not going to tell on now patting the place she has vacated. you. And anyway, what does it matter if “Make yourself comfortable, young he knows, you big wuss. man.” Duncan’s hand settles on top of hers. “My suitcase, Duncan! I’ve forgotten He looks round. She is waiting. He Someone behind him is getting “It’s in the luggage rack, dear. Just over my suitcase! We must stop the train. I smiles. impatient. He wedges his guitar in the there. Perfectly safe.” can’t go without my suitcase.” “You’re right! I do paint elves.” he luggage rack overhead, and sits in the seat Her hand relaxes and she slides back “Isobel!” the man says with an edge to confesses. nearest, his backpack on the table. Over into her seat. his voice. He sighs, then resumes speaking She starts to bounce on her seat. “I the top of it, he notices the expression of “Well! That’s a relief,” she says, and in a gentler tone. knew it! I knew it! Duncan! This young the man has relaxed. beams in Alan’s direction, ficking her “Remember, Isobel, how we had such man paints elves!” Alan is irritated. He wanted a window fringe away from her eyes. She lets out difculty ftting your case into the rack, Her husband looks up. “How seat. From his backpack, he produces the a big sigh. and a kind man ofered to remove his wonderful, my darling. You’ve found a novel he is reading, its cover dog-eared. Alan waits for her to ask him about case, so you could put yours in the lower kindred spirit!” His mobile phone vibrates from his the book, but she is looking out of the shelf?” She turns to Alan. “Where we lived - jeans pocket. A text from his mum: window. He clears his throat. Isobel is suspended over the table, down in Devon, that was - we had a long Just found your packed lunch in the “Hmm. So… the Lord of the Rings. Is fringe almost concealing her face. rambling garden with lots of old trees. fridge. Mum that one of your favourites? At length, she responds in a quiet The elves played close to the small pool He hates it when his mother uses She continues to look out the window. voice. “I want to see my suitcase.” that was part of the stream.” emoticons. He hates it when she sends The man opposite intervenes. Duncan clears his throat. “Young Alan looks down. him a sad face. He hates it that he hates “Isobel! The young man next to you is man…actually…what is your name?” “They got used to me being there. it when she sends him a sad face. He puts asking a question.” “Alan.” First time I saw them, I thought I was his phone back in his pocket, shuts his She swivels her head round, her chin “Alan, would you mind letting my seeing things. But no! I would sit for eyes. leaning into the cup of her hand. wife out for a moment? Then, perhaps, hours on end, and nearly always, at least What the hell? It’s that bloody woman “Yes, young man. What can I do for you’ll get to sit in your own seat.” one or two would emerge from beneath next to him, patting his arm. you?” Again, that delightful smile. Alan gets up to let Isobel out. She’s the tree roots, and come down to the He opens his book at the page where “You were asking about my book.” looking out of the window again, water’s edge.” the bus ticket sticks out. A page gets “And what book is that?” she asks. whooping with delight, pointing to a Alan wills her to stop talking. scanned without taking anything in. “You know. This book here. Have you skein of geese against the pale sky. The “Then I started to paint them She is now tapping a quiet rhythm read it?” man cocks his head and looks at Alan. from memory, catching their balletic with her palms - elegant fngers, nails She lifts it up, scrutinizing the front Alan leans over and taps Isobel on the movements, their fne features.” ungroomed. He is not surprised when he cover. shoulder. Her head fops forward. “There are hears her voice in his left ear. “The Lord of the Rings. Why yes! I “Eh, excuse me.” no elves where we live now.” Her voice “That’s a big book you’re reading.” She turns around. “Have we arrived? catches.
Duncan looks over at Alan. “So, Alan, tell us about your painting,” he says in a voice that commands an answer. Alan looks round the carriage to make sure no one else is lugging in. waney-edged wood “Well… I don’t do paintings. It’s … Isabel Thompson you know … little metal fgures that I paint - elves, trolls, dwarves. Sometimes I paint the same one twenty times until it I wish I could meander like these waney edges is just the way I want it. It’s my passion. the edges of the shelf my father made My dad doesn’t approve. He thinks it’s so that his fathers’ books could look down on us with dignity weird, and a waste of time; says I’m too above old to be playing with toys. He’s banned the fray. me from getting any more.” “So you’ve had to give up your passion! I wish I could meander like these waney edges What a great pity! How unbearable!” making fun of movement and disto Isobel is clutching on to his arm, her rting eyes wide behind her specs. line; Alan reassures her. “Oh no! I haven’t and be the bridge that crosses between solid and air: given up! I do it secretly. At night time.” deviation from what norm? “Secretly! Secretly!” Isobel seems delighted. She speaks in a deep husky If I could meander like these waney edges, voice. “Duncan! He does it secretly!” a hop and a jump and a ripple People are looking over. Alan clutches of skating palm I’d chart a course away her wrist. “Please! Keep your voice from all these crannies and down.” closed pages. She covers her mouth, her eyes dancing behind her big specs. Then leaning in, I wish I could meander like these waney edges “Have you any with you?” she whispers, drape myself like contour lines across a map her eyes on his sack. move in currents of the air and water, “Eh…maybe a few.” anywhere the drift takes me – “Go on, show them to me!” Her hand fashes out to the zipper of his bag. His hand on top of hers, Alan looks my father, a craftsman over to Duncan, who intervenes. his fnest work “Isobel!” sitting She pulls back, folding her arms, hands in a house tucked under her armpits. Her head that she’s fnally droops. There is silence. A few minutes buying him out of later, she is snoring. Alan gazes out of the window. Fields as fast chase away behind them, a faint early as the banks winter glimmer over paling stubble. His will allow. hand disappears into his bag, feels around for the cloth tie bag, cushioned inside with wool to protect the three fgures inside. He opens it, and fngers each one, Annie Morrison’s hat knowing them. Peter Godfrey He imagines himself in his bedroom. The loose foorboards at the back of the My father wore it just before he died – walk-in cupboard. The oblong tin where we rowed out to spot seals of Blakeney Point. he stores his fgures. The box where he It’s been with me in Pyrenean ice, keeps his paints and brushes. His night- on Biscay and where southern oceans join. time forays into his paint station. His stepping-stone walk across the creaking You were the best known knitter in the isles foor. His ferce heart beating, as if it were and told me over tea and girdle scones going to meet its lover. of girlhood spent barefoot walking in gales The train slows, and the tannoy when only candles fickered, lanterns shone. announces: “We are now approaching Perth. Change here for stations to You wove warm strands of Hebridean wool – Glasgow Queen Street. Please make sure your last years saw our strand of friendship forged. you take all personal belongings with How often I’ve mislaid it, felt a fool you.” till someone comes up: ‘Is this blue hat yours?’ She is sitting quietly, her hands fat on the table. He clasps her left one in order and I retrieve that fabric of the few. to pass it on. She does not pull away. For I know the benediction comes from you. a moment the fgure nestles, cool and hidden, between their palms. She closes her hand round it, brings it to her mouth. She looks into his eyes. No smile. An ancient stare. And she is gone, her husband ushering from behind. Her wide stride. His fustering steps.
t’s three in the morning, Jen should the time he’s let go of the match all she be fast asleep dreaming of Tom Hardy. can do is watch it fall, in slow motion, to IInstead, she’s plotting the demise of the foor. A look of shock futters across her cheating husband. Story by Hazel Urquhart her face and she collapses. Her screams Today was one of those rare Sundays pierce the night air as she braces for the where she cleaned every inch of the ✯ violent fames to strip the fesh from her house. She found it under the bed—the bones. perfume. Perhaps her subconscious knew The lack of pain soon flters through of the secret hiding, waiting to bring in November. It’s now obvious where he’s ..the name on the bottle the fog in her brain. Jerking upright, a her life crashing down around her. She been. strangled scream still held in her throat, thought nothing of it. Gave it a quick Her brain goes into overdrive. Rifing fashed, like a cheap Jen realises she’s still in bed. She’s not on wipe, then sat it on her dressing table and through every memory of not knowing fre. She’s still alive. Panting, she stands on carried on cleaning. where he was. There have been many— neon sign advertising shaking legs and staggers to the dressing It wasn’t till fve minutes ago, almost too many. Last week, when he came table. The perfume that consumed her drifting of to sleep, the name on the home after midnight. She’d waited up, pleasures of the fesh for nightmare is still there. Taking the bottle, bottle fashed, like a cheap neon sign dressed in her leaving-nothing-to-the- half-price. she inhales, relieved to smell its delicate, advertising pleasures of the fesh for imagination nightdress—his favourite. foral scent. half-price. Clinique Happy—she’s never He’d brushed her of, saying he was too owned Clinique Happy. In fact, she’s been tired; hard day at work. Now it made Still, she can’t ignore such a vivid asking for Clinique-efng-Happy for the sense. staggers towards the window, opening dream. Jen grabs handfuls of clothes from past two years and he’s never bought it Now, worked into a frenzy of emotion, it wide and gasping for air. Dan’s wardrobe and throws them out the for her. one minute she’s howling, snot running Jen realises, it’s not perfume, it’s window. Jeans, t-shirts, the dated suit he Jen shoots out of bed at the speed down her upper lip, and the next laughing, petrol—chemical, fammable petrol. She wore to their wedding, the expensive of a circus cannonball act, grabs the face contorted like a moon-crazed psycho. swings round, hearing a noise behind her. jumper she bought him last year that still bottle masquerading as her own and Connecting with the mantlepiece across Dan stands in the doorway, a smug smile has the tags on. The last thing she discards glares at it. No question - this is not her the room, the bottle shatters, like her on his face. is the perfume. It shatters spectacularly perfume. Where the hell is Dan? He’s hopes for the future. The expected subtle “You bastard,” she spits, curling her on the patio, shards sparkling in the been coming home late for months now. notes ravage her senses, smelling nothing hands into fsts. moonlight. She’ll buy herself a bottle of She reasoned it was down to overtime, like the upbeat emotion suggested. Jen He doesn’t respond. It takes longer than Happy tomorrow, Jen thinks. She owes it saving money for their holiday to Mexico it should to register what’s happening. By her life, after all.
ou see, Little One, we’ve come lots of us over here, and we all looked a long way from when you were out for each other. Sins from the old days Yan unspoken promise, deep were forgotten, expunged. inside of me. When I dream, I still dream Ricky Monahan Brown ‘I’ll speak to Dorothy,’ Christina had of the fne, white sands of childhood said. ‘She might not be able to get you beaches. But I dream in English now. ✯ into the kitchen, but she’ll fnd you a You know, English isn’t my frst space. People are fnding it hard. Going language. I was a star pupil at school, home.’ though, and picked it up no bother – But penance did Christina no good. hard every day to get that immigration So I worked hard, and when I had a Chan eil dragh sam bith ann! Mortifcation of the fesh wasn’t sufcient, visa and ffty dollars to stuf in my sock. few spare pennies I went to the dance hall. I had to do well in class, really. Your the evidence of the baby enough for When the quotas were reduced, I Your father was the same as me. The son grandfather was a truant ofcer. Among condemnation. The elders had seen, by thought that what was left of my hope of an immigrant and a hard worker, he other things – he held down three jobs! her acts, that my sister remained enslaved had fnally been extinguished. But I was started his frst business when he was still He had to. I was the youngest of ten. Life to her sinful nature. There was no place saved by the Great Depression! Imagine, in school. In me he saw – yes, deep round was hard for everyone, then. People were for her among hard-working crofters and Little One! Suddenly, foreign streets eyes and a knowing smile – but someone leaving the island. By choice, mostly. But fshermen and truant ofcers. So she left, were no longer paved with gold. But I who’d work hard at work, at life, with a then Christina left and things changed. taking my hope for the future with her. didn’t need golden streets. I just wanted faith in its rewards. The icy wind whipping across the beaches She burned that hope in a lamp three a new life. Even the cramped dormitories So here you are, Little One. Keep my became a fagellation to the family. thousand miles away and sang to me of steerage class were a promise to the story and tell it to your children and light ‘But William told me he loved me!’ across the oceans every night and the youngest of ten. Working as a maid was a a lamp for them. Light a lamp for the my beautiful big sister had wailed in my lamp burned every night and I worked glimpse into a diferent future. people you meet, the people you touch. arms. Christina got me that job. There were Do that for me, won’t you?
he entire novel had been gentle rhythm and the river of creativity written in the dust. It began fowed, but there were gunshots in the Tin an unfashionable way, with hills and cholera in the camp. a description of the weather and the Story by Gabrielle Barnby A pair of years passed and the pastoral setting for the drama. This centrepiece was reached, a complex gave its writer over a year of pleasure. ✯ interweaving of plot and character. Nothing changed in the environment, The foliage of climate and setting so only the markings on the small clear painstakingly grown from the very space between the makeshift bed and the beginning brought the story into full makeshift stove. Both had been thrown narrative. The rains came and went, word or phrase did come, it was scratched fower. together from cheap materials after the broiling sun beat on canvas and fies came deep and ugly into the ground. The makeshift bed sank lower to the exodus over the mountains, both were through the tent fap, making the place as With winter, respite came. Fluency ground, the makeshift stove was greasy already a decade old. cosy as hell. returned and the writer worked with and cracked. The foor was daily swept The next section of the fction dealt The passage between this section and energy and inspiration. For the frst time, clean by an illiterate child and the story with the background histories of the the meat of the story was awkward. A there was impatience at the materials was so great it would have changed a principal actors. Each took between four doldrums. The fnger stayed poised an available, which limited the speed of civilisation. It was all written in the dust, and six months to compose, depending inch above the dirt for days at a time, progress. and fnished the day before the careful on their importance to the arc of the unable to score a single mark, and when a The waterfall of thoughts slowed to a hands became forever still.
e was on the phone, speakin an, as wee as I wis, I kent that the mair to een o his pals, fan I decided fsh he found the quicker he came hame. Hto hae a look at ft he was Still, it wis a shame our hoose wisna deein. The paper took up maist o the Story by Isobel Rutland on the chart. I wanted to draw it. Wi its dining table, weighed doon wi books on glass front door and the wide livin room either end so it wis laid oot fat. There ✯ windae and ma pink bedroom curtains, so was ither fat rolls wi elastic bands roon he would mine far wi bade. them, as weel as some new eens aye He hadna said onythin aboot nae in their cardboard tubes, ahin a chair. I Bank or the Swatch Way. The bit o paper The parallel ruler, the compass that drawin on the back o the chart. hid been telt nae to touch onythin, but in front of ma made up o a criss-cross o didna hae a roon face like a watch but hid I shifted the books, moving aside the aa that pencils wi sharp nibs an a fancy straight lines in green an purple and reid, twa legs and wis a brass pinted thingy that boorach o pens, hoping he widna hear the double ruler, an a straight edged stick, an aa at odd angles, telt him far to go. Bit loons at playtime wid try an stab yi wi, fap o paper as I turned it ower. The blank coloured pens same as the teacher used, I couldna understand it, nae pavements, it was aa too much. I fngert them frst, sheet fult the table, lookin naikit. Bit far wis too much for ma to leave be. nae signs, nae cat’s ein, only caul, hard listenin to mak sure he wis aye yappin. should I pit the hoosie? In a corner? In the I listened, makin sure he was aye claikin black sea aye movin aboot. I took the ruler and moved it aboot, middle? I took the double ruler, movin it wi the ither skipper. He soonded scunnert My dad wisna een for books or writing, a ower the thick paper. Fan the charts aboot until it settled at the tapmaist edge. fn he mentioned they hid been tied up I canna mine him iver colourin in, but did their job he would steam back into I set doon the nib o ma pen, pressin hard, langer than they thoucht for a paint an his charts were een on the neatest things Peterheid trying to be at the heid o a feggit fan the ink fanned oot thick an a re-ft, but I wis chuft to hae ma dad I’d ever seen. They were dotted wi wee smaa market, een that wisna ower fuul. dark ower the page. The ruler skitted a hame. It wis the same on a Sunday nicht triangles he’d drawn in faint pencil using And my mam would bake scones and an bittie as I drew the post o a door an fan I fan the holiday programme was on TV the fancy slide ruler that slipped ower the iced sponge for him coming hame. And stood back the hoose looked gye squint. promising sunshine in Majorca, an the paper as he plotted. I kent they were his there would be a toot-toot as the van Oot in the hall, ma dad wis sayin his win was fusslin makin the rafters rattle readings. Markins far he’d shot awa an hault drew awa, an in he would come dumping cherrios and there was a click as he pit and he wid phone roon the ither skippers an found chippers an pingers, an diferent his baggie wi its soor guf o fool drawers doon the receiver. I’d to hing in fnishin to see ft they were deein. And I wid hae sized green – Robbie coddlin, babies, big at the back door. And he would rip af ma bedroom curtains, so he wid ken the a sare belly cos I’d school the next day an smaa, sprags. Some good hauls, ithers jist his toorie and grin and sometimes gie ma hoose wis oors. I didna want him to go. I wid wish and a pucklie to keep yi gan. There were dark a beardie. Me screamin and wrigglin as He sighed as he rose fae the phone hope, and even pray sometimes, that he crosses to mark fasteners. Things like big he rubbed his stubbly chin up and doon stool, as I fipped the paper the richt wye wid phone roon the crew and tell them rocks, anchors, bits of wreckage, concrete ma smooth cheek – but lovin it aa the up an stepped awa fae the fancy ruler an he hid put it af and they hid anither nicht sinkers left ower fae the war, wire hausers same. Then he’d get into the bath and clutter o pens. Twa dark lines o ma hoosie in their ain beds. Then I wid cuddle next sharp enough to cut rope drappit when wash af the diesel-y smell, relaxin. And hid seeped through to the ither side. I him on the cooch. Naebidy wanted their the oil frst started – places far he’d maybe mam would mak our supper wi the fry drappit onto the cooch an stuck ma heid dad gan oot in that kind of wither. lost a net or got into a thrap. Or maybe he’d geen her; maybe a creamy fsh pie, or in ma library book so he widna see ma An fan the wither improved he took anither boat got into a thrap and he’d hid wid hae battered haddock wi real chips lookin guilty. Nae that it bathered ma if I the boat’s van, the same een he let me to tow them in. There were words like the that made the fat bubble and spit. But got a row. Now fan the wither deit doon and ma breether play in - driving its Bressay and the Skate Hole. Place names then sometimes he’d ging to his bed early an he packed his baggie, drivin awa wi wide steering wheel, climbing a ower the that were diferent from the words used cos he hid ti get up in the smaa hours to the crew in the boat’s van, fan he got to plastic seats wi their funny smell, sticking in the shipping forecast with its Viking, go back to Peterheid to land; hard, heavy Peterheid an loupit aboord, ma hoosie muckle tapes in the clunky cassette player North Utsire, South Utsire, when ma work withoot the help o lumpers like wid be wi him. He wid ayewis fnd his - and dee the hour’s drive to Peterheid, mam telt ma to wisht so she could hear if they hid in Aberdein. wye hame. then sail the boat under the brig, past the the wither hid missed far he was dodgin, I picked up a reid pen. The tangelt net ice factory, oot the hairbor to the Ling waitin for a gale to blaw through. o lines in front of ma helped him fnd fsh
Lost in Translation Magic Lantern Clare O’Brien Clare O’Brien
Barrel rolling through currents and tides, you ventured Freeze-framed you’re caught on camera, too close to the edge of the world. The ocean swell Flat-packed for home assembly. I power up, delivered you, a parcel spilling helpless mystery. Load up the mirrored disc and watch Out of your element, you toiled in our alien gravity, Your pixels search for their old voice. Your lustre drying in the sun. I came upon you in the evening. You were quite dead by then, your When I look away you change your shape stilled frilled limbs like soft blown glass. Your bell, A hide to wrap a story in. Your lungs with its grey fshmonger slab sheen, had settled Are full of weather. When the tide turns, like a parachute in the sand. Beneath your skirts The sea will rush into your eyes. you were the ancient oyster pink of corsetry. Your stealthy bone blades guide If I wade into the shallows, let the water lap Slow muscle mounted on the swell. around my soft white legs, will I make sense? Your sweat shines silver; treading water, Will the world you came from be my life support Your shadow slices sand beneath my feet. if I lie down and let my body foat out to sea? Or will my muscles slacken, robbed of resistance, Whose photons these? My dry eyes burn, my bones slowly softening in the salt? Your sea I cannot change the channel. would dissolve me like a slug. I’d drift, defenceless, Your breath is salt. Our long prehistory silent, stingless, until all that was left was a shadow Fades the screen to black. and a sigh, my voice whispered in a wave’s breadth. Fading like these jellyfsh, whose dehydrated pink rosettes are shadow printed on the sand.
By Anne Pia
Les Dernières Heures: The James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England was Last Hours the only son of Mary Queen of Scots. He was the most notorious witch hunter in history. Over 4,000 (mainly women) were consigned to the fames in Scotland. So Nails in your head obsessed was he, that he personally involved himself at the hammering that went on for days, in many of the proceedings. He was responsible for the as if you didn’t know about the scafold, famous James Bible. about the blade, and its journey, and the horseman, and the call that fnally came. J’ai Promis Pour Vous: Last But it was the vivid silence that announced it Words the warm skank and stillness of air crowding creep of the walls the sugared sweetness of your sweat.. Tell me about a country that’s silent that primed you.. where old religions linger assemble your mourners, and like a hard frost etch them on parchment crisp words and skin to paper rouse priests and absolutions make gods from history cling tight and in bronze and stone to your warm wooden cross statues that never crumble as you lie at last through fags and petty fame, listening... prolong a discourse ft only for tombstones and the mouths of men whose teeth have long Resplendent, unaided, decayed you walked Carberry’s Ghost in unholy ground. short steps to Golgotha, two axemen, Again and again I come back And I will show you that country’s glory your fnal fumbling grooms. and there’s a clearing above Carberry’s easy rise its castles once loud with song where the trees come close a chorus across its glens those keepers of secrets, a rain of fne words fowering their great halls; their breath’s bloom on my shadow. I will show you a palace too, Seton I gather a scatter of words spoken over hours once graced with the turn of her waist, that passed slow, the twist and bounce of her curls and toes In solid air and brittle sunshine solemn vows fnally dropping like stones; as she danced her Gaillardes, we skirted the castle low on the landscape and I send my lover south to England and away; a city exuberant with proud livery glimpsed grey walls and peeping turrets; in rough red petticoats afame with French fnery, a sudden, whirling North Coast gust disarmed, still proud, colouring every stone and paving; loosened long-limbed branches I stand stout before the axe. gardens regal to match our Mary spread them high and wide for here once walked a Queen. and set them free, On the 15th June 1567, Bothwell and Mary rode to their leaves a light footfall on the meadow; Carberry with an army to do battle with the soldiers of And I will show you now brought sea-mist too the Scottish Lords who objected to her marriage with a city, and a trace of full-skirted girls at play Bothwell. There was a lengthy stand-of and Mary, the where in all its rhetoric for independence rings and handstands and daisy chains, Queen of Scots, fnally surrendered on an undertaking of and the freedom to speak, a whif of love safe passage to Bothwell. her name is no more than whispered, lingering still, an inglorious imprint on a street corner trailing across the felds and the church walls that fêted an imposter “bittersweet”. witness to her fnal and bold arrival James’ Bible in rough red skirts, Seton Palace, now Seton Castle, a refurbished private huddle close by, dumb. dwelling, is where Mary retreated to as the guest Let me seek witches of George Seton, friend and Master of the Royal see only my mother, While from the block a quiet oath, Household. She danced here, held court, played golf and in the windrush of burnings “J’ai promis pour vous” archery in the company of Darnley and subsequently, the foul breath of harlots. an uncharted echo, Bothwell. It was at Seton that they spent their last night Let me make bushfres on moorland, her last legacy before the surrender at Carberry Hill…. hear the crackle of bones, to an unworthy people. fery hiss, pater nosters and confessions. In manus tuas, Domine
Yet in every river and loch the same water-lily breaking the surface, a single reed unbending, standing always tall on the shore, watching.
Blasted Things reading literature always means working his eccentric skills is that he builds his As the name intimates, Sans-Soleil is Lesley Glaister hard. sister’s wheelchairs. Born in India, he an ideal location for vampires. It contains Sandstone Press (2020) She’s written ffteen novels. Obviously, and Margaret are sent as children to live a forbidden forest through which the Review by Cynthia Rogerson this is not enough. with their grandfather in Edinburgh. At fearless Shona treks in order to reach some point their father returns, only to the plainly Gothic castle of Lord Erroll. For established Glaister fans, it will come Let there be light disappear in 1826. With this background Despite his red eyes, toothache, revulsion as no surprise that she’s produced another The Crown Agent it is perhaps unsurprising that Mungo has for both garlic and the merest hint of cracker. Though her consistency is rather Stephen O’Rourke a fair for the dramatic. Yet, what is notable light, our crème de la crème heroine has incredible. Helen Dunmore and Louisa Sandstone Press (2020) for a man of science (he is a surgeon) is more interesting things on her mind than Young are the only other writers that Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the the way he contradicts himself on matters thoughts of the undead. Indeed, their come to mind, in this respect. How does Vampire Menace connected to establishing his reliability. encounter could be said to encapsulate she do it? Perhaps her magic is in creating Olga Wojtas For example, he purports to respect his the book’s tone in that, instead of being psychologically credible characters who Saraband (2020) profession yet secretly wishes to abandon in a state of horror, fear and awe, Shona’s are both interesting and engaging. Never Reviews by Valerie Beattie it as it bores him; and, although presenting focus is on milk for her tea. Seeing the simple, never predictable. There is often himself as competent, he quickly reveals lord’s penurious ofer, she recalls a joke: someone sinister, but that character is With an ethos of keeping “the home that one of his patients died at his hands. “… Chic Murray in a guesthouse, picking never evil. They have reasons for their fre burning” ingrained in their history, His expressions regarding immigrants up one of those wee jars of honey and wicked intent, and the reader’s sympathy lighthouses brandish a humanitarian intent reveal a number of prejudices around saying to the landlady, ‘I see you keep a can lie with both victim and persecutor. to guide sailors safely ashore, a function nationality and class, and he is the student bee.’” In fact, the line between the two is never dating from the Pharos of Alexandria in and friend of the disgraced anatomist, Dr The objective of her quest is clear, and the point of the stories is never the third century BC. Over time, a fssure Robert Knox. revealed two chapters before the novel’s to tie loose ends, though loose ends are emerged between the lighthouse as a Hence, there is scant surprise when denouement and, with little time to often tied up. Her stories are dark and humanitarian symbol – a beacon of hope Mungo abruptly departs his profession spare, Shona focuses on putting the world riveting, but they still refect life artfully. and salvation to industrious sailors – and (and sister) without a backward glance. of Sans-Soliel to rights. Thus, readers’ Which makes Glaister’s novels literature. its role in imperial and commercial gain. Thereafter, the narrative progresses with journey through a comic interpretation of Blasted Things opens with a deceptively Stephen O’Rourke’s The Crown Agent Bugatti-like speed propelling readers the Gothic that is defnitely idiosyncratic cliché scene. It’s World War One, and sails into the turbid waters of this tension, through the many mazes of his new role, draws to a close. With order – and light – beautiful upper class Clementine has beginning in January 1829 in the Firth and O’Rourke does well illustrating the restored to the village, Shona fnds herself become a nurse at the front. Mourning her of Clyde. trials and shocks experienced by this transported back to her workplace and, brother’s death by saving other soldier’s Since the hardback publication in newly-employed spy. Of greater interest once again, slips efortlessly into her lives, she meets and quickly falls in love November 2019, O’Rourke’s debut are those points when the narrative unassuming life as a librarian. But one with a tall handsome Canadian doctor. novel has received positive reviews, and touches on the dark side of Scotland’s senses that, as night follows day, Marcia The novice Glaister reader might be lulled rightly so. Its settings, pace and plot lines imperial prosperity, on the politics of the Blaine will activate her prefect again into thinking this will be a traditional war have drawn comparisons with Buchan’s trade routes and the signifcant abuses of when only her eccentric views and means novel, with lovers separated and then later The 39 Steps and Stevenson’s Kidnapped. power in this time of global expansion will sufce to tackle situations one would re-united, perhaps with a baby or two The protagonist, Dr Mungo Lyon, has in Britain. These provide glimpses of have thought unimaginable. thrown in. Familiar romantic territory. captivated readers’ imaginations to the more penetrating content, something But Glaister fans will not be fooled, for point of hoping to see more of him. which, perhaps, may develop in future Mick she is never a formulaic writer. By page O’Rourke executes dialogue and adventures by Willie Orr 50, Clementine is back in London and description well, and the picture drawn The pace of Mungo’s unrelenting ThunderPoint Publishing (2019) regarding her new son with chilling of nineteenth-century Glasgow is rich quest for the traitor/s never slackens, and Review by Cynthia Rogerson indiference. We are inside her head, also in sensory detail. Regular utilisation of one of the most electrifying elements wondering why people like babies. Then clifhangers and mystery signposting keep in his story is his brother-in-arms on This is a story of survival despite we slip into her housekeeper’s head and readers’ curiosity piqued while Mungo the mission, and the man who saved his horrendous hardship. Well into the 1950’s her husband’s head, and we are anxious establishes himself as a character as keen life. A little like the complexity inherent in Scotland, children were removed from about the baby. Soon we are worried on drama as it is on him. And O’Rourke in the symbol of the lighthouse as a family homes deemed to be unsafe, about a stranger with a painted eye, intends to start as he means to go on beacon of rescue, the darkness and light and parents forced to sign agreements another war victim, then we are afraid of with respect to these generic elements surrounding this character illuminates allowing their children to be sent him. Terrifed. Then very uneasy because as Dr Lyon delivers the foreword to how pliant moral codes become when anywhere in the world. Parents - some we’ve identifed with someone who now his recollections of a life of secrets and matters of commerce are the true beacons of whom were simply on hard times - clearly shows a potential for cruelty. Is he missions in true theatrical manner. Now for governments. lost the right to protect their children a psychopath or simply a survivor? These more than 50 years older, The Crown In place of adventures in imperialist or to be in contact with them. Loving switches of empathy are uncannily swift, Agent takes place when he is 27. Scotland we have, in Olga Wojtas’ Miss their children was not sufcient to give almost dizzying. And we still don’t know The narrative’s inaugural event depicts Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace, a them rights. For some children, this led what this novel is about, if not war, if not a schooner foundering in the Firth of tale of gothic adventure in nineteenth- to situations of exploitation and abuse in tragic love, if not PTSD or depression. Clyde. Sandy, the lighthouse keeper, century France. This is the second in foster care. Mick was such a child. Uncertainty propels the story, makes it rushes out into the midnight storm, the Miss Blaine series but this reviewer’s At times this book is difcult to read, original. We are interested because the frantic to light the beacon but, before he introduction to Shona MacMonagle, the but at no time do the descriptions of fawed characters are so real and so dear, can fulfl his duty, his head meets with 50-something prefect and graduate of abuse feel gratuitous or melodramatic. and we want them to be alright. the fatal blow of an axe. His murder Marcia Blaine’s School for Girls (famed Orr writes with the needed degree of I’m a slow reader, but I can read a and the failure to save the Julietta ignite by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). While both detachment and compassion. There Glaister novel in two days, gleefully the stick of dynamite that will start the vampires time travel by virtue of their are many reasons to feel sorry for the jettisoning things like eating and intrepid Mungo blasting through assorted endless lives, Shona’s century hopping main character, but nothing in Orr’s sleeping. Yes, her novels are easy to read, protocols and courtesies as he takes on occurs in response to missions identifed depiction asks for pity, just respect and but not because they’re dumbed-down his new role as the Crown’s secret agent, by the ghostly Miss Blaine. Despite the understanding. or uncomplicated. They are easy to read unwavering in his quest to expose Sandy’s novel’s title Shona’s mission is revealed Orr is primarily a non-fction writer because they are exquisitely crafted, killer and the reason for the loss of the only in chapter 12, by which time the specialising in Scottish subjects, and he never drawing attention to the author. Julietta. “cisgender” heroine has arrived in a brings some of that sense of authority The pleasure they give is like learning Mungo’s narrative occurs during the cofn, attacked the mayor, been arrested, to Mick in the character of George, the your favourite comfort food is also, height of the East India Company’s rule. imprisoned and displayed pedagogic and Child Protection Ofcer. Roughly every coincidentally, the most nourishing food He is a curious protagonist yet more artistic talents enough to put the village other chapter is in third person, from on the planet. It’s simply not true, that interesting for it. For example, one of to shame. George’s point of view. We learn about
Mick’s circumstances through George, some not really so. Why not? An Lanntair selkie story as there is a strong Hebridean don’t have. In c. 325 BC he explored mostly things Mick himself may not be is a venue for all the arts and the loosely tradition of the seal wife as a daughter of the west coast of Britain from Cornwall aware of, and which in any case do not themed Faclan provides an opportunity a King of ‘Lochlin’ which is also a strand to Orkney and maybe Shetland, then concern him enough to be a natural part for events outside the solid, regular events in the Uig telling of the fnding of the north to Thule, and east to the amber of his direct narration to us. In contrast programming. In that context, annual stone. The Corrievreckan legend seemed coasts of the Baltic. Pytheas’ book has to the calm coherence of the George book launches from Stornoway based more strained. To me, its function as a been lost for over 2000 years; all we have sections, Mick’s chapters are a torrent of publisher Acair have been a steadying naming tale for the Sounds north of Jura are tantalising quotations from hostile prose from an excited – often frightened, factor, where a new publication is and Scarba is an essential element. This is critics. Haggith’s trilogy is a convincing, always determined - boy struggling to revealed by author interview, discussion lost as the action happens on ‘Lochlin’. provocative attempt to fll the gap. But keep his head above chaos. His dialect is or performance. In this fable, that name (often written as she doesn’t start with the Greek explorer, authentic Glaswegian, naturally written A Telling of Stones was launched with Lochlann or the Welsh version, Llychlyn) she begins and ends with the Celtic Iron yet always comprehensible. The most a performance that was close to virtuoso. is applied to an imagined island, mapped Age people whose lives were changed upsetting abuses are reported in an Its author, Neil Rackham, is best known between the Butt of Lewis and Faroes, by Pytheas’ intrusion. In her account, appropriately deadpan voice, for that is in the business world for books on the rather than Scandanavian territories the people who never had a voice and what a psyche does to protect itself – strategy of selling. He made it clear generally and most usually Norway. never wrote anything down: the remote, withdraws and detaches. from the start that this is not another This recalls Malachy Talach’s summary the non-literate, the enslaved, and even Orr is from Ireland, and while he’s compilation of the ‘prophecies’ and lore of Imagined Islands – a previous Faclan the women, get their chance to write been settled in Scotland far longer than related to Coinneach Odhair or The event. Like Birlinn’s production of that back. In The Lyre Dancers, the last word he lived in Ireland, perhaps there’s still Brahan Seer. It is an audacious weaving- book, Acair have spared nothing on is with those who dwell in the liminal something fundamentally Irish about in of legends with a storyteller’s disregard the production values. These do justice spaces on the margins of Europe, where his writing. The dialogue and Mick’s for the normal passage of time. The author to Alisdair Wiseman’s clear and bold written history has no authority. Pytheas monologues are nuanced, lyrical, every takes the Celtic knot as a central motif. drawings, in pen and ink, adding much to and his Greek world have vanished south word efortlessly working to bring the So an end can as easily be a beginning. the pleasure. The designer has thoughtfully over the horizon, and such resolution as scenes to life. And my goodness, the The casting of the seer’s stone into a deep placed short sections on lore linked to there is, is all Celtic. The sea has the fnal ending is well worth the reading. loch can thus be the action that prompts a such topics as ‘second sight’ or ‘the nature word. varying version of the central story of the of selkies’ in a pale Scandinavian blue, as The Lyre Dancers, like its predecessors, A Telling of Stones curse that comes from focusing through inserts. For me, the spare nature of these is an alternative On the Ocean. A sailor Neil Rackham (illustrated by Alisdair the aperture of the seer’s stone. summaries is one of the strongest strands herself, Haggith knows the sea as her Wiseman) There’s as many kinds of story as there of this daring book. characters would have known it. When Acair, 2019 are ways of telling one. Neil Rackam Rian returns to Assynt (Haggith’s home Review by Ian Stephen likes complex asides which become yarns The Lyre Dancers territory, evoked with lyrical detail), the in themselves and the audience is invited (Vol 3 of The Stone Stories trilogy) ever-changing connections between land Faclan has evolved into an annual event to gasp when somehow the teller does Mandy Haggith and sea make the place alive; this is the of great variety. It has been a combined pull it of and catches the main thread Saraband, 2020 true awakening of coming home. But the flm and book festival, as Wordplay was again. No matter how well you know Review by Margaret Elphinstone sea calls: nothing is forever, and it isn’t in Shetland. Faclan 2019 seemed not the tales there is great entertainment in possible to stay. so much a book festival as a cocktail observing them re-made in this context. On the Ocean by Pytheas the Greek must The Walrus Mutterer (2018) told how of events, some related to actual books, It seemed to me natural to gather in the be one of the most enigmatic texts we Rian grows up in Assynt until she is
forced to travel with Pytheas and the no fulflment for anyone. What would explorations of the nature of human loss. to the underside of a table which carries terrifying, powerful woman trader, Ussa. any of us become, if history, like Haggith, In all, there’s an uncanny gift of making four layers of protection on its upper skin. Rian is intrigued by Pytheas’ scientifc did not unfailingly provide us with a the move from the most understated but If there’s one theme to the fore, I’d say measurements and the unknown culture testing plot? accurate observation and seeing what’s it’s family matters, but the minimum of he represents, but her involvement in not visible to most, more sure than apparent artifce and maximum honesty his explorations comes at a desperate Wordplay and energy Coinneach Odhair. The feathers of a are used to examine memories. price. The potential for widening mutual makar/unmaker dead crane fall from a table ‘like milk for Ross Wilson’s title, Line Drawing horizons cannot be fulflled: Rian is Edited by Calum Rodger, tapsalteerie, the cat.’ comes from his revelation of the story a woman and a slave, and for her the 2019 behind a phrase you take for granted. His encounter with the Greek is all but Horseman Or take this jump: lines are often drawn in the conceptual lethal. And yet, in the second book, The Em Strang, Shearsman Books, 2019 ‘Anything that’s not tied down is gone, space between men squaring-up to each Amber Seeker (2019), the reader is drawn Nub even the sun.’ other. That could be in a ring for amateur to Pytheas. His enthusiasm about his Lesley Glaister, Mariscat Press, 2019 boxers or the line could be the surface of calculations and his instinct to discover Line Drawing It could be the simple act of chopping the earth – miners who work below the cannot but appeal to readers attuned to Ross Wilson, Smokestack Books, 2018 frewood or it could be the chance crust but cross fencewire to roll Easter the trope of the archetypal adventurer The Unreturning fnd of roadkill, but this poet sees and eggs with their kids in the open day. into the unknown. Pytheas endures his Martin Malone, Shoestring Press, 2019 feels with equal intensity. Flora prompts Language can also draw the line – a ned own rite of passage during his sojourn Let out the Djinn equal scrutiny as fauna. In fact, they on one side of a border is a chav on the on the amber coasts of the Baltic, and Jane Aldous, Arachne Press, 2019 seem joined in blood. You might have other. His poems are muscular in their this reader found herself willing him to Cairn thought you were on safer territory with terse storytelling but more tender than survive. But this same man has wronged Gerard Rochford, Malfranteaux the vermillion pompom of a peony. But macho. Rian brutally, betraying her over and over Concepts, 2016 you’re not. That hangs Shoestring Press’s good service to again, and consistently abusing his power Poetry review by Ian Stephen poetry includes bringing a selected poems over her as girl, woman and mother. He ‘like a bloody fst or a fresh heart.’ of the Argyll postie and social historian, has no moral sense of any rights but A selection of new(ish) gatherings of Angus Martin, back to the light and his own. I want to hate him but I can’t, poems reveals energy and commitment There is also variation in the techniques introducing more in this hemisphere to which is a tribute to Haggith’s nuanced even before you turn one page. used to similar ends. ‘Elegy’ and ‘Because the work of Tasmanian, Pete Hay, another portrayal. Tapsalteerie describe a new gathering the moon...’ come close to incantation celebrant of the vernacular voice. Now Third volumes of trilogies can of Scottish poets working ‘outside the with employment of refrain and regular the Nottingham press have published a sometimes disappoint, but The Lyre mainstream’ as ‘some of the most urgent rhyme. Elsewhere rhyme or half-rhyme is substantial collection by Martin Malone, a Dancers (2020) triumphantly draws and adventurous poetry of our time’. You often used but occurring as if by accident lecturer in Creative Writing at Aberdeen together all the threads followed so far, have to believe in that possibility just to along with chiming of sound inside the and one who has made the move from while successfully eluding any simplistic keep making the things and defnitely line. These measures tend to accumulate England’s NE to that of Scotland. A resolution. Having shown how individuals to publish them when attention, far less to a form that is only very occasionally century since its ending, this poet assumes are caught up and wounded, sometimes reward, is likely to be scant. lulling. And that when it is the intention, the voices of soldiers of World War One. fatally, in the clash of cultures, Haggith For me, the poet in this collection maybe just before the pain of birthing He does not attempt an idiom unnatural ofers no simple answer, and certainly who makes the words ring in an engaging or burial returns as it must. It’s all too to him but that of informed and educated no unambiguous ending. The encounter way is Harry Josephine Giles. The frst seldom that such a clear way of sensing commentators, participants or family. with Pytheas the Greek has changed impression is in sound and maybe there’s meets technique which serves its purpose The paintings of Wyndham Lewis everyone, but in The Lyre Dancers he more modernism in the proftable clash but with no need to fourish it or prolong and Paul Nash are cited but so is the himself is now, as the sagas say, ‘out of this of speaking styles than in the more its display. And all that has also met, in this artist Christian Boltanski (born 1944). story’ - perhaps it never did belong to him. sombre pallet of previous Orcadians such case, with illustration and design which The book has two parts, one a looser Haggith also negotiates the transition as Edwin Muir. Yet there’s something of combine to present it in a form which gathering and one a numbered series between generations so that the emphasis the ballad there still – an elusive fable suits the poems so well. of prose poems. In all, directness and passes to Rian’s children without leaving behind the ephemera of sensation. In Mariscat has a long-established use clarity are sought. Often a flm-like feel Rian marooned on the boring shores of ‘Astrid sketches Orcadia’ the airborne of a form which is between a pamphlet is created by linguistic imagery – ‘his last middle-aged motherhood. Rian remains artist ‘dights awey the natralism/fae her and a book. These are wire-stitched but things’ on a hanger or a tank compressing true to what the Walrus Mutterer slaet, an stairts ower again/abstrack...’ this certainly not spine-less in content. Nub two walls of a trench, ‘as you’d close two originally saw in her. She survives a third results in ‘black lines fer the starns, blue has the simplest graphic but the colours sides of a wound.’ Narrative is again to volume undiminished, even though the dubs/fer the tides, green aircs for the and typography on its cover gives it a the fore. plot sometimes leaves her behind in peedie skail/ o wheels an airms an bolas quality look and feel. This promise is Narrative clarity also drives Jane order to follow the lives of others. gaithered roond Central’. more than met by the content, presented Aldous. Then she lets herself go. An eel is This bringing together of the Greek Translations or versions are provided in a sans-serif on a good weight of near- ‘tricky as a spiv’. There’s much to admire and Celtic worlds happened through an but these are just as full of wordplay cream. Lesley Glaister has written a dozen in this poem but, for me, the Sargasso act of violence, and The Lyre Dancers shows and energy. You get the feeling that this novels, well regarded, but her poetry has birth and death cycle as ‘mysterious that the ofspring of this dubious alliance Orcadian’s collision course with the city the freshness of someone newly in love stillness’ doesn’t quite sustain the spell. cannot resolve their inheritance easily. is more positive than that of the Muir with the game. Her second collection Sadly, Gerard Rochford is no longer The Amber Seeker was Pytheas’ apologia to family’s anxious clash with Glasgow, with Mariscat has her persona merge with us (he passed away last December, Ed.). his daughter Soyea, but we never see her maybe a century before. with a tree rather than Em Strang’s horse. Cairn, his group of poems for the Isle read it. Instead, The Lyre Dancers shows Em Strang enters the natural world, The frst section is simply an episodic of Lewis, comes with a foreword from how Soyea fnds her own way in her especially animal kingdoms. You get a love-letter to the ‘vegetable hulk’ of an Robert Macfarlane to catch the tone: own world. In contrast to her half-sister, fair telling of this book by its cover (Kate ancient fg tree in Moreton Bay, NZ. ‘These special, subtle poems are the she looks diferent, which is a handicap, Walters). Horse and human merge in an The object of admiration doesn’t speak work of a writer of rare versatility, who and she seems to think a little diferently ink and wash imagery that hints more of back much but there’s still some tifs. The can move in a beat from the frailty of too. At the heart of her experience is a shamanism than surrealism. Shearsman’s lover is disturbed to fnd the young tree elegy to a robust address: scarcely-remembered, unbearable loss choice of a matt laminate, lean typography was an epiphyte, feeding of others, a bit which has shaped who she has become. and a hint of vellum in the pages serve like a cuckoo. A strangler too. Pummeling “I’d like a word with the maw But in The Lyre Dancers, self-awareness for the efect of entering into an artist’s book happens. The series, celebratory poems of this river”’. all characters comes through irreparable which is considered but in which the but ofset with gin-dry wit, prepares loss. Even the impossible Ussa becomes language has not lost urgency. This poet you for a looser grouping with shifting One poem celebrates the moment more herself than ever. If the world were alternates between framed perceptions in settings but all probing. Just when you when the poem which Iain Crichton less inimical, it appears, there would be three or four lines and more extended think it’s all a bit cozy, a child takes a fork Smith regarded as his strongest work,
✯ ‘Deer on the High Hills’ was revealed in friend, the literary and art critic, Sidney as revealed in an amusing anecdote, in Aberdeen. Anyone who had the privilege Sheldon, RLS sets out the stall: ‘…we are ‘At the shore of Sky foresaid, lys ane iyle honour of Lenin) and aunt, Margaret. of hearing that makar will nod. In all travellers in what John Bunyan calls callit Pabay, neyre ane myle in lenthe, full They moved from the Midlands in 1950 contrast, here’s one of Gerard Rochford’s the wilderness of the world – all, too, of woodes, guid for fshing, and a main and lived on Pabay until 1970. During series of haiku for Lewis: travellers with a donkey; and the best that shelter for thieves and cut-throats. It that time, they raised a family (one of we fnd in our travels is an honest friend. pertens to M’Kynnoun.’ whom, Stuart, runs the Edinbane Pottery ‘lichen grafti He is a fortunate voyager who fnds many. So wrote the clergyman, Donald on the adjacent mainland of Skye). And coloured the Calanais stones We travel, indeed, to fnd them. They are (‘Dean’) Monro in 1549, just a few they tried, tried and tried again to fnd scraped of by vandals’ the end and the reward of life. They keep years prior to the Scottish Reformation. ways to eke a living from land and sea and us worthy of ourselves; and when we are Some three centuries later, Hugh Miller to develop a range of small, potentially alone, we are only nearer to the absent.’ – geologist, writer, editor and key fgure money-making ventures. Reprise Some Poetry Reviews Online Fitting, then, that Sheldon would become in the disruption that split the Church Towards the end of his Aunt Margaret’s a signifcant editor of Stevenson’s letters, of Scotland, early in the Victorian era – life, Christopher, who was a regular An editorial slip meant that Helen Allison’s both during and after the great writer’s wrote in glowing terms about the same visitor to Pabay as a child, promised superb overview of fve poetry collections short life. place: his Aunt Margaret that he would write published in 2018-19 was omitted from Some 140 years after Stevenson’s ‘This island, so soft in outline and a book about the part the family had the print edition of Northwords Now 38. stravaiging in the Massif Central with colour, is formidably fenced round by played in the story of the island. By For any reader who hasn’t yet seen these Modestine, his travel credo also applies dangerous reefs. He would be a happy blending his own experiences there, on our website, where they appeared at to many aspects of Leonie Charlton’s geologist who, with a few thousands to family recollections and old photographs, the time of that autumn-winter edition’s journey in Marram, where she goes spare, could call Pabba his own. It contains he has fulflled that promise. But he has distribution, go to northwordsnow.co.uk north, at pony pace, through much of the less than a square mile of surface; and a also achieved something with much and search under Helen’s author entries Outer Hebrides. Her human travelling walk of little more than three miles and wider resonance. By casting an expert to read her What is the writer risking with companion is a friend, Shuna Shaw. Their a half among the line where the waves eye over sources that reveal (including this book? review of the following: four-legged companions are the ponies, break at high water brings the traveller through richly characterised key players) Ross and Chief. The writer’s passion for back to his starting point; and yet, though shifts in ownership and thinking about This the ponies (shared with Shuna) shines thus limited in area, the petrifactions of its land, for example, including in times Jim Stewart, Voyage Out Press, 2018 through from the outset, including in shores might themselves fll a museum.’ when shipping magnates held sway Eating thistles descriptions of coat colours which make Fast forward to recent years, and a here and earlier generations farmed, he Deborah Mofatt, Smokestack Books, them sound nice enough to eat: ‘Ross is time of further changes – not in religious gives the story of this tiny place national 2019 a Rum Highland Pony with rare ancient practices, but in other ways. Shifts in signifcance. Noctuary bloodlines…They have unique colour ownership of land, especially along This is a book that will be a resource Niall Campbell, Bloodaxe, 2019 combinations – fox dun and silver dun, the west coast and in the isles; declines and a pleasure for readers for many years Stitch liver and mouse and biscuit dun too. in population and traditional means to come. Margaret, Len and the many Samuel Tongue, Tapsalteerie Press, 2019 Some have zebra stripes along their of making a living from that land and Pabay dwellers who came before them Why the Sky is Far Away spines. Ross’s passport states his colour as surrounding sea; shifts in the culture and could be proud of that legacy. Mandy Haggith, Red Squirrel Press, ‘dappled chocolate’; his mane has blonde background of many people who make ✯ 2019 highlights, and in summer you can see their homes there; now all part of the the dark dapples across his body.’ contemporary scene across much of the Any Ordnance Survey map has layers Marram - Memories of sea and Chief, in contrast, is bright silver Highlands and Islands. Fertile ground of meaning hidden, for many, in plain spider-silk grey. Together, the ponies’ characters too, perhaps (in contrast to the wet, sight. Scattered across it are names of By Leonie Charlton complement each other, with Ross being nutrient-poor soils of the west) for an topographic features whose origins Sandstone Press 2020 the older, ‘experienced’ one and Chief’s historian with deep knowledge of the could be from centuries before even the Pabay – An Island Odyssey ‘bravery’ bolstering Ross in moments of region to dig in archives and document frst edition OS maps were drawn. It’s as By Christopher A. Whatley pony doubt. As below, so above in the past changes and how they might inform if past generations can still speak about Birlinn 2019 saddles, as the two equestrians support current thinking. parts of the land where they lived and Reading the Gaelic Landscape each other through challenges of weather, Christopher A. Whately, Professor worked and fought and travelled, if you Leughadh Aghaidh na Tire wild camping and more, meeting diverse of Scottish History at the University of trouble to look, then listen. By John Murray island residents along the way, from Barra Dundee, has now turned the soil of the Across the Highlands and Hebrides, New, expanded edition to Callanish. But a central challenge for small isle of Pabay in ways such as those, especially, and parts of Scotland beyond, Whittles, 2019 the writer is not the externals, but the and more, to write a remarkable book. this means paying heed to Gaelic Non-fiction reviewed lingering trauma of her relationship with As might be expected from someone names. But even if you have little or no by Kenny Taylor her late mother. This can still haunt her with his standing as an historian, the knowledge of the language, you can still waking present, whatever the glories of breadth and detail of his research into the get expert guidance as your eye scans Narratives describing journeys with sea and machair and camaraderie might history of this little place is impressive. At the maps or walks the terrain. Reading an equine companion can have great be. a rough tally, there are more than 1,300 the Gaelic Landscape by John Murray appeal, even for readers with no prior At diferent locations, Leonie, entries in the index and many hundreds is the ideal aid to such exploration. Its knowledge of such animals, save for (nicknamed ‘Beady’ as a baby by her of chapter notes (placed at the end, so not style is clear and engaging, making even ofering the occasional handful of grass mother, on account of her eyes being encumbering the chapters themselves). an overview of Gaelic grammar and over a fence. Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘shiny, like beads’) strings a bead or more But this is no dry-phrased, academic pronunciation a pleasurable read. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes from her mother’s collection through treatise, aimed principally at other But it’s the details of many names (1879) is an acknowledged masterpiece, silken thread – also her mother’s – to historians. It’s a story with narrative drive (some common, some scarce) that have both of this horse family sub-genre, and leave as a kind of necklace, punctuating to power it, and a passion that shines made this book such a valuable resource of travel writing in general. Through the journey with small, symbolic gestures. through for both the place and the people since frst publication in 2014. The the skill of his descriptions and asides, This is part of what gives the journey who have shaped it. expanded edition has additional images, details of place and character that an unexpected emotional undercurrent. What makes the book unusual is how enhanced drawings and extended text in might otherwise seem trivial become Studded with well-crafted and memorable it blends both personal and wider history: parts. The useful format remains, where fascinating; the meandering journey descriptions and told with great honesty, ‘Islands mesmerize and intrigue me,’ separate index entries for Gaelic nouns beguiling. And improbably, at the core of Marram is much more than the ‘travelling writes the author, ‘They have since I was and specifc place-names help with the book, is Stevenson’s love for a small, with two ponies’ book it might seem at a very young boy. One in particular, the searches. The chapters are short, but full of mouse-coloured donkey, Modestine, at frst glance. It’s moving and compelling, subject of this book.’ inspiration. Just think of where Chapter turns both amusing and moving. in quite a diferent way. RLS would Christopher Whatley’s link to Pabay 9: ‘Climate, Season, Mood, Sound and Writing to dedicate the work to his understand. came through his uncle, Len (named, Time’ might lead you.
shoormal n - highwater mark on beach; the water’s edge. Dey fann his boady ee moarnin ida shoormal. [Shetland ForWirds online dictionary]
hat does northness look like? What are its sounds? WIs there a clear aesthetic of the north; or does ‘northness’ exist only as an antithesis of everything we leave at our back when we pack the car and head for the ferry? Not stufy rooms and multiple fickering screens, but cool blue landscapes and a sense of space; not trafc, but airy, empty roads; not blabber, but silence. Which make the North Isles and the Hebrides ideal (idealised) holiday destinations; but this romantic isolation, whether real or imagined, presents signifcant cultural, economic and emotional barriers to development for the islanders themselves. Shoormal, a conference held in Lerwick in September last year, put this issue front and centre. The UHI’s Centre for Rural Creativity invited artists, academics and community workers which share a sense of interconnectedness Peebles and Laura Watts). A diverse range piano and percussion) traced threads of to take the long view of the creative and commonality. Heritage and cultural of Orcadians and non-Orcadians - poets, melody and song which had migrated economy of the Highlands and Islands: identity now become much more fuid. politicians, scientists, tourists, locals and round the North Atlantic rim. Their does it only service the tourist trade, Cait McCullagh described her role as a exiles - were asked to speculate on the performance - an interweaving of or is there a deeper interconnectedness co-curator of Orcadian ‘heritage’, and islands’ evolving future. Elements of Greenlandic polkas and drum dances, of rurality and intellectual and creative its constantly renegotiated parameters: Orkney’s ancient past are interwoven Shetlandic fddle tunes, whale songs and activity? What does this look like in this “where it stops and where it starts cannot seamlessly with migration, mobile whale sounds, wind and water - left the new nomadic age? Is there resilience; or be clearly bound”. phones, and energy from wind and audience all but speechless. is it wrong to look for this? The University of the Highlands waves: ‘the future is imagined and made I left Lerwick with a sense of foreboding: UNESCO describes intangible cultural and Islands aspires to be deeply by us in heritage strategy, in timetables, the things that can strengthen the islands’ heritage as including ‘representations, immersed in its communities. In in roadmaps, in schematics, in prototypes creative economy - technology, renewals expressions, knowledge, skills – as well his keynote speech, Vice-Principal of new technologies’, says Watts. This of interest and participation, outcomes- as the instruments, objects, artefacts and Neil Simco described how, in future symbolic trajectory of past, present and based funding - also have the power to cultural spaces’ which are transmitted from planning, the university visualises future is important to the islanders’ own afect it disproportionately, and change it generation to generation and which are itself within and from the perspective cultural understanding of themselves beyond recognition. Perhaps the ethical ‘constantly recreated by communities and of the islands. There is clear evidence, as self-defning, as both integrative and response of the artist is really to set groups in response to their environment, he said, that learning has a direct outward-looking. themselves aside: to refuse the compulsion their interaction with nature and their impact on intellectual, cultural and This question of representation rose to word or frame what’s around them, history’. A community’s intangible academic development of the wider again and again as speaker after speaker but instead to let this unique world assert heritage comes under threat at the point community; its senses of place and described their own representation, or itself, and to document this as it happens. at which it is no longer self-perpetuated purpose are deeply interconnected. re-presentation, of the islands. For me, I arrived on the Northlink on the within and for the community itself, but The UHI is further distinguished in the most powerful artistic responses were Thursday morning, and waited out the is transformed into something intended its emphasis on the humanities, said those that grew out of listening: as in hour before the conference registration primarily for a stronger outside group - Prof Simco: it is in the social/cultural/ Shetlandic jeweller Helen Robertson’s opened by having another cofee out on for the nostalgic ‘tourist gaze’. creative continuum that the scientific ice-thin Hentinagaets - lace shawl the rear deck upstairs. Everyone else was Katrin Dautel and Kathrin Schödel disciplines have meaning. The Shetland patterns knitted in silver wire, stitched inside or already ashore. The ferry berths propose an alternative understanding of Arts Development Association also like cobwebs into fences and frames on ‘nose in’: the sky was clear and I could the ontology of the island-world as a has a strongly civic role, said director abandoned crofts; and Catherine Munro’s see all the way up and down the Bressay ‘constantly re-created space with changing Graeme Howell, which explicitly links cultural study of the breeding of Shetland Sound. And something was out in the boundaries and inscriptions’. This perhaps cultural creativity and wellbeing in the ponies and the crofters’ discussion of channel, travelling south to north, and ofers a more empirically accurate “advancement of the resident”. ‘the hill’. Nordic Viola’s musical journey at some pace. Every 10 seconds or so it picture of the ‘islandness’ of Orkney and To look back is to look forward. See, round the North Atlantic was incredibly surfaced and spouted, or ‘blew’; the water Shetland - as held in a web of semi- for example, the Bray Editions booklet moving. Katherine Wren (viola and was too choppy to see what it was, and it isolated island and mainland settlements Orkney futures: a handbook (eds. Alistair laptop) and Gemma McGregor (fute, was gone in a minute.
Craig Aitchison is a teacher and writer Amelia Graham is reading History at Gail Low is the general editor of the arts Her poetry has been published in several from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. He the University of Edinburgh and was review DURA (www.dura-dundee.org. literary magazines and one of her short is about to complete a Masters in Creative shortlisted for the Jane Martin Prize for uk); Imagined Spaces, a co-edited anthology stories was Commended in the Neil Writing at the University of Stirling. Poetry in 2019. She is currently working on of essays with Kirsty Gunn, will be Gunn Writing Competition 2017. a collection: People, Places. These are her frst published by Saraband later in the year. James Andrew has had three books of poems published in a national magazine. Evelyn Pye’s collection, Smoke That Thunders, was poetry published and recently won the Robin Fulton Macpherson’s A Northern published by Mariscat Press (2015) and, from Autumn Voices Poetry Competition judged Barry Graham is what Foucault called Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010 (Marick it, the poem Mosi-Oa-Tunya was chosen for by Sally Evans. The Book Folks have an Author Function. More than a dozen Press Michigan, 2013) is to be followed the 20 Best Scottish Poems of that Year. published three of his crime novels. books. https://barrygrahamauthor.site/ by Unseen Isles and other poems, from the same publisher and Arrivals of Light is due Marka Rifat is a member of Mearns Chris Arthur lives in St Andrews. He Edith Harper writes poetry and stories in from Shearsman Books later this year. Writers. She has been published in US has published several essay collections, English and Doric. Although now living in Kelso and UK publications and began writing most recently Hummingbirds Between and originally from Aberdeen, she still fnds Nicola Madill is a singer songwriter/writer poetry, short stories and plays after careers in the Pages. www.chrisarthur.org. writing in Doric easier and more expressive. from the east coast of Scotland, who ‘alchemises journalism and corporate communications. the oneiric and ethereal by blending lyrics with Gabriellle Barnby lives in Orkney and writes Lydia Harris lives on Westray. In 2017, she poetic prose into songs and short creative pieces’. Nikki Robson’s poems appear in places such as short stories, poetry and full-length fction. She held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Acumen, Under the Radar, The Lake, Obsessed with is committed to supporting creative experiences Award. Her latest pamphlet Painting the Stones Nick Major lives on a biodynamic farm with Pipework and Scotia Extremis. She was runner- for young people. gabriellebarnby.com Back was published in 2019 by Maria Isakova the usual menagerie and a sexually-frustrated up in the 2019 Shooter Poetry Competition. Bennett of Coast to Coast to Coast. peacock called Percy. His writing has appeared Heather Beaton lives on South Uist and in The Herald and The Scottish Review of Books. Cynthia Rogerson’s latest novel Wait is inspired by the changing seasons, wild Lesley Harrison is a member of the for me Jack (written under the pseudonym weather and connecting with the hidden Northwords Board. Her most recent collections Marion McCready lives in Dunoon, Addison Jones) is published by Sandstone. wild. www.heatherybean.blogspot.com. are Disappearance (Shearsman, 2020) Argyll. She is the author of two poetry and Blue Pearl (New Directions, 2017). collections, most recently Madame Isobel Rutland enjoys penning novels as well as Valerie Beattie is a Northwords Board member Ecosse (Eyewear Publishing, 2017). short fction. She won the Romantic Novelists’ and developed UHI’s frst undergraduate Jennifer Morag Henderson’s Association Elizabeth Goudge Award in 2015, is literature degree. Her research interests include biography Josephine Tey: A Life was acclaimed by Robin Munro now lives on Bute, after an arts’ correspondent for The Wee Review and Gothic studies and she is working to bring the Observer, Independent and Telegraph as a Book running a bookshop in Galloway. His two member of the Aberdeen Writers’ Studio. an accepted book draft to publication. of the Year. www.jennifermoraghenderson.com published poetry collections are The Land of the Mind and Shetland like the World. James Sinclair’s poetry collection Yarnin Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in the Paula Jennings’ most recent poetry was published through Bluemull Books Cévennes mountains in France, the subject of collection is Under a Spell Place, published Anne Pia is an Edinburgh-based Italian in 2017. His frst play Da Sam Rodd My her fourth collection.www.sharonblack.co.uk by HappenStance. She facilitates poetry Scot, author and poet. Her Language of my Ancestors Drave was broadcast on BBC writing workshops in Fife and Edinburgh. Choosing was shortlisted for the Saltire First Radio Shetland in November 2019. Clare O’Brien lives in Wester Ross, writing her Book Award (2017) and won the Premio frst novel, ‘Light Switch’. Recent publication Suzy A. Kelly holds an MLitt in Creative Flaiano Linguistica in 2018. She has now Ian Stephen’s selected poems maritime is includes Mslexia, Spelk and anthologies from Writing from Glasgow and is also published completed a second book for Luath Press. published by Saraband, as is his novel a Book Hedgehog Poetry Press and The Emma Press. in Gutter and New Writing Scotland. She is of Death and Fish. Waypoints (Bloomsbury) working on her frst novel, Vile Deeds. Lydia Popowich dreams, writes and was shortlisted for the Saltire non- Hamish Brown MBE, D.Litt. (St. A) is a writer, paints by the sea in Caithness. Her frst fction book of the year award, 2017. photographer, lecturer, poet and editor of over Ingrid Leonard comes from Orkney, pamphlet, The Jellyfsh Society was published thirty titles, most recently two collections of non- which inspires much of her poetry. Her in 2016 by Paper Swans Press. Ian Tallach Having previously worked fction: Walking the Song and Chasing the Dreams. poems have appeared in Brittle Star, The as a paediatric doctor, Ian is now Interpreter’s House and New Writing Scotland. Karen Hodgson Pryce lives in Aviemore. medically retired with MS. He lives in Ricky Monahan Brown’s memoir Stroke was Glenurquhart, as do his young family. one of The Scotsman’s Scottish Books of 2019. He’s working on a screenplay set Vawdrey Taylor is an artist and writer in nineteenth century Sutherland as part from the Black Isle with an interest of SFTN’s Write4Film programme. in etching and illustration.
Rachel Carmichael was once a lawyer Clair Tierney lives in Ardentinny and is but now writes stories. She has been a singer-songwriter, teacher and emerging published in thi wurd magazine. poet. Themes include voices of women in history, children, immersive environments. Paul F Cockburn is an Edinburgh-based freelance journalist specializing in arts & Isabel Thompson is a UHI Creative Writing/ culture, equality issues, and popular science. Literature student currently staying in Oban. He is Scotland editor for broadwaybaby.com Graham Turner stays in North Harris and Julian Colton lives in Selkirk, edits The Eildon Edinburgh. His work has appeared at StAnza Tree literary magazine and contributes articles and on the Poetry Map of Scotland. and reviews. His fve collections include, most recently, Che Guevaras and Everyman Iain Twiddy studied literature at university, and Street (both Smokestack Publishing) lived for several years in northern Japan. His poems have been published in The Poetry Review, Poetry Carey Coombs breeds pedigree Ireland Review, The London Magazine and elsewhere. Beef Shorthorn cattle at the foot of the Pentland Hills near Dunsyre. Hazel Urquhart is a second year degree n the 1960s and 1970s, we used to roads were cut through the landscape and student studying Creative Writing with UHI, Derek Crook lives on Mull. He has spend our summers in Portavadie, a a razor-wire fence was erected all around Inverness, enjoys writing poetry and prose published in High Tide, Dreamcatcher, Snakeskin, wild, remote corner of Argyll, where my grandad’s cottage. and was published in the Scottish Book Message In A Bottle and elsewhere. I Trust’s 2019 Anthology The Blether. my grandad had a small cottage on the However, no orders for platforms Gillian Dawson is participating in Clydebuilt edge of a shallow, sandy bay known as the came and the company soon went Lynn Valentine writes between dog walks. She is 12 – the Verse Apprenticeship Scheme Salen - Gaelic for ‘small inlet’. The house bankrupt. Portavadie was left derelict for working towards her frst poetry collection under run by St Mungo’s Mirrorball (Glasgow). had no electricity or running water, but many years, and my grandad’s cottage was the mentorship of Cinnamon Press after winning She was runner-up in the Hugh Miller a place on their Pencil Mentoring competition. Writing Competition 2017-2018. I remember those days as the happiest of eventually sold to a hotel company for my childhood. development. Petra Vergunst is a poet and ecologist living Imogen Forster is preparing poems for In the mid-1970s, the government In this image, I am dreaming of and working in Northeast Scotland. Her writing publication as a pamphlet, and posting deals with the multiple ways in which we know, haiku and cinquains on Twitter. approved the sale of the surrounding land Portavadie, before and after the cataclysm, relate to, and participate in our environments. to a company who built oil-rig platforms. joined by my parents on their honeymoon, Amanda Gilmour is a creative writing The multi-million-pound project was my brother birdwatching and the cat Mags Wallis lives in Strathpefer. She keeps hens, student at the University of the Highlands heavily subsidised by the public purse from Portavadie farm. enjoys knitting socks, climbing trees… and writing. and Islands. She lives in Inverness with her husband and three children. and Portavadie was destroyed - the Salen The piece is made with handblown Pip Osmond-Williams graduated in 2019 had explosives placed in it, transforming and salvaged glass, which I have from Glasgow University with a PhD in Peter Godfrey lives in the Hebrides, works as it into an enormous, deep gully, a large, sandblasted, engraved, fled, painted and Scottish Literature. Her poems have most a reluctant journalist and is currently trying to recently appeared in New Writing Scotland and escape by putting together a frst poetry collection. concrete workers’ village was built, wide fred. the SWC chapbook, Island & Sea.