View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Northwords Nowprovided by Edinburgh Research Explorer Issue 9 Summer 2008

At the Word’s Edge – NNow interviews LES MURRAY Taming the Elephant– Essay on translation by ROBERT ALAN JAMIESON Floating Stones – LOTTE GLOB’s new book reviewed New Fiction by JOHN GLENDAY, ALISON NAPIER and DAVID MCVEY Poetry by PAULA JENNINGS, HENRY MARSH and more New poetry collections by YVONNE GRAY, GEORGE GUNN and TOM POW reviewed

The FREE literary magazine of the North

Northwords Now

Contents Northwords Now

A three times yearly literary magazine published by Northwords, a not-for-profit company, registered at February 2005. 3 EDITORIAL Address 4 Poems by HENRY MARSH PO Box 5706 Inverness IV1 9AF 5 Taming the Elephant, Essay by ROBERT ALAN JAMIESON Board members. KY Irvine, Chair; 6 New Gaelic Writing at Northwords Now Jenny Mayhew, Company Secretary; Margaret Ferguson and Ann Yule, mem- 7 Two microfictions by JOHN GLENDAY bers. 8 The Season of Festivals Editor Rhoda Michael with Jon Miller and Isabel 9 Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre. A short story by ALISON NAPIER Rogers 10 Poems by GERARD ROCHFORD Advisory Group I Blake, S Campbell, F Woods 11 Dewpoint Designer 12 At the Word’s Edge, Jon Lesley’s interview with LES MURRAY Gustaf Eriksson www.erikssonmedia.com 14 Poems by RYAN VAN WINKLE and PAULA JENNINGS Front cover image 15 Poems by CHRIS SAWYER and MARK EDWARDS Margaret McAtier www.magmaphoto.co.uk 16 An Elemental Alchemy Cotacts NNow 17 Here be Serpents, a Short Story by DAVID MCVEY T 01463 231758 E rhoda8@btopenworld. com 19 Poems by DEBBIE COLLINS, LAURA-CLAIRE WILSON Advertising T 01463 231758 & GRAEME BARRASFORD YOUNG Distribution T 01463 231758 23 REVIEWS Subscriptions The magazine is FREE and can be picked 23 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS up at locations across Scotland. See list on P22 23 WHERE TO FIND NORTHWORDS NOW The fee for individual ‘home-delivery’ is £5 23 Introducing ISABEL ROGERS for 3 issues, cheques payable to ‘North- words’.

Submissions to the magazine are wel- come. They can be in Gaelic, English and any local variants. They should be sent to the postal EDITORIAL We look forward to having, in our Autumn issue, a address – see above. Unsolicited E-mail fuller account of what Emyr Lewis and the other highly attachments will not be opened. The mate- informed speakers of this eye-opening conference had to rial should be typed on A4 paper. Contact say, prepared for us by Dr. Heddle. details and SAE should be included. We n Northwords Now, issue 9, we continue our inter- In this issue we continue NNow’s modest contribu- cannot return work that has no sae. est in minority languages. When we stumbled across tion to the promotion of minority language interests with Ithese matters a year ago we thought we were dealing a major essay, ‘Taming the Elephant’ (page 5) by Robert Copyright remains with the author. with a little local difficulty. Now we learn that the Council Alan Jamieson who continues the discussion of translation of Europe has a vigorous and active Secretariat of the matters begun in these pages in the Spring. Next publication date planned for early European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Further, and importantly, with tangible support and en- July 2008. Just as we were preparing issue 9 to go to print the couragement from HIE and HI-Arts, we have made a start UHI offered a Conference in Inverness on this subject on the process of developing a more formal policy for our titled ‘Voices of the West’, and led by Dr Donna Heddle of gathering and presentation of Gaelic writing, in collabo- UHI, Orkney College. ration with experienced Gaelic writers from around the Emyr Lewis, Welsh lawyer and poet, and UK repre- Highlands and Islands. sentative on the Secretariat of the Charter, set the scene First planning for NNow began in late 2004. None The Board and for the conference with an account of the impact of the among us would admit to having enough Gaelic to be our Editor of Charter across the ten years of its existence. He describes Gaelic editor; nor were we well enough acquainted with Northwords Now it as ‘an international instrument (the recommendations the Gaelic literary world to have a sufficient sense of di- acknowledge of which must be ratified by individual states) for ensur- rection within it. Nonetheless, we have been able to carry support from ing the promotion and protection of Regional Minority some attractive Gaelic material in every issue to date: fine Inverness & Nairn Languages.’ He defines it further, not as establishing rights, new poetry, a school Sorley MacLean celebration project, Enterprise, but as creating norms: not primarily legal but more socio- and several excellent poetry collections for review. the Scottish Arts linguistic; a language-planning instrument. One of the Please see our notice of invitation to Gaelic writers on Council and virtues of lawyers is that no word they use carries poetic page 6 of this issue. Hi-Arts. ambiguity; meaning is defined! - Rhoda Michael ISSN 1750-7928

3 Northwords Now

Poems by Henry Marsh

On the Glasgow Train Canal in Autumn - Maryhill Out of the Dark

She sits opposite. Wrings her hands Wintry breaths – a thin Winter is a weight on the sea. round her mobile. Her head, pushed mist is polishing the glass. Stars are falling into the breathing surf. back into her seat shifts, side But the light restrained, Orion is aloof and stubborn, to side. She settles. muted, sees further. studded to a bleak bulkhead. It permits you to enter. Alders Warmth seduces. Fire flames Yawns. The blue-grey eyes drown in brown. From endless, ghost across closed eye-lids. fix. But their broken panes lucid depths a birch Cheeks burn – backs will not allow her passage grows upwards from its twigs, freeze. Sleep drags to the dreich fields. their few, sunk leaves to the tomb of a bedroom. Bored like uncertain glimmers of fish with lucidity, the window enjoys Flares in the murk over Grangemouth or fragments fallen the night in transmission – the cold appear to make her shiver. Her phone from the morning moon. unfolds in opaque equations. won’t work. I don’t have mine to give. The reflection elbows She wears two brooches: at the root in a watery Morning elms are hoarse – metamorphosis, becomes have found their voice. Etched on one lapel of her grey suit, substantial in the air – enough flat on a slate sky, a poppy; the other carries the photo to carry a few small navigation through the net seems of a soldier. They share the shape of a mouth, birds and the frail sun. improbable. But rooks are the arch of an eye-brow. Though a ripple threatens, bouncing and dancing, steering the image is persistent – it follows between suppliant limbs, You’re in distress, my wife says. as you pass till swallowed assuring that the sap will rise – I bless her for speaking. The son behind by the gulp of a bridge. unfold its pulse in the sun. was killed by a roadside bomb. November They wheel in sudden clamour, is a difficult month. settle to talk the wisdom of a black brooding on icy sticks. Unemployed – he went for a soldier. Oregon Pine and a Child Eighteen years – three weeks in Iraq. Why remember only now, shadows The black puddles in a derelict yard It wasn’t the spirit of place – for she ran, of birds, lustre on the night sea? could be fathomless. happy and laughing by the spring wood, brought Slowly, roots are finding the dark. something from the depths of a woman’s And yesterday, I found a grief To die for a lie. I remember, though, passing face that looked like joy. that unreality had shrouded. a September in Central Park and a woman, After forty years it broke her coat rain-black. Rachel It wasn’t the wind, in its tiresome through a window in a film. weeping for her children. insistence on recalling a passion of winter, And meeting – knowing, utterly, for in spite of itself, it shifted the hanging that love would grow, your gifts larches to a shimmer of bright green. of body and spirit, your quiet, insistent goodness lead into life. It was more, perhaps, an instinctive All this, beyond my agency. shiver at sublimity under a great pine, the swart roots braced across rock before knuckling into submissive earth.

And the cage of its trunks, like the limbs of an ancient yew, stretched into dizziness, promising some dire entrapment, a dumb and wooden metamorphosis.

And its shadow – the nothing that is, a bold, yet subtle absence – whispered these intuitions of loss that haunt even the happiest of children.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t like it.’ And ran.

4 Northwords Now

Taming the Elephant By Robert Alan Jamieson

Robert AlanJamieson continues the discussion, begun in NNow # 8, of dilemmas about translation for writers who choose to write in minority languages.

postmodern era. Variations co-exist – in- (Scandinavian) elements, even 500 hun- an Elephantine viewpoint. And to use the The State of Scots deed, it is a happy thing that they should. dred years after the transfer of political English as a beast of burden is perhaps a kind Despite the obvious parallel experience power from Copenhagen to Edinburgh. of revenge for being long-squashed; a tool aoilios Caimbeul, in his essay of marginalisation, the relationship between Shetland’s long history of North Sea trade to increased interaction and propagation ‘In Bed with an Elephant’, ad- Scots and ‘the Elephant’ is markedly dif- with speakers of Dutch, Frisian, and Low of minority language via translation. This, I Mdresses issues around translation ferent from that of Gaelic. Many English Saxon is also a factor. Distinctiveness for the suggest, is payback for centuries of cultural as they affect Gaelic poets and which reso- people understand Scots - north eastern Shetlander is not an issue. The problem is imperialism – the revenge of the bedfellow. nate with us writers of Scots. The key dif- English dialects particularly have much more what to do with those parts of the But here I must add that this Elephant has ference, perhaps, is that in the case of Scots in common with the southern forms of local tongue that do not fit neatly into the been, to me, a marvellous craitur, has carried it is less easy to see where Elephant ends and Scots, reminding us that the old kingdom English or the Scots alphabet, particularly me as reader from steppe to dustbowl, from bedfellow begins. Scots and English shade of Northumbria reached from Forth to the ‘Scandinavian vowels’ as they were once old world to new, from saga to haiku. While into one another – part of a complex spec- Humber, that it was to the south of Humber termed by the education authorities - but I do not wish to be swallowed by it, I am trum of language which rounds the North the land of the Angles began, and that traffic these issues I have written about elsewhere, grateful to it. Sea. Whereas cousins across the water, just and trade across the border is both ancient and lie beyond the remit of this essay.9 I My own first experience of translation as indistinct from neighbours, achieved ‘lan- and everyday. A quick look at the work of should mention, however, the vital work of was into English. It grew out of a friend- guage’ status centuries ago, Scots struggled Bill Griffiths8, for instance, will confirm the late John J. Graham in the 20th century, ship made at the Scottish Universities to reach such a state of grace. Its current this sense that the forms of West Germanic the key figure in giving the Shetland tongue International Summer School in 1989, situation is both parlous and hopeful - par- found on the east coast of Britain do not the same authoritative credibility described in ‘Soviet times’. Volodymyr Dibrova had lous in that it appears ever more diluted by neatly fit the current political map. There earlier in relation to Scots as a whole.10 something he wanted to show people ‘in anglicisation and globalisation; hopeful in are many specific examples I could quote, the west’ – that Ukrainian literature existed that rather than being, as once, popularly but a favourite one of mine is the word – and I fell into line, working the literals he misconceived of as the ‘broken’ version of ‘haar’. In my adopted home of Edinburgh, Translation: provided into the target language – English Imperial English spoken north of the bor- people take a certain pride in naming the visibility and enrichment – for Edinburgh Review11. One thing he der, there is increased understanding both at North Sea fog thus, as if it was specifically explained to me was the iconic place of the home and abroad that it too has justifiable an Edinburgh (or Leith) phenomenon. But Visibility is a difficulty for any writer, if they letter ‘i’ in Ukrainian, for it was this symbol claim to ‘language’ status - as recognised, fi- it is a word used as far north as Shetland are at all bothered about their work being that most distinctively marked Ukrainian nally, by the resumed Scottish parliament. and, according to the OED, as far south as read. In situations where the medium is a from Russian – which reminded me of The academic work of the last century the Humber. Another example comes from smaller tongue isolated by a larger, where the non-English graphs in my Shetlandic is vital and impressive - the Scottish National a small pamphlet of Yorkshire dialect writ- the media is largely conducted in a ‘foreign’ work. And I consider this approach apposite Dictionary1, produced between 1931 and ing I picked up years ago. I was amazed at language, this difficulty is obviously magni- for Scots generally, as one feature of Scots 1976 under the editorship of firstly William the title - ‘Cum thee Wis’ – which I recog- fied. I recall an interview with the Faroese which distinguishes it from the southern Grant and latterly David Murison, set out nised immediately as ‘Kum de wis’ (‘come poet Rói Patursson, winner of the Nordic Elephant is that whereas English lost the to represent the full spectrum of Scottish this way’) from the tongue of Shetland. The Council’s prize for literature in 1986, where sound once represented by the graph ‘æ’ vocabulary, and its single volume spin-off2 contents too seemed very familiar. he bemoaned the fact that Faroese writers centuries ago – a short ‘a’ – Scots did not; so helped publicise the richness of the Scots So it is a complicated picture. Even the had a maximum of some 48,000 readers. that MacDiarmid’s famous line, for instance, tongue. In the 80s Billy Kay provided a name ‘Scots’ is potentially misleading, for as At the time I thought this substantial, but might be represented as: “I’ll hæ næ haufwæ popular yet informative assessment of both we know the Scots themselves were origi- of course not all the people of Faroe read hoose.”12 the history and late 20th situation3 and nally Celtic and not Germanic, and the term poetry. And the point is linguistic isolation, Following this work with Volodymyr William Donaldson’s research illuminated firstly referred to Scottish Gaelic. While one not poetic. Dibrova, I was approached to work with an overlooked area, the widespread use of of the distinguishing factors between Scots The ‘minority’ writer is invisible to a Nadia Kjurik on a Ukrainian feature for Scots in the press in an era which previ- and the other West Germanic tongues is its world which does Index on Censorship, ously had been regarded as something of a many Gaelic loan words and phrases, it is not know how to “Translation responds to focusing on Yevgen low point.4 relatively easy for the language we now call decode and so can- Pashkov’ski.13 I later Scots in the 21st century began with Scots to blend into English – too easy, some not recognise the the original by freeing worked on a similar Matthew Fitt’s first novel, a groundbreaking might say. The danger of ‘false friends’, or merits of the work. basis with Liv Schei, futuristic dystopia,5 and Fitt’s subsequent ‘negative transference’ is great, where the A true poet may it as a mutable thing, on a novel from the work in tandem with James Robertson in same root word has evolved different mean- well make poetry a complex of encoded Danish, and out of the Itchy Coo6 project is providing books ings over time. Compared with Gaelic, it is whether anyone all this a habit devel- for children that have proved – surprising- not so easy to distinguish Scots, to main- reads it or not, but ideas and associations not oped. I got to like the ly, to many doubters - genuinely popular. tain a ‘forked tongue’ as W.N. Herbert calls we are entitled to merely to be admired, but process. And about 2003 saw the publication of The Edinburgh it. In the work of writers such as Kathleen ask, after Derrida, this time I began to Companion to Scots,7 an important bench- Jamie or Don Paterson, we find a quieter whether it is fully transmuted, necessarily translate myself – that mark academic work which further under- Scots voice inhabiting their predominantly writing if no one is, began to make bi- lined this new-found status, and in 2004 a English language work, rather in the manner reads it. And so, for rearranged. It is, in effect, lingual text. I realise team at Dundee University digitised the that the voice of Orkney inhabits the work the writer work- a kind of ‘Re-Creative now in doing so I was full text of all ten volumes of the SND and of George Mackay Brown – the occasional ing in a so-called recognising that the made them available free via the Dictionary word amongst an otherwise English text, minority language, Writing’.” child inside me had of the Scots Language site. perhaps the odd idiom translated to give the translation takes been translating ever The pluralistic approach employed in feel of Scots. As a result, the need to translate on a much greater since starting school in these key works, recording historical and into English is less pressing – in many cases importance. The irony is, perhaps, that the Shetland in 1963. In 1989, those Ukrainian geographical variants, shows Scots to be a a small glossary is quite sufficient. very Elephant that threatens to squash its translations were a political act – anti-Soviet very broad kirk, reaching from Shetland to But in my own case, or that of my native smaller bedfellow, can also be the beast that – and the translations I began to make of my Ulster, encompassing urban and rural – a tongue, the picture is different. I come from helps transport. For the Elephant has a back own work had that tenor to me. They were ‘pluricentric diasystem’. The question of a the most northern part of the Scots world, so broad it can be a ‘bridge’ language that statements – notifications - of existence in fixed or standard orthography, for so long a and grew up speaking a very distinctive carries little us to distant others – others English. I aimed for redress – if not equiva- sore issue, now appears less pressing in the form with considerable North Germanic like ourselves, marginal and isolated from lence then at least a relation, a speaking-to- rr

5 Northwords Now

r one-another, a dialogue between the voice Translation is kindred to creation, but dif- where density of allusion and ambiguity is Notes of Home and the voice of Education. ferent in that it begins with reading whereas far greater than in speech or prose writing, 1. www.dsl.ac.uk My involvement with Literature Across creation ends with it. Translation responds to must inevitably be misrepresented in ‘trans- 2. The Concise Scots Dictionary, ed. Frontiers14 in recent years has developed this the original by freeing it as a mutable thing, position’. But then poetry, one might argue, Mairi Robinson, 1985 interest. LAF is a Euro-wide venture which a complex of encoded ideas and associations lies in the active attempt at understanding, 3. Scots: The Mither Tongue, Billy Kay, brings together writers (mainly poets) from not merely to be admired, but transmuted, not graphs, and translation at best is exactly 1986. minority languages in order that they may necessarily rearranged. It is, in effect, a kind that. 4. The Language of the People William translate one another. In most cases, an of ‘Re-Creative Writing’. So the translator Reading poetry is difficult enough in Donaldson, 1989 Elephant is required – a bridge language, and the creator are not so far apart – in- one’s native tongue – the very nature of it 5. But n Ben A-Go-Go, 2000 generally English. This involvement led to a deed the essential semantic instability of any resists the intelligence, almost successfully, as 6. www.itchy-coo.com new understanding on my part, that inward text, dependent on the subjectivity of the Wallace Stevens20 phrased it. A translation is 7. The Edinburgh Companion to Scots, translation is a means of testing and extend- reader, suggests that translation is not such always partial, a subjective reading, a response eds. John Corbett; Derrick McClure; ing the native, a way of adding to the body a different thing from the kind of necessary to a call, to some appeal found in the origi- Jane Stuart-Smith of literature written in that form – a means interpretation made by a reader in their na- nal, but if the thing that is made is genuinely 8. A Dictionary of North East Dialect, of enrichment.15 So far, as a result of LAF, tive language. responsive, based on deep understanding of 2002 I’ve translated - via these Elephants - the Ah, but poetry - it is often said - is un- the original, the ‘transposition’ may itself at- 9. in the essay ‘A “Quite-Right” apo work of over 20 contemporary European translatable; an idea sometimes attributed tain the state of being poetic. Poetry is not, da Saekrit Paetbank’, 2004 – English poets into my version of Shetlandic Scots.16 to Coleridge and the elevated Romantic then, simply what is lost in translation, as translation of the original Shetlandic In each case I learned something about my station of the poetic art his work helped Robert Frost once famously remarked – text is available at http://www. native tongue as a consequence. to engender. But it is an ancient thought, it is also, potentially, what is found. And if robertalanjamieson.info Yet translation is no simple business – it and in more recent times we find Roman all translations fail to make different things 10. Grammar and Usage of The Shetland is, and always has been, fraught with the is- Jakobsen taking it up: “Poetry by definition alike, that is simply inevitable. Dialect, ed. Robertson and Graham, sue of correspondence: how can two essen- is untranslatable. Only creative transposition Untranslatability is part of translation as 1952; The Shetland Dictionary, ed. John tially different things be made alike? is possible: either intralingual transposition – Jacques Derrida once said: “…. There is no J. Graham, 1979 from one poetic shape to another, or inter- experience of translation when we don’t 11. ‘Independent Writing’ in Edinburgh lingual transposition – from one language experience the untranslatable ... it’s abso- Review 86, ed. Murdo Macdonald, Re-Creative Writing into another, or finally intersemiotic trans- lutely linked to the idiom, to the extent that 1991 We might argue that the original process of position – from one system of signs into an- the idiom is not translatable, that the transla- 12. in A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, creating in language is just this: a process of other, eg. from verbal art into music, dance, tion translates the untranslatable. That’s why 1926 translation, in its broadest sense, of mood or cinema or painting.”17 literature is the experience of translation, is 13. Index on Censorship, 3/1993 feeling or idea or observation into thought- This distinction between translation and what calls for translation. To write a poem, 14. www.lit-across-frontiers.org words, then those into writing – then fol- transposition is hierarchical – the presence an untranslatable poem, calls for transla- A book of translations from the LAF lows ‘translation’ from draft to draft until: of the word ‘only’ suggests the latter is in- tion. The poem cries for being translated workshop held in Shetland in 2005 alchemy, the energy has led to something ferior. In ‘transposing’ a poem interlingually, precisely because it can’t be. That’s why we was published by the award-winning magical. All that making in the workshop something less than ‘translation’ takes place. try and translate Hölderlin and Milton and Caseroom Press in conjunction with has created something - we hope: the en- The person responsible is at best a ‘trans- Mallarmé, and we know that they are not the Scottish Poetry Library (ed. Robyn coding of meaning; an event in semantics, poser’ – which has an amusing if accidental translatable. But that’s why the untranslat- Marsack, 2006) and perhaps publishing - we hope. The en- negative connotation, in its association with ability is not a negative concept. It’s not op- 15. for information on and examples of ergy of composition has, ideally, crystallized the French loan, ‘poseur’. The implication is posed to translatability. Untranslatability is translation into Scots, see European something to be treasured - even festishized: that we are fooling ourselves if we imagine the element of translation.”21 Poetry in Scotland: An Anthology of ‘The Definitive Text’. otherwise. The difficulty is intrinsic to the process Translations, ed. Peter France and However, publication and its core notion The text, to the structuralist, is the text is – as being elephantine is a condition of be- Duncan Glen, 1989 of ‘deadline’ do not always coincide with the text – a fact, or series of facts, ink marks ing an Elephant. And however oppressed we 16. www.robertalanjamieson.info/ completion. Writers may be hurried towards on paper. But what is contained there, es- native speakers of Gaelic or Scots may have translations.html it, the published text may be incomplete. It pecially in the case of poetry, is something been by being educated in English, we are 17. ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, may be the victim of careless publishing, lit- other, something allusive and elusive, even at least fluent in one of the world’s great in On Translation, ed. Bower, 1959 tered with typographical errors. The ‘defini- in the original - a complex of sound, im- languages – not the case with all minority 18. discussion of logopoeia, phanopoeia, and tive’ is not really, then, a thing that resides age and idea, within an architecture, if we language speakers. melopoeia in How to Read, 1931 in any of the editions or revisions – it is follow Pound’s following of Aristotle.18 As I feel we should use this to our advantage 19. Thought and Language, trans. not made of text at all. It is in the author’s different languages encode different world – by taming the Elephant, become ‘mahout’, Hanfmann and Vakar, 1962 mind, an ideal aspired to, and, on rare oc- views, different ways of thinking about ex- and guide it to where we want to go. We 20. in ‘Man carrying Thing’, Collected casion, blissfully achieved. The ‘made thing’, perience, so replication is impossible. “A should endeavour actively to direct it, and Poems of Wallace Stevens,1990 that fixed identity in words - the event in word is a microcosm of human conscious- not lie passively abed awaiting the crush. 21. www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/ published language - emerges out of flux, ness,” as Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky19 wrote. And that is just what we are doing, Maoilios surfaces/vol6/krieger.html and stops the creative process, sometimes Poetry, which makes such use of the musi- Caimbeul and myself, in using it as vehicle drastically. cality and the associative power of words, for this Gaelic/Scots exchange. n

of researched essays and reviews of books or times yearly. The Autumn issue is planned events which merit specialised attention. for 1st November ‘08; the Spring issue for New Gaelic Writing at We also aim to be accessible to a wide 1st March ’09. It is planned that there will (mainly English-speaking) readership. We be a Gaelic Editor in place for these 2 issues. Northwords Now have a 7000 print run per issue and the fact This person will be keen to receive submis- that we are, notionally, ‘Free’ makes it easy sions of new creative Gaelic writing, of sug- for us to place NNow with stockists across gestions for essays or features on matters that Scotland; and for them to be able to report are issues ‘now’ for Gaelic writers. orthwords Now occupies some- To date most of what we have published has on high rate of uptake. Anyone wishing to have more informa- thing not unlike the place previ- been unsolicited. Some wonderful surprises We get messages from readers saying how tion, or wanting to submit material for possi- Nously occupied by the Magazine come our way. they have enjoyed it. ble publication should write to the General Northwords which was published out of We are a magazine where creative writ- We have had, to date, something GAELIC Editor at Northwords Now, PO Box Dingwall from 1991 till 2004. ing can be published. The ties of the writ- in every issue: poetry, a schools project 5706, INVERNESS. IV1 9AF. It will What do we mean by ‘North’? Our inter- ing or the writer to the north may be close (Plockton/Sorley), and 6 excellent poetry be passed on to the Gaelic Editor. ests are wide-ranging. They extend beyond or not. We look for ‘high quality’, by which collections to review. And now we have be- a fixed geographical location. We’ve had a is meant, that which is satisfying to readers gun, in collaboration with established Gaelic featured review of 20thc.Russian poetry; of discrimination and experience. We have writers, to formalise a Gaelic policy. an essay on Margaret Tait, Orkney poet and a sound reviews section and seek informed We are being supported and encouraged Rhoda Michael film-maker; have used images from Inuit art and lively reviewers. And we have a fea- by HIE with HI-Arts in this enterprise. (aka Rhoda Dunbar) and have been offered an essay on the Sami. tures section which is evolving into a mix Northwords Now is published three Editor NNow

6 Northwords Now

Two microfictions by John Glenday

What My Mother Called Me

The human heart, I am led to believe, is the same size as a clenched fist. And so it was that in that single heartbeat between the last beam of last night’s dark and the deep, grey first light of today I caught sight of who else but, coincidence itself, my mother settling from the air. She was built from old smoke stacked in a shuttered room. Light in the air as the last of hopefulness, she batted the dandelion clocks of her fists towards the draught, pulled herself clear of the peeling bedroom wall, one hand to the place her heart had been. In the moment between forming and her own words dissolving her again and me thinking all that about the human heart; its size, her hands, that room, and the messy rest, she mouthed the word it was she had called me by, which was my father’s also, with an upturn to its only syllable, as if it were a question she had never framed before.

The Woodling

hit thick night. Wind up with its his roots or feet and grows like dark in the long thin glum-voiced call. Trees night to the size of a piglet, then a lambkin, Sdoing their thrash and flails. Face-rain, then a stirk. That sudden. Stripling he is in a needle sleet and all. Two of us for a deed’s blinking, then half man and giant man. doing: me for the looking out and Spirket Spirket says on the quiet: - our fish-eyed, smile-faced jobsman - for ‘Whose life can gallop on like this and the burying. The pair of us at the swither yet have the living in him still? He’ll cast a where two roads cross their hearts. Loitering white shadow,’ and he does the sign. to earth a deadborn dibbled from the Inn We steps back and looks one into the girl’s godfriend’s sister. Him has a blackwood trembling other. Our hearts shift in their spade. The pair of us carries iron. cages like a shift of wind. ‘Where’s tricks then?’ says I to the smiley- And still the undeaded babe does its boy. And he gives me the follow with his growing, this elf-fleck the piss raised; a first finger, ducks through a gap by the wood’s and last beard spurling from him now, and rim. the snow of his hair coiling through the coal ‘In here by the beech fall, where the of his hair, and he falters to something older going’s soft,’ says he, then hacks out a thin than the minute he has lived. The arc of his hollow for the carcase of the babe thing I’m earthtime founders in a handful of breaths. carrying, fish-cold in my hod. He takes grip A rainbow washed white is his breathing as of it from me, fumbles the damp grilse of he sets him to take his one footstep in the its greyness in and slips a shaved farthing world. But he stumbles and droops and pants against each half-closed socket. Heaps back and halts. And so old is he now, he husks the leaves and dirt for a coverlet. Steps back into himself and as he withers turns up a a step. Eyes the finish of it. last shrivel of his face and says with a gentle ‘And here’s for the wetting of his luck,’ he plead and the lifting of a hand and a voice smirks, unbuttoning, and pishes brazen-like like a paddle-blade through grain: on the hummock he has delved; then says it ‘Give us a name to me Father, bless you. again, but softer for fear of a priest’s hearing. Tell us. What was I called?’ but is gone in Now of a sudden that stream of his water roils the breath that began it. To wood-mush. To up this swell of a leaf-whimper and a grim wind. To forgetting. steam, a rising boil of peat mud and beech Spirket puts the brief spade to it, fleshbits mast and shadows. That bairn surfacing; and mulch and all, then touches the arm of coins dropping. Brown glint of half-ways to me. Points to the woodless where two roads rotten flesh, struggling to stand. cross their hearts and are gone, just like I ‘Whoa, boy!’ And Spirket leaps back from said. One rising in the smoke rot and pig oil the quick rising of soil and livening corpse. lamps of town; faltering in moorlands under It burgeons. It lifts its head. It squalls. The a sprung pod moon; the other wending from brace of us wearing a sudden emptiness of not much of anywhere to the far side of all moons for faces. but nowhere. ‘Jesus squail him and squab him!’ says me, Spirket touches again and points. ‘this spawn of a woodling.’ ‘Our way,’ he whispers. ‘Be off with us And up it grows in an instant, all now.’ And wipes the done deed from his mushroom-like, and picks the plug of earth spade’s white grin. from its howl. First as a tottery suckling, ‘Be off with us too,’ says no one. then fresh boy, we decides, that toddles to ‘Be off with us all,’ says I.

7 Northwords Now

The Season of Festivals (the quieter kind) Dances of Thought in Scotland’s Ceilidh of Ideas

Wordfringe Compiled by Freda Hasler (and Friends)

ithin its comprehensive web- site www.wordfringe.co.uk, Wwhere you can read full reviews of the 32 events which make wordfringe an established part of our northern festival calendar, wf director Hodgkinson reminds us of “the incredible range of literary tal- ent we have in our midst.” Add invited guests, at tempting venues in Aberdeen and around the Shire – that’s May in North-East Scotland! The programme featured the expected vibrant mix of poetry, drama, fiction, laced with music, dance, visual imagery. This year, special emphasis was placed on the writers’ groups that nurture talent, with five launch- ing anthologies. Several workshops covered aspects of the narrative voice, all chock-full [someone noting this demand?], challeng- ing and instructive. Readings by Writers in Residence too: four employed by lo- cal councils during the 1990s gathered in historic Duff House: Gunn, Bryan, Dunn and Gibson in the same room, on the same evening? Inspiring. James Robertson (left) and Stuart Kelly at the Ullapool Book Festival Enthused by the WORD festival, what do we, the audience, look for in this excit- ing and ever-expanding fringe? Something different? Our reviewers hover, pens poised, Dickinson, back by demand, deftly support- within an international context and this as advertising. Referring to Akhmatova, eager to share their highlights. ed by Balgoni, Wizard and co. year there were more non-Anglophone po- Tom Jones suggested that poetry’s position wordfringe got off to a jubilant start North again, Duff House launched ets than ever. That poetic connectivity was in all this, is ultimately, to be ‘at variance ‘Pushing Out the Boat’, with its stunning Huntly Writers’ first anthology “Spirit of emphasised by Kenneth White’s reading and with the world’. artwork and diverse voices. An Arts Centre the Deveron”: humorous post modern ex- in his interview with Andrew Clegg. It was In the StAnza Lecture, Sarah Maguire audience of 70+ watched talented writers perimentation. At Fraserburgh’s Museum also echoed in Annie Freud’s discussion of questioned poetry’s relevance in relation to breathing vibrancy and life into their read- of Scottish Lighthouses, the Blue Salt Eliot, in a ‘Past & Present’ session; she ar- the Iraq conflict, referring to Auden’s point ings. This venue staged several wf events, Collective in ‘Hooked by Emerald Froth’ gued that every new poem contributes to “poetry makes nothing happen”. She noted, including Shetland Night: island life obser- - the heart and soul of life painted using a greater organic whole, altering the canon. nonetheless, that the continual complaint vations by talented indigenous writers, en- nature’s palette. Regular wf host, Aberdeen’s At a ‘Poetry Breakfast’ John Burnside with that ‘poetry is irrelevant’ was contradicted hanced by guitar, harmonica, plus local liter- literary enclave Books and Beans, gave us Norwegian poets, Odveig Klyve and Finn by the fact it is a perennial grumble; poetry ati. There was drama at the Woodend Barn. ‘Four Paris (based) Poets’, an evening of fine, Øglænd, discussed the survival of older na- refuses to go away. Referring to Brecht and In ‘Everything but the Truth’, Wordfringe intelligent verse; ‘Poems of Quality’, just as tive languages in the face of the engulfing MacNeice, Maguire argued that writing Festival Players presented three monologues it says on the tin, Ryland’s poems shedding tide of the internet. They argued that re- poetry, even in the darkest times, is a nec- and a dialogue, compellingly written and light on the world through her fresh and maining connected to their locality enabled essary act. Maguire suggested that poetry performed. While ‘Poetry and Music of All most original voice; and wf grand finale ‘A them to be international, but just as rural is, however, vulnerable to political exploi- the Faiths’ at Midmar Church offered Mary, Celebration of Childhood’, with a new an- life needed to be guarded against becom- tation; poets from the former Soviet Bloc Joseph, digging, burying, mantra and lament thology in aid of Children 1st. ing a pastiche of itself, similarly, poetry are promoted, but not Arabic ones. Having - with Bach on guitar. What did we used to do in May? had to resist the shallow discourse of com- worked with poets from Somalia, Maguire Tiny venues provided intimacy: at merce. Alexander Hutchison, Robert Alan argued that poetry translation is the oppo- Balmedie’s Tarts & Crafts, humour, suspense Jamieson and Kevin MacNeil, along with site of war; it requires negotiation. and sadness in ‘New York Dialogues and StAnza Franconian and Friesian poets, spoke about With around seventy events featuring Island Blethers’. No amplification required Stuart B.Campbell having a ‘mither tongue’ that in various ways almost as many poets, it’s not possible in at the ‘Open Mic’ in Better Read bookshop, conflicted with the country’s dominant lan- the space available to say more about how Ellon, with standing room only for an excel- tAnza celebrated its tenth anniver- guage. There was a sense throughout the StAnza crackles with energy and enthu- lent mini-ceilidh. Local flavour augmented sary last year, confirming its fixture in festival of poetry, whether as a specific text siasm. If you weren’t there this year, don’t by a good sprinkling of Doric at Aberdeen’s Sthe literary festival calendar, and while or in its defence of language, existing as an miss StAnza 2009. St K’s, with Portal Creative Writers dipping this year didn’t have anything like the ‘100 actor within a personal and global context. into their recently published ‘Poetry from a Poets’ extravaganza, to expect an anticli- It was perhaps less to do with Brian Postcode AB24’. max would’ve been to misunderstand what Turner (whose 2008 collection ‘Here Bullet’ Ullapool Book Festival Among Aberdeen Central Library’s StAnza is about. This year, like previous communicates his experience as a soldier in Paul Bain weekly pleasures, ‘All Said & Dunne’ wel- years, StAnza did so very well what it exists Iraq) contributing to the debate ‘Poetry & comed back this poet’s startlingly clear phi- to do: celebrate poetry. Conflict’ that the discussion focussed on Ceilidh of Ideas’ were Donny losophy of life, fearless and sometimes fe- This year’s festival themes, ‘Poetry & ‘conflict’ meaning ‘war’; it was probably O’Rourke’s (the gregarious rocious. Enigma’s ‘Poetic Off Licence’ pro- Conflict’ and ‘Sea of Tongues’, seemed un- unavoidable. August Kleinzaler’s point was ‘Aand hugely generous honorary vided a real treat for the head and the heart: likely companions, but they complimented that war has paradoxically been a continu- President of the Ullapool Book Festival) sex, drugs - with goats - and vicars? While each other in some surprising and subtle ous feature of ‘post -war’ civilisation. He ar- opening words, suggesting the intimacy, vi- at convivial Musa’s ‘Demented Eloquence’, ways. Although StAnza is ‘Scotland’s Poetry gued that global institutions regard war as an brancy, the entwining of word and thought this reviewer’s favourite performance poet Festival’, it has always oriented the poetry equally valid means of obtaining their goals that sums up this festival’s unique qualities. rr

8 Northwords Now

Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre. A short story by Alison Napier

he indicator is still on.You lean side- grim landscaped litter-garden. You would model, down the motorway, and suddenly wearing your cool shades. Cool shades, ways and flick up the arm. “Thanks,” say, “Look look, there’s a space, there, bastard, the rear-view mirror fell off. Just fell off. I said the first time I saw you wear them. TI say and keep driving, not turning we were here first, oh, they’re leaving, quick, Landed on the floor at my feet all tangled You lowered your head and looked at me my head. Past the computer superstores, the in there, reverse, yes I know there’s a queue with the pedals. I got it kicked out of the over the top, eyebrows raised, grinning. And carpet and furniture warehouses, the exhaust behind you, so what, wait, jesus you’ve got to way and kept driving, checking the wing look, you are grinning again. A superstar at a fitters and the kebabs and the minicab firms be quicker than that…” but I, embarrassed, mirrors instead, but always always forgetting superstore! And your arms are outstretched and the drive-thru McDonalds. Heading for have already changed gear, moved forward a second later and looking up. I had no idea like my angel of the North. Someone steps home. and skulked away back to the perimeter. that I looked in the mirror so often. And into the frame, onto the set, enters stage left, The green eye blinking on the dashboard And so I parked. You said, ”Won’t be long, now here I am doing it again. A vanity case. a new character in an idiosyncratic hunting stops, I hear the ticking, a racing caffeine you stay here.” So I stayed here. Where else I can see the vast gaping doorways of the hat. A deer stalker. Steps into the limelight, heart, only after it stops. Blinking and tick- would I go? I put the radio on and switched store from here, everyone is moving in or under the spotlight, into the circle that your ing. I have blinked and ticked all the way it off again. I stared out at the shrubs, name- out except the supersize security guard with arms would make if you were an equation, from the supermarket. Without you I might less dusty abandoned bushes in a pretend the LA cop-style uniform, standing, legs the circumference being I think two pie are. have blinked and ticked all the way home. herbaceous border sandwiched between apart, arms folded, mirror specs alert, look- The shopping list joke. Elementary my But without you I would not have been at parked cars and the recycling centre. I watch ing for trouble. dear Watson. Dear god. The circle com- the supermarket. the recyclers recycling their wine bottles and There is a screen, certificate U, with re- pletes. “I just need a couple of things,” you said. pet-food cans, and almost get out to rescue volving adverts at the side of the main en- There are revolving adverts at your side “You don’t mind do you?” A couple. a flapping carrier bag that has missed out trance, and at the other side there are rows but hey, surely when the ads start the main I said I did not mind because I knew on its chance for reincarnation. Doomed to and rows of trolleys snaking in wobbly lines programme is meant to stop for at least, oh, what a couple was. A couple is one and one spend a thousand indestructible years blow- across the paving slabs. Trolleys with baby a while, two and a half minutes maybe, not makes two. A couple is lots of things on the ing in the wind. And where will you go to seats at the front and ones with a clipboard just keep going with images of blood or- shelf, and choose the two ingredients that go my lovely. for the organised executive’s shopping list. anges and sparkling Spanish cava and patio together. A couple is two items from a long A tank draws up confidently, roaringly, For if you have more than a couple of things. sets and sun screen, all on a grotesque split list going up the aisle. We are a couple of beside me and slams to a halt. I turn in my Ones that hook onto a wheelchair and ones screen multiplex, now showing simultane- things from the supermarket. seatbelt, in my lowly civilian Sierra, and that are split-level, for if you have a couple ously. I did not know (and how could I “I’ll come with you. Maybe we can go craning my neck I see, in what is actually a of baskets. And deep ones, for tumbling into know) that you knew her quite as well as it for a coffee after?” I was already imagining monstrous black and chrome Cherokee Jeep, as you laboriously empty it at the checkout, appears you do. the double chocolate muffin and the crazy- a solitary woman in a tweedy-green deer- and shallow ones for the timid and moder- You gesture over towards our car and I big mug of cappuccino with a sprinkle of stalker. Sherlockina Holmes in the super- ate shopper. And even the injudicious, who see you laugh. She laughs too. A newer mod- everything. I don’t think you heard the cof- market car park. Stalking deer. I smile and I place all their eggs in one solitary basket, are el. You gesture because you are a risk taker. fee bit. No worries. know I will tell you about this when you get catered for here. This is my signal. I see it all now. I have seen Blink blink. We left the house fifty-seven back. Deer stalker. Jeez, you will say. Families stream in and out, man pushing it all now. The whole thing was brief and minutes ago. I know this because we left as Dear stalker, I am writing to you because trolley, steering helplessly without satnav, mute and wholly predictable. I can smash the the Archers’ theme tune was signalling the I have seen you many times but have never kids trailing behind, woman dreaming of screen and risk seven years of misfortune. I end of an episode and now it is nearly ten had the courage to speak to you. What is another life. Bustling singles stride in with a am not a risk taker though and I watch you minutes past three. We left the supermar- it that you find so fascinating about me? Is credit card and stride out again with ciabat- astonished as you take, take risk after risk af- ket five minutes ago. We arrived at the su- it my flamboyant yet sophisticated style of tas and chiantis. Its only bread and booze, ter risk. Taking away. My future. A takeaway permarket forty minutes ago. I know. I can dress? Or my artful manoeuvring of a su- sonny. Don’t be fooled. role, a kiss as the credits roll. And there you barely keep up either. But although I am not permarket trolley? Can I save you endless I adjust the mirror again because there have it. The past before I knew you, precisely by nature a calculating person I reckon that hours of trouble and invite you up to my are you! I know you even back to front, I mirroring the future I will have after you we were at the supermarket for thirty-five riverside apartment in the Old Town? Here know you in all your reflected glory. I know are gone. Empty. Only choking. Blink blink. minutes. And that is seventeen and a half is the address. I do hope you can come. I you framed in your little secret video screen, Jeez. minutes per item. Blimey. am generally at home between Whitsun and a video that is now showing on a tiny televi- The two items separated although I I am not a risk taker so when we reached Easter, otherwise I am painting at the villa in sion five inches by two, set against a back- know this only to be temporary until they the supermarket I swung in to the far side Provence. Do call. Yours etc. drop of a dusty windscreen (at least the bit meet again and they will, as they have and of the car park because I knew there would I glance in the mirror to see where Ms where the wipers never reach), and behind have and have. I had a Loyalty card, yes it’s be a space for us. I have tried sometimes to Holmes has gone. No sign. I move the mir- that is the shrubbery with a forlorn plastic in here somewhere, I know I have it some- trust in my luck, headed brazenly right up ror slightly and know that this is a mistake bag perched on a twig. I’m gonna make a where. And do you need any help packing to the front entrance, only to beat a humili- because I will have to rearrange it when we big star out of you. your bags? No no I’m fine. I’ll do it myself. ating retreat back to the wastelands by the leave. Ah well. I once drove a car, an older I know you are a star because you are Blinking, blinking hard.

r (continued from previous page) Writers and audiences congregate over a obvious reference here being Jekyll and the questing sense of who we are present in lives in Barcelona, prefers to swim between weekend, conversations continue and evolve, Hyde with its notion of fluid identities. his quietly elegant prose. identities and remain undefined, seeing them the threads picked up, gathered, drifting off Essie Stewart told of her life as a traveller, Gradually, the festival emerged from these as equal and creative rather than particular again. stories where the landscape became story, longworn preoccupations. Sam Meekings, a and defined. This was further taken up in The festival was opened by James where geography became embodied in tale young poet, presented his new collection the modernist poetry of Richard Price, in Robertson reading from his highly success- and myth, stories and traditions that are van- Bestiary alongside the more solid and quer- its eloquent compressions and contrarpuntal ful novel The Testament of Gideon Mack ishing as a way of life vanishes. This was con- ulous figure of George Gunn, also reading rhythms and was finally blown apart by Zoe and a glimpse of as yet unpublished novel tinued by the folk-lorist Margaret Bennett, from his new collection, The Atlantic Forest. Strachan’s brutal description of oral sex in a about Scottish life and politics in the latter reading from her Scottish Customs from the Gunn’s stands firmly in Caithness but reach- toilet. We had safely reached a modern world half of the twentieth century. He suggested Cradle to the Grave, with her accounts of es out and draws in references from Brazil to now but not before a final flourish from that Scotland’s uncertainty about itself al- folk customs, rituals and superstitions from Iraq in a widening circle and confluence of Alan Spence reading from The Pure Land, lows provocative and elusive questioning, birth to death, some which still keek through ideas that swirl around his favoured still (and his historical novel about Thomas Glover, an ambiguity picked up by Louise Welch in into our less credulous modern age. This stormy) centre of Dunnet Head. switching between Aberdeen and Japan. her lecture on Robert Louis Stevenson and sense of haunting was continued by Alasdair The notion of identity all but dissolved So this festival’s trajectory continues to ‘The Theatre of the Brain’ : the influence of Macleod, the great Cape Breton writer, in the brilliantly theatrical performances of recognise that our past is rich and thrums dreams on his fiction and their eruption into reading from his novel No Great Mischief, a Luke Sutherland. Luke, Orcadian-born, who below the surface, redefined in the contem- and influence on the conscious state- the Highland culture displaced to Nova Scotia, has lived in Glasgow and London and now porary spirit. n

9 Northwords Now

Poems by Gerard Rochford

In My Aunt’s Kitchen Sun Rise Proposal

A summer evening’s walk along the lane. I listen to the water in the shower Come in your black silk nightie, rain upon the silking of your body. the one with a broken strap She will offer me cider and I’ll watch her over your right shoulder; cook, sweep, bend, reach, wash. With face upturned, eyes closed, through an unmended tear your hands are busy with soap. the bud of your breast breaks out. I enter without knocking. Beside the fire, her body painted by the brush of flames, You glance down to the right, The first time you said: Oops, and covered it up. she is sitting in a tin bath soaping her breasts. and lift your foot to the pumice, the balance of your breasts askew Come to me in your new kimono, She does protest, but only teasingly. like fruit, giving themselves on its back a bright redwing No looking now, she says, but of course I do, to the gentle persuasions of weather. rising into the parting leaves waiting for my eyes to seize their chance. of a Japanese Abelia, You are unaware of self, of me, its blossoms flushed with pink. Slowly she stands before me jewelled in water, of time; absorbed without reserve leans across for a towel to rub herself. within the set imperatives of ritual. I will say: The bird knows the best places.

I register that tender shadow of hair Unseen I move away, a hunter, Come with the light-green blanket which binds me still to the body of a woman. diverted by the beauty of his prey. your good friend lent you, the day I showed you the path into the listening forest to look for chanterelle. Ironing a Sari Water Fall I said: They lie near a stream where the paths cross. This hand dyed cotton We follow paths but then we wander unfolding on and on, beyond the scattering of children, Come when the curious moon until its face and colour stands on tip-toe at night are young again. into the arms of trees, the giving moss, to watch through the window; the darkening growth, the cover of leaves, and come again at dawn Such length is like a path trying the anxiety of birds. under the frank blue sky. down to the river, which morning and evening There is an ache to trace the source of you. You will smile and say: You are so predictable. feels the feet of women Hand in hand the messages come through; And come to me who wander from the village you know my feelings, read my thoughts, after your shower, to the washing place my need for you upon this bed of rock. as my towelling bath-robe and laugh about their men opens up, like the white wings of a swan, beside smooth stones. We overhear the waterfall upon our feather bed. filling its depth and always wanting more. The cloth has no one now You will say: Yes… to fold around; one brown shoulder covered, the other bare, Swimmer Flight breasts shaping Into this other element a tease of bodice, you slide, fluid as otter. I ring you like a bird then set you free. the crucial tucking in around the waist. Within the loch you are free The sky may bring you back to land again. like the making of love. And I am wrapped I am a watcher of winds and weather; within this task, You float on your back, breathing warmth legs wide apart, a reader of seasons, signs of tameness. from what has touched your skin. or cleave into the darkness. My arms reach out like branches. Your eyes are shut or open to whatever closes in There is a garden with no traps; around your skin. a cage even, its doors left open. Beneath the rowan trees this man is watching. There is the uncertainty of homing.

He spreads a towel, white, upon the green moss.

10 Northwords Now

DEWPOINT: the saturation temperature of water vapour in air at which dew or fog is formed.’

This is an exhibition of photographs, phrase poems, screen prints and photograms, the result of a remarkable collaboration between print-maker, Carol Dunbar, poet Valerie Gillies, and photographer Rebecca Marr. Its first presentation was at Inchmore Gallery*, mid-May, 2008. By Rhoda Michael

t is a complex exhibition. Its title, You have to see the cloudscape to get the Dewpoint, is an attractive word, some- intention of the poet. Ithing a poetic imagination might have The inscription for cirrocumulus strati- created. But it is a term drawn from the formis undulatis is: first cut/ of the scythe/ ice science of meteorology and it has an exact crystals fall. scientific definition, as given at the top of For cirrus intortus it is: a wave-form/ moves this page. as one/ with the swimming snake. For nimbos- As a collaboration it draws not only on tratus it is: with cloud-swept face/ the mountain their creative imaginations but also on the hermit/ smiles. intellects of these three women. In the gal- These verses offer something like a ref- lery books including scientific text books erence back to creation myths; perhaps to lie on offer for visitors to browse through. a sense of that primitive capacity to go on These are texts that have been explored by creating them even when the science is un- the artists in their efforts to arrive at an un- derstood. derstanding of the physics of cloud forma- This is a well-designed exhibition. Which, I tion. They have made themselves expert. wonder, would I like to have? One of these A key text for them has been Richard by itself wouldn’t do. How would I separate Hamblyn’s The Invention of Clouds them out? As you go round the room their (Picador 2001, ISBN 0 330 39194 1) It is force accumulates; their connection affirms a biography of Luke Howard, important as itself. This is not an exhibition of discrete the man who, at the start of the 19th cen- objects but something more like an installa- tury, proposed a taxonomy for cloud forms tion - which would be impressive if it could and their processes of formation. He based be held as a unit. Perhaps in the foyer or it on Linnaean principles of classification board room of a significant and relevant and his work remains the standard system public service: a university science block; used today. the head office of Scottish Water or Scottish In considering the part played by Hydro-electric? Howard’s studies in the work of the artists The other groupings in the exhibition who created this exhibition, it is worth not- are by Rebecca Marr. While coherently ing its influence on artists and writers of his connected to the main collaboration, they own time. It was the period of the Romantic can also be viewed as independent of it. Revival in Britain and Europe. In England One set is of digitally photographed cloud- the Lyrical Ballads was being published and scapes, titled Cloud Atlas, 1-12. Wordsworth could write about ‘wandering The other of these sets is presented as lonely as a cloud’ or as being ‘alone amid the a homage to Anna Atkins (1799-1871) a heart of many thousand mists’; indeed there name new to this reviewer. A brief biog- is a very long tradition of using clouds and raphy of Anna may interest some readers. all other aspects of weather as a source of Her father, a scientist with an interest in the imagery for the ups and downs of human processes of photography, was a friend of experience. John Herschel, originator of the cyanotype Hamblyn’s book, however, points also to process. She is best known (see Chambers the ‘profound excitement that is generated Biographical Dictionary, 6th edition 1997) by new (scientific) ideas’ and cites the in- for, in particular, her books of original cyan- fluence of scientific discoveries, including otype illustration of plants, the first of which Howard’s work, on writers such as Mary was British Algae:Cyanotype Impressions (in and P.B. Shelley, Coleridge and, among oth- 12 parts 1843-53) ers on the Continent, Goethe. It is RM’s set of hand-printed photo- How then, does this play out in the grams (ie. made not with a camera but by Dewpoint exhibition? using cyano-sensitised paper) of algae that The exhibition space is on the upper constitutes the homage. Each is named by floor of this handsome gallery. You enter the botanical term followed by the popu- the space directly from the staircase. There lar name: Ascophyllum Nodosum/Knotweed are two major groupings in this exhibition. Wrack; Laminaria didgitata/Tangleweed. An Most prominent is the collaboration proper. elegant tribute, and a significant feature of A suite of twelve cloudscapes digitally pho- this exhibition. tographed (RM), identified by generic and specific, and each placed in the upper half Part of this exhibition can be seen at of a frame are hung round the room. The Porteous Brae Gallery, Stromness. n lower part of the space within each frame is empty. The glass covering these has been Photo: Rebecca Marr hand-inscribed in white paint with brief phrase poems (VG) as her response to the *Inchmore Gallery is on the A862 seven cloudscapes. – dewpoint I – XII. They remind the eye that positioned with intention. The fact of the miles west of Inverness. These artefacts are separated/connect- this is an artist who makes tapestries with painted poems draws you more strongly on, ed by groupings drawn from twelve very the finest thread. The numbering of all these other senses become involved; there is a hint Contact: Fred and Gwen Black at small screen prints (CD) titled Fragment frames leads you round the space. They are of hidden narrative, a sense of expectation. 01463 831573

11 Northwords Now

ennyson reckoned he knew the weight of every word apart from T‘scissors’ – Les Murray claims to know the weight of even that word. It is words and their weight that have given At the Word’s Edge Murray his place of eminence in world poetry, not only their power to invoke and transform but also their dark talent to Les Murray, the internationally celebrated poet recently visited Ullapool. wound, marginalise and dispossess has oc- Jon Miller interviewed him during his brief stay in Wester Ross. cupied much of his work and life. Words obsessed him when he was a child - there was ‘a set of eight encyclopaedias in the house and I read them till they fell ‘our dreaming mind’, ‘poetry is the only whole dreaming’, ‘Nothing’s true till it’s dreamed out in words’ apart. I got to be interested in everything’. He claims that ‘the most useful member of the Murray family was Sir James Murray, to be a translator and it continues the same a cousin of mine, who wrote the Oxford idea as a translator. There are animal systems English dictionary’ (and who died, ironi- of communication and I’ve been fascinat- cally, when he reached the word ‘turnover’). ed by them. They’re not always simple and Even bad language which he revelled in as a they’re not a series of spoken syllables. Ants child he calls ‘black poetry’ - he was ‘scared when they meet open their mouths and kiss out of it’ by having spirit of solder flicked their messages to each other. Each one tastes at him when he was four years old and this the chemicals in the other one and it tells combination of ideas about language, not him things. The world for a lot of creatures only their inventiveness and creative po- consists of a perpetual exhibition of pictures tential but also their power to cause pain that we can’t even see.’ Murray refers to seems to constantly rock against each other the phenomenon of blindsight – the ‘sight’ in Murray’s world. which blind people develop based on sen- When he talks about his discovery of po- sory experience – ‘which is really made of etry he realised ‘ there was somewhere to put echo most of the time. There was a fellah I these words, there was something you could was talking to on the phone one time….I do with them, they had an immense power asked if he had always been blind – he said and force that could be directed. Having he had so I asked him what senses he used. a large amount of electricity, I suddenly He said I can walk down the street and I discovered the transmission.’ Although he can tell you what every house is made of, claims to be musical illiterate (‘I only know whether it’s cement render, brick or glass two songs : one is Yankee Doodle Dandy and I can feel the people in my forehead. It’s and the other one is the one that isn’t that a kind of mixture of pressure and echo.’ one’), it is in the manipulation of the sounds It is this ability to inhabit other states of of words that we find his musical inventive- living, to transfuse himself into other selves ness – ‘it’s the closest I get to music’. In the – animal selves, tree selves, river selves – to poem Great Bole from Translations From the sense the other worlds of ‘pressure and echo’ Natural World : that shows he has something of the shaman’s power of transformation. In an offhand but Needling to soil point revealing comment, he says that his father lengthens me solar and his daughter, Clare, are psychic : ‘I’m my ease perpendicular hopeless at psychic...but maybe it’s with from earth’s mid ion. words’. Nevertheless, many of his poems are Murray’s meaning here seems to echo driven precisely by ideas : metaphysical and Seamus Heaney’s description of the word as philosophical ideas as well as fiercely held ‘pure vocable, as articulate noise’, meaning ideas and opinions about ancestry and ori- subsumed by the liquidity of its soundscape, gins, victimisation, oppression, history – ide- what happens on the tongue and in the ear as which continue to run though Murray’s rather than an appeal to rational under- poetry and reveal his uncompromising sense standing. This use of phonosemantics – the of injustice. construction of meaning through sound - is His sensitivity to having enemies, which a practice he often uses. In fact, he claims, can at times seem like a persecution com- along with Don Paterson in his recent es- plex, is rooted in his experience of his school Les Murray, photographed by Margaret McAtier say The Sense of Sound, that sometimes ‘the days at Taree High School. Here he had to worst thing you can have for a poem is an endure savage bullying because of his bulk, idea – you come to the idea through the his precocious intelligence and intellect and other things. And sometimes you don’t even his background : that of the rural poor. His bother to come to the idea. One of my fa- time at High School he has described as be- vourite poems I ever wrote was called The ing ‘hell’, a time when he was ‘monstered’. instinct to prevent aberrant and different Uluru (Ayers Rock)) and to Princess Diana Images Alone. I just started using imagery Much of the anger went into poems such people from mating and reproducing so as victims who were attacked by journal- and followed it line by line. There is some- as Where Humans Can’t Leave and Mustn’t the species would stay stable.’ Much of this ists : ‘It was always a woman, always a lone how a kind of picture in there but it never Complain, The Head Spider, and Burning Want bullying was sexual and mainly from girls, woman. They’d check whether she had any comes completely into focus. It’s in effect a in his collection Subhuman Redneck Poems, a which has lead to some difficult passages in defence, any big voice that might protect piece of music written in words.’ title that is itself savagely, provocatively iron- his work regarding the treatment of women her and if she hadn’t then it was open ridi- Murray seems to have an almost feral ic. In this collection, the poem Rock Music - and yet it is women Murray often defends. cule, usually not based on anything she had sense of words, a faculty that works below begins ‘Sex is a Nazi’ and continues : The turning on individuals, women in par- done.’ the level of consciousness, able to inhabit ticular, by power groups, is something he It is the tortuous experiences of school animals and landscapes and return them to ‘...to castrate the aberrant, the original, the finds ‘loathsome’ - an attitude that contra- and its cruelties that help define Murray’s us renewed, as if we have been handed some- wounded / who might change our species and dicts those who see aspects of his writing as challenging of the world and its complexi- thing of their essential presence. ‘Language is make obsolete / the true race’ an attack on feminism. He refers to women ties. He has an intense suspicion and dis- what humans do. Nobody else does it so you such Linda Chamberlain (the infamous case like of elites – of any kind : in his eyes, the can go back and find their life and translate Murray says ‘I had a theory that this torment- of the mother who claimed her nine-week principles by which the ruling classes rule it into the human terms of language. I used ing of people was a counter-evolutionary old baby was taken by a dingo in 1980 at are ‘always to be distrusted’. This extends

12 Northwords Now

And certainly the 1990s were a time when Murray seemed to be in constant conflict with the modernising trend in Australian society. He was seen as ‘a running dog of At the Word’s Edge capitalism’ when his apparently anti-liberal and conservative views on multi-cultural- ism, feminism, his loyalty to the bush and Les Murray, the internationally celebrated poet recently visited Ullapool. the rural poor he grew up with conflicted Jon Miller interviewed him during his brief stay in Wester Ross. with Australia’s attempts to distance itself from the stereotype of the Aussie and be- come more urban and urbane. Ultimately, however, he claims his depression has helped ‘our dreaming mind’, ‘poetry is the only whole dreaming’, ‘Nothing’s true till it’s dreamed out in words’ his writing – ‘my head was such a rotten place that I went and lived in other places, other lives. It made me more sympathetic to society. To this end, he grounds his work in other people. You stop judging people be- the vernacular, a Wordsworthian ‘language cause you realise they might be in as much really spoken by men’. His work is full of trouble as you are’. sympathetic, poignant portraits of the peo- It is this empathy with those whom so- ple who inhabit the Australian bush, the ciety ignores that has allied him with the outback, who have struggled to come to aboriginal culture, a set of ideas that runs terms with their lives and inhospitable land- through his work and, although he says he scapes, one of the best examples of these has moved on from these some time ago, he being his poem The Last Hellos, about the still returns to them if something needs said. death of his father. Much of his poetry about the flora and fau- Nonetheless, much of his poetry is dif- na of Australia seem to ‘sing’ the land into ficult, employing syntactical and intellectual existence in the manner of the Aboriginal constructions requiring careful reading and dreamsongs. His latest collection The Biplane re-reading to fully grasp their complexity. Houses often looks at Australia from the air Another contradiction is that formal and – there are references to flying, airscapes, linguistic aspects of Murray’s poetry would weather – and this idea of looking down not be possible without the experimenta- on the earth from above is ‘an aboriginal tion made possible by the Modernist move- perspective. A lot of aboriginal art is taken ment he disparages – the playing with form, from above – it’s maps of the country.’ the use of sound, such as in the poem Bats’ The concept of ‘dreaming’ reappears Ultrasound. However, where Murray differs constantly in his poetry and conversation : is in not creating a mandate, a set of rules, ‘our dreaming mind’, ‘poetry is the only whole a poetical-political elite dictating that only dreaming’, ‘Nothing’s true till it’s dreamed out certain ideas will be allowed within the can- in words’ – a concept that is integral to the ton of the canon and from there be used as Aboriginal way of living. It returns again weapons of mass deconstruction. to Murray’s desire to speak the truth about When he was at Sydney University, he his country and its origins. His interest in realised that this institution ‘was based on aboriginal ancestry (he has even considered critique’, on criticism, whereas he was ‘ a being genetically tested to discover if he person that likes to turn things over and has Aboriginal ancestry) is tied up with his enjoy them for their existence and hold concern about origins, about the society he opposing ideas at the same time. Anything lives in, to remove the deceits we construct that’s true has got a place in there. You don’t for ourselves about our identities, both in- want to go selecting your world picture and dividual, social and national. He sees the excluding things’. tensions in Australian society, its attitudes A further contradiction would appear to towards the Aboriginal people and the rural exist in his stated attitude, mentioned above, white, non-urban society, as being caused by towards Princess Diana whom he saw as a failure to recognise its own historical ori- falling inside his definition of the defence- gins and ancestry. ‘If you’re going to talk in less woman hounded to her death by the terms of traditions then at least know about media. This is could be seen as a either a everyone of them and not just the favoured contradiction given his ideas about mon- one. It’s just a matter of telling the truth. archy (he is a republican) and about elites If you’re a number of ancestries then admit Les Murray, photographed by Margaret McAtier (she was a member of the privileged ruling them all and learn from all of them because classes) or, more generously, as Murray re- that’s the truth of you. Human beings are all fusing to be bound by the rules of even his intricately woven together.’ own principles and allowing a more benev- In his poem, Gentrifical Force, he details the olent, humane, forgiving response to suffer- gradual transformation of personal history ing. In Fredy Neptune, his epic picaresque into bourgeois gentrifying intolerance: to literature, for instance, in the dictates of rest of Australia to destroy it and get rid of it verse novel, a work Murray has described high Modernism. In a 1974 essay, ‘Pound and it’s still there. It’s a minority but it runs as his ‘secret biography’, the main character, ‘From the high ground we now tell our blood Devalued’ he rails against Ezra Pound, par- the media, it runs culture and if you don’t Fredy Boettcher, is witness to and endures that they are scum, living on stolen salt land - ticularly because of his ‘anti-Semitism, his go along with it a hundred percent you’re tremendous humiliation and exile in the Gentrifical force leaves so many behind bullying, his exclusiveness’ and still speaks of in trouble. If you’re in my business, it’ll be course of his journey through the twenti- and turns them to primitives in its mind.’ him today with huge distaste. In Memories on your back all the time’. Another echo is eth century, yet in the end is restored to full of the Height-to-Weight Ratio, (a poem about heard in his distrust of the universities and bodily feeling through his own distinctive With Walt Whitman, another poet who at- when he was forced to lose weight to keep academics: ‘You never know where you are understanding of forgiveness. tempted to ‘sing’ his continent in his own his job) he states : ‘Modernism’s not modern with an Australian academic. The surface The depression he has suffered for most words, Murray could be said to contain : it’s police and despair’. ‘There’s always been treatment is not in any way related to what of his life, stemming from his treatment at contradictions yet is happy to live among bullies. I watch out for them. I tend not to they might write about you.’ school, contributed to his making of ene- them. Perhaps he would add the proviso be quiet about them.’ Murray’s counter to this has long been mies - and his forgiving of them. ‘I got a re- (perhaps even against himself, just for devil- His antipathy towards power elites is ech- to use the language of the people he grew ally unbalanced anger a lot of the time. You ment): ‘Never forget that any good idea can oed in his distrust of the media – ‘There was up with and who are often excluded from find yourself talking exaggerated nonsense rise up and come against you, no matter a part of the middle-class that turned on the power structures and the advantages within and making enemies, offending people.’ how good it seems.’ n

13 Northwords Now

Poems by Ryan van Winkle and Paula Jennings

They Tore The Bridge Down a Three. Seabird, What Has Death Left Year Later In Your Belly? Ryan Van Winkle Nowadays I don’t pass the creek much. Paula Jennings There is no reason to walk my quiet boy across metal into Louisiana. One. After Salvador Dali: Oiseau, 1928 If the bridge I knew still stood I found her in a blue dress maybe I could bring my boy down, The artist has tunnelled your head to a circlet of bone beneath the old wooden bridge tell him the lawn can wait. for the beach to wear, a beaked ring for Death to rattle with ropes round her wrists, her neck, her ankles. Tell him his father wants to pass the time, on his scythe. You look as though you are in flight, make him talk. but land is your sky now, a shore like graded sandpaper It’s how we would tie a hog. But the bridge is not there any more. When there was money on which your feathers wave smokily, as though for that type of thing. And Falyassa’s paper bag of salted peanuts you had passed through aerial fire. Are you cleansed has run down, met the big river now. Falyassa’s hair was perfect That last thing of hers, for the final crossing? The moon is full, the light theatrical. the day she left Beaumont but, heading out for the open ocean. You still have one wing for your journey by the time Powell got her to Texas, her dress looked like it had caught Four. and Death has left a golden gift inside your belly; the wrong side of a horse. dog-shaped, skull-grinning and pregnant. She was from across the border in Lake Charles. I remember they told me I used to like the song about it, Death steals life but leaves a changeling, Falyssa Van Winkle was ten, could play it a little on the guitar. and here’s a changeling within a changeling, and she got raised a little north of here. My boy found the scratched thing up in the attic like grim Russian dolls. Curious, I reach through with some photos of me and his mom the frame to the swollen dog-belly, scratch away paint. They said she went to buy peanuts at and he asked me to play. some flea market in Beaumont and her mother watched Falyssa go, I like to think I could have taken him to the creek, kept hawking clay ashtrays brought a fishing pole, that cheap guitar, Driving in Autumn and heavy magnifying glasses; made something happen, Paula Jennings nothing too fancy, just stuff before he too cuts out for some sea. people sometimes need. On the Strathkinness low road I remember I told him I couldn’t remember anything. a voice from last night’s dream - Five hours later Falyssa Maybe I can’t. let go of the reins and let your animal carry you - was under the bridge I used to spit off then form follows thought into my headlights: and Powell was cleaning his mobile home, Somebody told me Powell made it into the papers, a flow of fur from road to verge, readying to drive north. said his last words were, “I am ready for my blessing.” a tawny brushstroke sliding into damp grass. I brake, Two. Next time the boy gets into the attic unbuckle myself into my animal. I want to follow him up, tell him, Now we are travelling through stiff stars A year later the new bridge went up. So am I. of cow parsley. High up, black leaves All clean cable and wire, arrange themselves against the moon, so the cars can drive too fast a beetle drums its gleam across our path, and my boy and I can’t simply sit there, and in this night’s cacophony let the water pass. Night Road of smells, our seed-beaded pelt Paula Jennings yelps out its rank fritillary scent. As a kid, I’d rest on the splintered rail, We are a long time gone, long enough protected in the strong shade of the Cyprus Pines, After the skidding thump and splintering of glass, to hear the wing-beats of sycamore keys, drop pennies or spit onto the frogs of Cow Creek. the night has settled into small rustlings the small explosions as each splitting seed It ran pretty clear then. and a deer is cantering on silent hooves, begins its long dive into leaf-mould. carrying a woman who moves easily to its rhythm. My animal carries me faithfully But they said a good car couldn’t cross it. through a rip of brambles So I guess the children She’s riding the road kill, back to the verge: who used to throw pennies, spit, both of them fresh from their deaths, had to find something new. the deer as fleet as on its final arcing leap now every weed in the ditch is breathing, from trees-edge to tarmac, the woman bareback. even the tarmac is alive, I can still see the old bridge, even the ticking flanks of my car. the pennies rusting in water. They’ve outrun that other scene: the steaming huddle on the road, the cooling portrait in the windscreen.

14 Northwords Now

Poems by Chris Sawyer and Mark Edwards

mother ghost Early Morning, Dunecht Mark Edwards Mark Edwards Chris Sawyer if its a fart at one end it’s a had he lived If I cried out shite at the other she would say of she would’ve called him John I would be heard only news carried through the village a name like a blank canvas By the soft, damp earth leaving him free to weave his own thread And musty trees. her being the middle child through the same gray cloth she could get off with the likes There is no deference here of that and was rarely shy a child’s voice calling for help To the Angelic orders: in the miaow of a cat Nature is too fierce, jumping into fights the squalling of gulls Its brilliant temperament to defend the elder brother Leaving the birds and foxes till he got out the place she is seen going to the shops To rule, singing and sniffing. she is talked about behind her back leaving a fair few fearing she picks up things with a hand Paths go up and across, her temper his resurfacing so it that won’t give up its tremor Leading into darkness was never going to be a local And only on through into light small quick steps on the path By my act of will, faith. affair and when finally the bairn he runs but she can never catch up arrived it was pinned securely the cruellest trick No angel can break the canopy. on the landlord’s left tenant she has learned not to move My cries would bounce Back to the soft, damp earth. him with the straggly beard who’d roadied his way through the nineties but she fair piped down science fiction Mark Edwards Mother Tongue after beardie went back to the rigs Chris Sawyer retaining only enough spite for in the glistening pervy auld mannies young lads blueblack window (1920 – 1970) the shadow of wiry branches hanging about shuttered windows Gently, he lowers the memory of his mother shellsuit bottoms torn at wind batters the window Into the water. the hem the young lass branches flailing Gently, he cradles his mother’s head now screams for reebok trainers in the distance a few spots of light In the water. then turns austere for an hour long orange, white, yellow service having the foresight Eyes closed, he scatters the language of his childhood a science fiction night Upon the water. to pick her moment tug the nothing out there minister’s sleeve informing is human Finally, he turns the blank pages of his adult life him the tea’s too weak Compound words fading In the water. hardly substitute for the stuff mummy prefers straight from The Dry Lake the bottle Chris Sawyer

The edges are blurred now, beneath A scrub of heather.

The trees stand back from the valley base On guard, watching for the Water’s return.

The dust sometimes curls into a memory of waves Exploding upon impact, covering the dry grass

A nature trail, useful maps, resting points. These are all incomers Living on time borrowed from The changing climate.

15 Northwords Now

An Elemental Alchemy

An appreciation of Lotte Glob’s new art book Floating Stones in her fiftieth year of ceramics by Lesley Strachan

Lochan Beinn a’ Chearcaill, The Lunar Loch - Near the top. Photo: Lotte Glob

arth. Water. Stone. Ash. Mineral. ceramicist Lotte Glob journeyed from her and exist for itself. We come to the book and airy, reflecting something of the spon- Heat: words which any geologist workshop near Cape Wrath, Sutherland as we would to a painting or other fine art taneity of the writing and bringing life and Ewould be familiar with and under- to visit 111 lochans around the Scottish piece in a gallery. presence to the pages. stand as vital to explaining and understand- Highlands. With her she took three ceramic And, as we would view or experience And, as with any artwork, we are drawn ing the powerful elemental processes which stones that were then launched into each of any other artwork, our initial response is to further in. We slow down, we begin to form the landscape we inhabit. These land- them. The visit was documented ; photo- the aesthetic. The 33 lochan visits illustrated see connections between images, catch a scapes come no more spectacular than that graphs were taken ; a journal kept and draw- here occupy a double page to themselves. rhythm in the visuals, start to read the field of North-west Sutherland, newly recog- ings made. The project was a highly personal Glob, we see immediately, is a skillful enough notes that accompany each of the visits. We nised ‘Geo-Park’ and for some 40 years du- one – almost a diary of private pilgrimage, photographer. The landscape is recorded in begin to formulate opinions, ask questions ration, home, and workplace of Lotte Glob, with all the documentation held in two all weathers, lights and seasons with an eye and build a relationship with the artwork. ceramic artist. thick ringbinders. It was when Watermill for colour, texture and mood. Whether it is The work seems to fit most comfortably Earth. Water. Stone. Ash. Mineral. Heat : Gallery owners Kevin and Jayne Ramage long views, low views, close-ups or broad within the context of what we call land art, words which any potter would recognise as were shown the work by Glob, that the idea sweeps, the photographic compostions have or environmental art. We make immediate vital to the exhilarating process which is the of publishing a book was born. The fact that a deeply felt sense of space within them, connections with artists such as Richard alchemy of the ceramic process. The artist’s 2008 would be Glob’s 50th year of working the smaller ones being perhaps the most Long, Andy Goldsworthy or Chris Drury. hand and eye transforms mud and miner- in ceramics gave added impetus to go ahead absorbing with the rhythmic repeat of the We may even think fleetingly about the als, changing them forever when given up with the publication of a high-quality book circular motif of stones, held steady within landscape photography of Colin Prior or to the heat of the kiln, a substance made to mark the occasion. the textures and forms of the landscape. The that other Colin – Baxter. However, where- durable, given longevity, usefulness, purpose Floating Stones has the look and feel of ceramic pieces themselves become studies as Goldsworthy and Long work with na- – life. It is unsurprising that for so many ce- what we have come to expect from a qual- in form, surface decoration and glaze qual- ture’s materials directly, Glob takes her own ramic artists the physical landscape has al- ity art book. The book is hard-backed, ity. No two are the same, and we are struck ceramic creations into the landscape and lure and meaning often providing spiritual bound in soft grey-coloured cloth with by the variety of effects as Glob layers, ex- leaves them there. significance. Few, however have placed the simple embossed details for text and illus- periments and uses her vast knowledge of Glob is quite firmly and definitely a ce- link between geological and ceramic proc- tration. The pages have good weight and glaze development to create ceramic pieces ramicist – a potter (or is that now an un- esses so squarely at the heart of their work as decisions on quality of paper, ink depths, as varied as found stones or pebbles. The fashionable term?) whose creative process Lotte Glob. For Glob, this connection, this layout and content have been carefully con- stones are photographed within and against involves a close, continuing and intense rela- flow of energy from environment through sidered. All these aspects work their own al- the natural textures of the environment, tionship with the mountains and wilderness artist into artwork and back out again, is chemy to produce what is indeed a pleasing sometimes echoing their surroundings, of the Scottish Highlands, and who clearly convincingly realised in the body of work aesthetic. Apart from the introduction by sometimes providing a more startling con- needs the ceramic process to give physical entitled ‘Floating Stones’. Jayne Ramage, there is no other comment trast to the colours and forms around them. form to her ideas. A visit to Glob’s studio, Between 1994 and 2005, Danish-born or analysis, allowing the artwork to breathe The accompanying line drawings are fresh or a glance at her website makes clear that

16 Northwords Now

Loch Choire a’ Mhullinn, Strathconon. Photo: Lotte Glob Loch Luchd Choire, Seana Bhraigh. Photo: Lotte Glob here is a ceramicist interested in pushing her outdoors in any sunny or sheltered crevice what she does do is bring a strong female Glob is completely at home in this place. work in many different directions – plates, and her love of wild swimming. Glob is un- presence to the genre of land art with this Her creative process and artwork here are garden pieces, sculptural forms and instal- ashamed about revealing her personality, her relaxed, unselfconscious aspect and assimila- ageless activities – connecting with the en- lations are all evident. The most interest- humour - her humanity : the person is very tion of artwork and self. The writing and during geology around her. ing of these seem to be when the surface much here. Among the wilderness, those drawings bring the dimension to the work But there is much about the book and decoration and firing processes become the empty lochs, the loneliness of the three ever which ultimately sustains interest and keeps the work that will appeal at more prosaic important element rather than the sculp- present stones, there is the artist. This is no us asking questions. levels. If your experience of Highland land- tural form. Experiments in using sediments longer an abandoned wilderness. It is in fact Intrinsic to the whole concept is the scape goes little beyond the view from the and rocks – firing them onto and within the writing - and curiously the little draw- notion of pilgrimage, ritual, offering and car windows, or hotel bar or restaurant, then clay, have resulted in some of her most suc- ings - which bring much of the book alive. sacrifice. Is this a way in to understand- there is much to admire here. Floating Stones cessful work. One recent project involves Somehow we need Glob’s presence, her ing something of the spiritual relationship takes the reader to the hidden corners, not the creation of ceramic books. Each book Glob has with her envi- the mountain tops or familiar vistas, but chronicles a walk taken or a place visited, ronment? There are many to the corries, the folds, the intimate still the found stones and sediments (memory spiritual and magical con- places. The stones themselves, while clear- markers of birds spotted, landscape features nections – the significance ly a human creation (the throwing rings beheld or sounds heard) fired between the of the number three (the are a subtle feature on many of them), do clay pages, fused there forever – only able triple goddess, references not dominate or even attempt to compete to reveal their secrets when broken apart by to traditional tales and leg- with the natural forms around. They have the geologist’s hammer. ends), the walk to a wild, a comfortable modesty, an inescapable fe- Glob writes of a ‘fear of nature’ within often high place of beauty male form abstract enough to take various Western Art, and describes how she seeks to (in all weathers and condi- interpretations - stones, eggs, pebbles, ves- escape dogmas of imposing structure upon tions), the offering up of a sels. The range of glazes used on the work nature, of taming and controlling. She seems creation (an ancient ritual gives added personality to each piece but to seek a transformation in attitudes to land- common to practically all again, the overarching feeling is of modesty scape. Through looking closely at her work, cultures ) and the letting and simplicity. These ceramics do not aim to we feel Glob’s familiarity and comfortable go. Glob herself becomes make grand statements - they are almost not relationship with her surroundings to be a an almost magical , mystical important at all which is why in this context possible way forward. character - trekking into they work. One aspect, which becomes more evident the wilderness to present Lotte Glob has stated that, ‘my work as the book is experienced over time, is the her own stones – wrought is therefore of the land in inspiration and deeply personal, and unselfconscious nature from the very stuff of earth origin’. In many ways, Floating Stones also of the work. The writing specifically reveals and rock, transformed in reinforces the fact that we too are of the much about Glob as a person. If we see the kiln at 1300 centigrade land. The joy this artist shares of her close these notes as integral to the appreciation of (undergoing physical alter- relationship with the wild ancient places is the project a whole, we can perhaps begin ations similar to the land- what lingers and uplifts. This is a landscape to judge whether she has indeed escaped scapes volcanic origins). most of us at best rarely experience, or at the dogmas she seeks to avoid. Although the The artist as shaman : it is worst, fear, seek to dominate or exploit. writing has little of the poetic quality of, say, a powerful metaphor, and Lotte Glob compels us to get out our ca- the text pieces by Richard Long, there is an Lochan Creag Faoilinn, Loch Eriboll. Photo: Lotte Glob one which still intrigues goules and boots and forge a re-aquaintance intimacy and familiarity with surroundings personality to make complete sense of the the art viewing public. The most notable with that part of ourselves. that is quietly compelling. As well as records project. Glob’s relationship with the envi- feature of Glob’s particular brand of sha- An exhibition of Lotte Glob’s work to mark of routes walked, with references to weather ronment, and specifically this small pocket manism, however, is again the sense of ease her 50th year of working in ceramics can be and specific landscape features, we learn of wilderness we call the West Highlands, is and homeliness intrinsic to her activity. The seen at the Watermill Gallery, Aberfeldy in of abandoned shopping trips to Inverness, at the heart of the Floating Stones artwork it domestic rituals common to each walk are August 2008. Glob’s preference for oatcakes and cheese would seem. Whether Glob has wrestled free all as important a part of the alchemy as the ‘Floating Stones’ by Lotte Glob, published as trekking food, her habit of napping from established dogmas is debatable, but launching of the stones into the lochans. by Watermill Books 2008, price £25 n

17 Northwords Now

Here be Serpents A short story by David McVey

e stood at the foot of the vast stern Gav - always awkward in situations of reached the steep headwall of the glen we to admit defeat and turn back. I trusted his grey mask of the rock face. enforced jollity - and said, ‘You’ll like him, would have to contour round the face in judgement. WGav looked up, his head held Gavin: he wanders up hills for absolutely no order to reach our ascent route. The last time Angela and I had gone to slightly on one side. ‘We can try to go round justifiable reason, just like you do.’ At the foot of the summit slope, I caught Gav and Sheila’s for a meal I had mentioned, to the point where the slope eases,’ he said, Now that we were more than halfway up up with Gav and we shared a bar of choco- in a light-hearted way, his reliability and wearily, ‘There should be a route up one the side of the cliff face, we could see that late. He pointed to the steep face we would coolness; the trust that Gav inspired on the side or the other.’ We turned right along the there were none of the overhangs appar- have to traverse. ‘There are a couple of hill. Sheila’s jaw had set. ‘Well, it’s a shame bottom of the face, and began to slither our ent from below. The rock wasn’t even truly snowfields on the way. We can’t avoid cross- all of that vanishes when he gets home,’ she way up loose rock and heather at the point vertical, just a steeply angled slab. Gav had ing that big one.’ said, and the room suddenly chilled. She where the sheerness gave way. found a line of old fence-posts that made ‘Will it be a problem?’ went on to change the subject and, slowly, We had reached the face after a sweaty progress up the unstable slope a good deal ‘Nah. Shouldn’t think so. Not at this time we got back into conversation again. Gav haul up a dank glen whose lower reaches more secure. Beneath us was the headwall of of year. Our boots should dig into it nicely.’ had said nothing since her outburst and at were choked by dense conifer plantations. the glen and below that, dark with growing And so we set off gingerly with the ris- one point left the room without explana- The trees had ceased abruptly and we had timber, was the lower glen. Still the uneasy ing slope on our right, using our right hands tion. He seemed a bit more cheerful when ascended from the airless depths by a path silence, a static electricity, hung between us. to help us balance on the more insecure bits. he returned, ten minutes later; he and Sheila that corkscrewed up the headwall of the glen. The slope eased and we relaxed. Broken The going now was less rocky, the vegeta- were soon on good terms again and we The May afternoon was muggy and dry, but slopes of rock and tufty grass, still topped by tion mostly upland gardens of blaeberry and thought no more about it at the time. the sun remained coyly absent. There was the ruined fence, lay before us and we be- wild strawberry – out of season, but provid- Just ahead of me, I noticed Gav stoop little breeze. At the summit of the pass, the gan to cover the ground more swiftly. Then ing firm handfuls when we needed some- over something small and dark lying in the rock face had proved to be more substantial I heard a shout of triumph ahead of me, thing to grasp for security. I was a little wor- snow. It looked like a heather root or a small than expected. It lay on our planned route, loud, raucous but lacking in enthusiasm, and ried about the large, steeply-angled patch of twig. He picked up the object, turned to me and as we couldn’t get up it, we had to go I looked to see Gav squatting on a short, fat hard-packed snow. As we approached it, we and said ‘It’s a lizard!’ round it. cairn of grey rock. But he wasn’t smiling. saw that it stretched down for over a hun- I hurried to look into the cup of his Gav was first up the shallow gully at the Instead, he gazed at the western sky, hidden dred feet, and above us for some distance, hand; it was a lizard, stiff, motionless and edge of the face. He made his footing on until now by the bulk of the rock face and too. I saw Gav crouch down and stick his seemingly lifeless. Gav closed his other hand crumbling rock and sometimes maintained the hill. gloved hand in the snow as the bowl of over the animal, as if to warm it, and said, ‘It his balance by grasping clumps of heather. I Sulky black clouds were unfolding to- ground was bathed in glaring blue light. His must have cooled down while crossing the came a few paces behind, careful to dodge wards us, underlit by flickering threads of words to me were at first lost in the rumble snowfield. They go torpid if they get cold.’ any mini-rockfalls that he dislodged. It was blue. Slightly to the north, a sad, pale beam of thunder, but he repeated them. ‘It’s no I had often seen these creatures in the hot, dry work, but slowly we made progress. of sunshine glinted on heavy showers. As we problem at all. Have a go yourself.’ hills as they basked on rocks in the sunshine. There was no talk. That was usual, but today watched, it went out and was engulfed by He moved aside a little to make room This one seemed to be as inert and cold as there wasn’t the easy, comfortable silence the blackness. for me. True enough, the snow was firm but death itself yet soon Gav said that it was that we usually shared on the hill. Normally ‘Time to forget it.’ said Gav. We turned to easily took an impress when you put weight starting to squirm as it absorbed the warmth we seemed to tune independently to the look at the ridge along which our planned on it. Its texture was like coarse, damp sugar. from his cupped hands. ‘Let’s get free of the spirit of the wild, chatting if we felt like it route continued. It snaked southwards, dip- We should be able to kick steps into it as snow and into the heather.’ he said, ‘there’s but comfortable with silence, relishing the ping to a broad, peaty col splashed with we contoured along. Of course, if the snow no point releasing it here again.’ spectacle, the air, the quiet, the peace. Today, pools and old snow and then reared up, over were glazed and hard further on, we would We moved off again, more slowly now, though, Gav was silent for a reason. broken rock and peat, to a pudding-shaped have to backtrack and go the long way since Gav had to keep his balance with two We had driven to the village at the foot summit that lay in deep shadow. round, with the storm coming ever closer. hands enclosing the animal. Soon the snow of the glen, where Gav had tried to park by ‘Looks like we didn’t miss too much, We set off, Gav in front as usual. It was thinned and we stood among limp brown a small public garden. As he did so, he had anyway,’ I said, ‘It’s all peat hags and grassy easy to kick little ledges into the snow with heather and blaeberry. Gav stooped, opened scraped the car against a metal railing. He bumps.’ the side of the boot and so we made good his hands, and the lizard leaped free and lost stopped the car and inspected the damage: ‘Yeah,’ said Gav, ‘We’d’ve been hag-ridden.’ progress. The field remained uniformly itself in the heather. a noticeable dent and some badly scraped As he spoke, a nearer streak of electric steep, and there was a dizzying sense of ‘Here be serpents,’ I said. paintwork. The railing wasn’t in such good blue was followed by rumble, deep and exposure once we had gone a few yards. Gav stood staring at the spot where it shape, either. ‘Hell! Sheila will be raging,’ he resonant, that seemed to issue from the Below our boots, sugary fragments of snow had disappeared, then forced a brief smile. snarled. mountain itself. ‘Time to get down quick,’ skittered downwards and out of sight. I be- ‘Aye. Here be serpents.’ Everyone knew that Gav and Sheila’s re- said Gav, ‘I don’t fancy going back the way gan to worry: what if the snow did become Another glaring blue flash came, and we lationship was crumbling; he’d barely been we came.’ difficult further on? I looked up to see that hurriedly contoured the last section of steep able to persuade her to let him have the car. He let out a sigh of irritation. Normally, Gav had pulled a few yards ahead while I slope to the path, and then ran the remain- They were a volatile pair and theirs was not I’d think it was a reaction to our thwarted had been dawdling. I began to inch my way ing few hundred yards to the forest and eas- a home for small talk. Later, halfway up the plans, but today I wasn’t so sure. A nearby along again. ier ground. Thunder boomed and echoed glen and in the midst of that uneasy silence, flash illuminated the neighbouring hills and Gav was renowned for his coolness, and around the upper glen. We stopped to rest Gav had mumbled to himself, ‘That bloody we set off without speaking; no need for on several occasions I had had reason to be just on the edge of the forest as large drops railing. What the hell am I going to do about words. grateful for it. Adrift on a high plateau, af- of rain started to fall. I immediately start- Sheila and the car?’ The slopes leading directly from the sum- flicted by dense cloud, piercing rain and a ed walking for the spurious shelter of the I felt especially involved because it was mit were littered with boulders and fields of soul-sapping wind, it would be Gav who trees, but at first Gav stood where he was, through Sheila that I had met Gav. Sheila smaller rocks, but the slope was a lot easier patiently studied map and compass and who pensively, looking at something or some- had been a good friend of my wife, Angela. than the one we’d ascended. We quickly lost returned us safely to lower ground. In win- one who wasn’t there. Then he made up his At their engagement party, Sheila had height, but the slope did not lead us directly ter conditions, he knew just when to rope mind, and followed me into the forest. There grabbed my arm and introduced me to a back to the path down the glen: once we up, when to put on crampons - and when was no point in staying where we were.

18 Northwords Now

Poems by Debbie Collins, Laura-Claire Wilson & Graeme Barrasford Young

Hanging Your Shirt Long Vacation She has no mouth Debbie Collins Laura-Claire Wilson but she must scream Graeme Barrasford Young While you are out I go to hang your shirt in my wardrobe, I came home to shorn hills raise it white as a sail to the skylight, and gardens foreshortened draw out the ticket folded in your pocket like empty offering hands. if her lungs were always still to try my fortune. our breathing would be laboured; It’s bigger than my body, Bridges hunched narrow streams, stiff as a handshake, the streets were smaller, so close, if her tears were never shed this second skin you wear and even the air was indifferent. our bodies would be withered; to work, to show your friends, to take me out. Having arrived to be deprived if her ears heard only what she knew I swore I’d never bind myself of my return, I reeled upright, our silence would be absolute; with washing, ironing, tending. standing directionless But I’m only settling without behind before me, if her bones were never broken the collar where a tie will slide. adrift. our soil would stay infertile; Then unwinking the cufflinks, bright as tossed coins, if her green dress was all she danced in little as my new love, our boredom would be deadly; folding them in the oyster-shell of my palm, For Shadows almost a promise. Laura-Claire Wilson if her eyes reflected only dark skies our horizons would be too narrow; The wide sky fell on gardens, contemplative stones, if her milk had not erupted The Night Dad Lost His clean of time. our lives may not have happened; Memory Debbie Collins It drizzled waves of heavy roofs when she at last explodes her pain that swept its clouds from shoulders, how can we ignore ‘enough’? shadow-bristles brushing. Between the back door’s slam and the gape of garage jaws It misted, weakly, secret rooms it started to unravel. where silent feet bent, kneeling. Severn unopposed His life’s thread: Graeme Barrasford Young a glistening ball of yarn snagged on the Inwards, and veils of dim wood of garden fence, blinded it, dissolving When flood, snapping the heads of hollyhocks. through each magician’s box dangerously deep, By the time he reached the rosemary bed flattens at its peak, the thing he’d come to fetch had danced out of his where light failed finally sucks down debris, head. on drooping arms of silk, imitates a placid lake, He felt the tug of it unwinding, skin as pale as silence bridges, stranded the years rewinding, scented the cologne in a way no builder of his first kiss inside the shrinking light teeth and blackened smile could expect, between the shed and fence, picked up and midnight-wood dark eyes become gates: the ghosting football chant opened in their whiteness. coiled in the gate-spring’s creak. orb, almond, square, Caught on the teeth of clothes-pegs on the line, each to futures he found again the tattered flags of war years. Till it Friends reunited not allowed for: became Graeme Barrasford Young cackle of loons, the loose strand jerking out the ribs whispers in rotted trees, of his schoolboy pullover, leaving him Paused forty years ago, weeds through tar, trembling, bare, our words might have been trivial, unloosed dreams. amazed. a renewing with much to say that never spoke of things Trapped by ripples, peering through latticed memory, their stones drown. events twisted from reality by imagined slights and scars. Yet what we both gave then informed our lives enough that sentences started arm-in-arm now end a life and land apart.

19 Northwords Now

REVIEWS

IN THE HANGING VALLEY DEAR ALICE Poetry by Yvonne Gray A poetry collection by Tom Pow Published by Two Ravens Press, Publisher, SALT. 80 pp, £12.99 80pp, £8.99 Review by Daisy Mckenzie Review by Daisy MacKenzie This most recent collection of Tom Pow’s In a short introduction to this new col- poems is his response to the history of lection of her poems Yvonne Gray says of the buildings which are now the location Orkney that ‘your gaze turns constantly of his place of work, Glasgow University’s outwards’. It is her hallmark that her gaze Crichton Campus in Dumfries. This, its constantly does; and that simultaneously it original buildings recently refurbished, was looks inward too. the site of the Crichton Royal, a Victorian Her poetry draws the reader in to what her Hospital, an Asylum for those once identi- gaze sees: the way things look and sound; the fied as insane. It was, as were other simi- way life is for the people and the creatures lar Asylums across the country, built in the that inhabit the places and the elements she 1830s and used for their original purpose writes about. And her style, the manner of well through the 20th century. her writing, is characterised by a marvellous Tom Pow is already an experienced and absence of display, and by the finger-tip ex- nationally respected poet; and the poems actness with which she finds the true note. that constitute Dear Alice are arguably his Her title poem, In the Hanging Valley, is most interesting yet. Here he has offered something like a sampler of how she does that most welcome of things, a looking at it. It describes an afternoon of (surely?) the world outside himself, and then an im- two people rowing in a boat, somewhere agining of himself into the experience of Scandinavian and to the north. Two people those he finds there, perhaps extends them responding to the detail of their experience, to some aspects of those who run them now absorbed in the intimacy of it: in their new guise (‘we are a liberal arts col- lege after all’) All afternoon we pulled to the south//the sun on These asylums were humane in intention our backs and a breeze/feathering our hands and and civilised in the care they provided for faces.//We listened to our breathing/to our hearts their patients by comparison, certainly, with beating//oars knocking in the rowlocks/and the practices of the earlier Bedlams. And if blades lapping// as they dipped and pushed... their practices now seem old-fashioned, and if they have outgrown their usefulness that is There’s hardly a word in this poem that a because of the relatively recent advances in ten year old child couldn’t read; yet scarcely the understanding of brain chemistry which a word or phrase that doesn’t offer up a se- can provide a rather different instrument of cret and a revelation, or echoes and con- control of mental disorder. nections: In ‘The Great Asylums of Scotland’ Pow describes their domestic organisation: Their We paused//hung between sky and lake, poised/ farms. Their laundries. Their water supplies. And in the golden boat, circled//by ice crusted peaks./ their architectural style: their portals . . .the tree- Strakes creaked; timbers quivered . . . lined avenues. . . still with us, as keen to serve as the day they were built. And he refers also to a The language is so quietly offered that curious side-light, their co-incidental con- the full ranging of all its potential mean- tribution to the local economies, providing ing comes on the, or ‘this’, reader gradually. employment as tradesmen and nursing staff Even as the rowers watch how families on for Victorian cottage-industry workers made the farthest shore are gathering their harvest redundant by the rise of urban manufactur- and hanging hay to dry on lines, ing industries. As an opening up of a chapter of human history it is a book of value, even Like a silver thorn, an airliner drew//across the if not quite as a professional psychiatrist or blue and passed into silence/beyond the icefield’s What was it you said/in the city bar that night?/ ‘April Journey’ is for George Mackay historian would have done it. edge. ... it was not the tongue’s honed blade/you drew Brown, perhaps the finest of the many po- So what is gained from Pow’s approach .../ They left you at the back door/ your blood ems, by many poets, that have been written to it as a poet? It’s something more than a The ‘silver thorn’ like a mythic brooch, tide ebbing down the street/long past closing for him. The journey is across the island – collection of individual poems; it’s an ar- holds together a timeless past with futures time. 16 slow miles from St Magnus Cathedral to ticulated whole with the parts, the limbs scarcely yet imagined. the burial ground. Along the way daily life and the organs positioned and connected The poems in this collection draw on Among the work Yvonne Gray has done goes on: the Ola is leaving Stromness as the up. Images echo, voices refer back and for- wide-ranging experiences for their inspi- are several collaborations. It is easy to see hearse gets there. ward to other voices. The title poem ‘Dear ration, among them her life across the last that others would want to work with her Alice’ is the gently ironic heart of it with eighteen years in Orkney. The first poem of – many of her poems reflect the strength Turning from the sun, Malcolm sees light/ its poignantly searching last two lines: some- the collection is Nousts. It sketches in the of her respect for the gifts of others. Voices glance from cars on the kirkyard road -/he cuts where I’ve missed out on love, dear Alice/Wendy endless rise and fall of the sea, the way the from a Tapestry does this for the tapestry- the tractor’s roar; at the shore at Warebeth/ (the tells me I don’t know how to kiss. fact of the sea shapes the working world of maker, Carol Dunbar; Reflections does it children) fetch water, gleaming circles/that tilt And there’s a sparrow that haunts the the islands: the wash unfurling of the ferry, for the artist, Sylvia Wishart. She has worked in their pails// . . . Shalders sweep up/ sudden pages of these poems. In ‘Prelude’ a young empty nousts, the new marina, steel-armed with both of them. flights of white crosses . . ./clouds gathering/the cat has it in its mouth, it’s beak still sound- pontoons, how at night a floodlit hull bleeds But two poems, maybe three, each de- last of the neeps to be brought in./ Cold rain lessly praising the day. Occasionally it re- rust . . . She knows the turns of the seasons, scribing funeral journeys and the responses coming;/the first lambs due appears again, finally in ‘Resistances 5’: the urgency of crop-gathering, the erosion of the community to the individual losses The third of theseintensely moving poems of the rocks. She understands the experi- show most fully her profound awareness of is titled Harvest. To comment on it at all I will let into my world/ three things air light ence of exposure and frailty. the qualities of others. would feel to this reviewer like a huge in- //and the trapped sparrow/matron took a brush to. Uncoiling Lines is a set of poems that ‘Valediction’ is the first of these, for a trusion; and so I settle for pointing out that speak of risk, of loss and the foreshadowing young man, a boy, his life not lived yet – it is there, in this very fine collection, and This collection is all the stronger for its of loss. Again the voice is quiet, she uses the it reveals the meaningfulness that ritual can am leaving it to readers to discover it for quiet but clear tone, sometimes with an exact minimum of detail: have, simply understood ritual. themselves. n awareness of potential comedy, but always

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REVIEWS with respect, finding the exact detail which imagining herself perhaps as the WAG of god of thunder, assimilated to the landscape, with. Her knowledge of the properties of reveals or gets to the heart of things. n Peter Crouch. ‘will dress in black/ with a red scarf around his plants, types of trees and the uses their wood When she is exploring faery tales there neck/ he will caress the bellows into thunder’), can be put to, and of the foods that can be is intense colour, as when the wolf devours but also many others, including Saga (which gleaned, hunter-gathererwise, from the land AUTUMNOLOGIST Red Riding Hood: ends with ‘the desire to complete/ that which is considerable. These aspects will be in- Poems by Anne Ryland. can never be completed’) and Christmas Dawn. teresting to a wide range of readers. Arrowhead Press. 2006. £7.50. I didn’t spill a drop/ except her cape over the floor In that poem, ‘the messiah/ chases Venus Though the writer knows a lot about Review by Gerard Rochford - / a pool of velvet blood. home’; frequently, throughout the whole such things of the period the writing still book, alongside exfoliating, sometimes ef- has a slightly ‘modern’ feel to it. Eg After a I first came across the poems of Anne In the final poem of the collection, ‘Ripe fulgent imagery, and occasional political self- storm which has been severely damaging to Ryland in Northwords Now. They passed the Fruits’ she prays: indulgence we have great, taut wit. There the stables there is mention of their ‘trauma- A.E.Houseman test of quality - the hairs are two short poems, Rob Donn and the title tised’ horses. There are accounts of shaman- on the back of my neck bristled. I invited Bring me sticks of cinnamon / its inner bark peeled poem of the book, which, to my mind, are istic experiences, neatly done, but perhaps her to read in Wordfringe festival 2008 - she then rolled/ into a quill with fragrant grooves. // wholly built-to-last, because, while main- not imagined powerfully enough to engage entranced a large audience who queued to And bring me, last of all / the children who have taining the loyalties of the other poems, the reader. buy her book. Now I have read her collec- not come. // Let them climb in that tree and they do so with a perfect economy of wit To some extent this applies also to the tion another test has been passed, poems in sway / from its low branches like ripe fruits. and intelligence, and without any waste. In development of the characters generally. which a single word or image can set off on Rob Donn, the writer sits by the grave of Youngsters, perhaps teenagers, will find a a poem of one’s own. There will be many more ripe fruits from the Mackay bard who drove cattle to the great deal in it to enjoy for the adventure She loves words, even invents one for the this poet: Falkirk tryst ‘to learn news of The Pretender/ or and for the ‘good/evil’ conflict. Other read- title of her work. One way into the world the new German king/ who like you could not ers might look for more subtle and deeper of this fine poet is to notice what she loves A glut of crab apples, flushed skins / splitting speak English’. As Gunn sits in the place of development of individual characters and - words, the sea, languages, paintings, her into lips that weep brown. belonging, with ‘all my many grandmoth- conflicts. mother, her imagined sister, reaching out to ers’, he points up the bond of connected- But there is sufficient strength and con- her father, the grief of a longed for child, I hope her sensual poems will be securely ness between those who, for whatever rea- trol in the narrative drive to provide most faery tales, colours, especially blueness. caught in sheets of publishers’ paper where son, are outsiders. people wit a satisfying read. n These themes are explored with elegance their insights and beauty can be savoured.n In The Atlantic Forest, ‘A boy stands on a and a poetic imagination which rarely fails headland’ looking beyond the Pentland Firth her. They are sometimes brought together to what cannot be seen and what is there- aptly and creatively . . . fore ‘not there’, the Atlantic Forest of Central LAPWING CHAPBOOKS THE ATLANTIC FOREST and South America. But ‘he can see it fine/ Publisher, Selkirk Lapwing Press. 20pp. I always loved/ a verb table, the way tenses A poetry collection by George Gunn he can see the timber shore/ somewhere in Brazil www.selkirklapwingpress.co.uk string/ together as pearls, each mirroring another/ Published by Two Ravens Press. 84 pp. or Nicaragua/ he can see a boy lounging in a Review by Daisy Mackenzie . . . the carved drawers of etymology where/ tide £8.99 tree/ looking back’. That imagined boy, who derives from time. Review by Donald Mackay mirrors Gunn as a boy looking out from Dunnet Head, expands the known parish- MILNE GRADEN POEMS For her mother, (whose dead body she On the un-sober occasion I first met George landscape of Caithness to include the world By Laurna Robertson views with fearless honesty), she writes: Gunn, he struck his chest and shouted at and all who live on it. This is a fine task for me, ‘I am the voice of Dunnet’. At the time any poet to set the imagination. n The first poem in this chapbook sets the two cow seals (will)… /sing her limbs back to this struck me as a bit of hyperbole; I believe quality and tone for the pages that follow. life,/ . . .until she is silver and streamlined. now that, at the time, I failed to catch what The poet is at her window asking for inspi- it was he was saying. George knows him- THE LAST BEAR ration, Come little poem... She has lovely lyric and for her father: self to be made from the place he was born By Mandy Haggith control. And she knows how she wants her in, genealogically and physically, and, being Publisher, Two Ravens Press, 256pp, £8.99 poems to arrive, like mouse tails/quivering/ I clutch his wrist/ he snatches it back... such a creature, Dunnet speaks through Review by Daisy Mackenzie between plant pots. him. Like twittering birds/ swooping/in a cupful In ‘Last Words’ she laments the terminal dy- Gunn as a visceral, anti-intellectual poet, This novel has been written by someone of wind ing of a language: then? There is an element of this in his writ- with intimate knowledge of the terrain and This poem is delicately but firmly craft- ing, and it’s a fine one. Difficult to convey landscape in which, albeit centuries ago, it ed, a slender bracelet of language. The last speaker swallowed / . . . the taste of clearly without quoting at length, it consists is set. For many readers that far north-west She has a fine sense of landscape and all Ubykh on the tongue. in throwing-off of images centrifugally. The corner of Scotland may seem remote, but as that landscape holds: A hedge of wet lambs/ thread that connects them is the writer’s described in the book it has its own central- bleats through the mist. Thin cries catch/and and in ‘The Goodbye Timetable’ we taste own intuitive consciousness and the land- ity, a place entire in itself, yet linked by sea- hang on grey wire. Her touch is precise. the parting from a lover: scape, historical and present, he is walking roads to a connected world. Some of these poems draw on her ex- though. And so ‘the beach before us beckoning/ The period of the story is that point, say perience as a school teacher. They reveal a Breakfast crumbs from his mouth/ cling around the tongue of the tide licking at the bay/ like an 1000 years ago, when Norsemen had made mature warmth, a clear understanding of mine. April calf at an empty milk pail/ we walked wet settlements in the further north of Scotland her pupils, and an imaginative humour. In to the widening sky’ (The Solution). and had a policy of something like what we The Mountains of Europe the members of Every poem is a new presentation of her- I find this evocative. As someone who would call ‘integration’. It was also a period the class become the mountain ranges and self. In ‘The Pause’, inspired by Vermeer’s ‘A also lives in Caithness, it reflects and informs when Christianity was established but when place themselves in atlas relation to one Lady Writing’, she writes: my experience of what I see every day. And pre-Christian beliefs were still powerful and another. yet it is more than a gut response to land- practices were still observed. I pause to gaze while my sentences seep/ into scape, for the poem just-quoted ends, ‘our Wolves are still around but mainly in Andrew, Ben, Euan and Lee, sitting at the front paper, then I slowly sign/ with all that I am. promise to the sea-lit sand/ to never become a places remote from settled communities. . . . are the Great Plains of Europe . . . Julie and symptom/ of the problem we mean to solve’. In Bears are almost extinct – the ‘last’ bear is Kim/ are the Vosges, Kirsty and Monique the Anne Ryland can be sharp, ‘a man who is so the ideology of the poem, visceral authen- female but has no mate. They have been Jura./ Then the basketball team . . . – ‘stand as old he will always know better’, and funny. In a ticity is a covenant which underpins action significant creatures for those who still fol- tall as you like’ – become Alps . . . poem ‘The Tall Man’ she imagines: and thought. It is, among other things, a low the ‘old’ pagan beliefs. And it is the fate refusal to be fashionably urban or cosmo- of ‘The Last Bear’ that is imagined in this But over time there is drift. One of the Alps/ a giraffe on the football field,/all legs andno politan. story. moves to the south of England. A Jura breaks tactics – A faith that the endurance and beauty of The author is primarily a poet, particular- a leg. this county will be a guarantor of regen- ly experienced in description of landscapes adding: eration of both it and humanity, underpins and their inhabitants. She uses that experi- There’s more of it. It’s affectionate many of the best poems in The Atlantic ence well in this story. She is good at de- fun, and, along with its companion piece, I would be happy to wake up/ to his boat feet Forest, particularly My Grandfather Ogun scribing conditions of the elements that her Whereupon the Assassin, it’s a delightful protruding/ from the end of the bed, (his blacksmith grandfather as the Yoruba characters have to endure and to struggle chuckle. rr

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REVIEWS

r (continued from previous page) SOMETHING IN THE BLOOD from Lila, a chain-smoking bar maid who Occasionally his meaning obscures itself Alongside wistful reflections are remind- By Vivien Jones happens to be house-sitting John’s auntie’s a little with abstractions but many poems ers of beauty born in pain and loss. Mary home in post-tourist ghost-town Aviemore have moments of capturing of sensation as Leith’s protagonist in The Shepherd goes The work in this Chapbook has a colour- and who helps John to unravel the mys- in, love is amethyst . . . is wine and music and from being, ‘ready to fall in love with every- ful vitality, sense of life experienced respon- tery of Ninian’s identity. Dashing through a waterfalls and laughter . . . or as in, I am a just thing,’ to witnessing the slaughter of inno- sively, vivaciously. As in The Mermaid’s Song deftly drawn war-torn Highland landscape, born foal/I am a gem, clean hewn . . . cence inside a lamb’s execution pen. ‘There where she sings ‘for the whole sea kingdom, for John is forced to grow up fast, developing may be answers in this river / but questions its eternity . . . its sway and endless dance; as a heart-warming stalwartness and facing up pervade every nook,’ according to Steven in Bologna Food Hall where a ‘vendor arranges to the losses and traumas of his past life. Whoor of a City Porter’s poem, On the River Findhorn. cheeses with the air of a lion-tamer’. James Jauncey has conjured some of the By Les Quinn George Hardie’s Crofter Man, describes the There is a fine sense of self running Highlands’ best-known landmarks into an trials of those that have gone before; ‘Thair through it, not quite rebellion, more a claim atmospheric future world; there is some- The city is Glasgow; the voice faux-naif. chyce, ti pey or muive. / Ti stairt aa ower for the right to express life in one’s own way thing strangely entrancing in the prospect of These pages are primed with shocks and the / weary darg fattenan, / aye, anither’s rather than within the requirements of con- Inverness’ Bught Park as a refugee camp and alarms that segue into ambush for the pat- hungry purse.’ And Ian Morrison’s chilling vention, as in Chamber Street Museum when the funicular railway up the Cairngorms ronising. Quinn’s subject: life as lived on story, Protection, explores teenage sexuality the laughter of her two small boys as they rusting in disuse. If you like a read packed some of the more derelict streets of the city amid class conflict, where seduction seeps discover the excitements of the tall horse- out with scrapes, hide-outs and lucky es- where he finds a kind of poetry, counter- into the classroom; ‘conjugate’s like, posh for shoe staircase causes a ‘convergence of keepers. capes, don’t let your teenage sons hog this point to a more conventional beauty. shag. Ken?’ (Who chorused) Shhhh! As if life itself could adventure tale. n His occasional mis-spellings, the slides of Pushing out the Boat, Issue 7, provides be silenced’. syntax – they are conscious and deliberate. another quality collection of creative work, Vivien Jones’ vitality is engaging. These He lets us have brief glimpses of his liter- sure to satisfy readers at home and abroad; verses will come over well in performance. acy – hopes he is ‘more Jim Kellman (sic) and the team who have edited and pub- But for reading off the page, more atten- Ettrick Forest Press than Irvine Welch’ (sic again). He can make lished are to be congratulated. n tion to the crafting, to the rhythms and Poetry Collections cross-references as in ‘Not-so-clockwork the management of where the stresses fall, 44pp; £6.99 Orange’, as in ‘Lost in Paris/Drunk in would make them more satisfying both for Review by Daisy Mackenzie Prague’ (Orwell?) the reader and for the poet. n His wit is, inevitably, ironic; his undoubt- THE SEARCHING GLANCE ed lyric gift camouflaged by skirmishes By Linda Cracknell Love’s Pathos along the edges of propriety. Consider this: Published by SALT. 184pp hardback, By Graham Hardie Gorgeous turned ankles -/Kneecaps on stu- £14.99 WITNESS dent lassies/Breasts of varying cup/And lovely Review by Daisy Mackenzie by James Jauncey, Graham Hardie is the founding editor of an flanks./All tucked away/In hibernation/Until Young Picador 2007, ISBN interesting new publishing venture, Ettrick the first thaw of spring. The satisfactions to be got from reading a 9780330447133 Forest Press; and he has, bravely, issued his Or yet again, the neat observation in short story are, as we know, different from Review by Mandy Haggith own collection among the first. this: I trip into street diners/whose smoking those of a novel. The novel provides a long- Des Dillon and Dr Linda Jackson, peo- demands/have created a kafay culture/In these er wave of expectation and tension. It car- Witness is ostensibly a novel for teenag- ple of experience in these matters, endorse out-of-doors/far from European/Glasgow City/ ries you along for many hours, usually more ers, especially boys, but it deserves wider Hardie’s poetry warmly: shows insight into Streets. n than can be done in a single reading. It sets attention than this suggests. Its setting is the archetypal truths at the root of all literature; up the desire to get back to it, and there’s a the central Highlands in a future post- gems of delightful lyricism studded throughout; a sort of tristesse when you reach the end of independence Scotland, in which things deeply poetic spirit romancing with the primeval it. The scale of the short story is manifestly have gone terribly wrong, largely due to elements of nature. Pushing Out the Boat, Issue 7 different. It is different in other ways too. To a misguided land-reform process that has This reviewer notes the highly individual New Writing from the North East of experience its virtues another set of expec- nationalised all land holdings greater than imagery, often repeated across the poems as Scotland tations has to be entered into. one acre. An Orwellian state ‘Department’ if the writer is evolving a set of personalised Review by Christie VanLaningham This collection from Linda Cracknell has been running rural affairs so badly that symbols. There are also many idiosyncratic is an excellent demonstration of what civil war has erupted in the Highlands. A conjunctions of language: culpability of truth; A pronounced sense of place ebbs and flows such virtues are. She is an experienced grassroots protest movement, funded by the kudos of my soul; setting her tenure alight. Such through the pages of this most recent collec- and respected writer in the genre and The former landlords, has evolved into a guerilla phrasing stops the reader short; demands in- tion of prose, poetry, and artwork, not only Searching Glance is her second collection. military resistance, the National Liberation terrogation of the poet’s intention. providing readers with the thrill of a literary (And we are keen to remind our readers Army (NLA), which is brutally suppressed But he can do straightforward clarity journey, but also the bone-deep comfort of that we published one of the stories in it, by the national army. Although this scenario too as in: A piece of celery/hanging from your home and hearth. And the Sky was Full of Crows, in our Spring seems to go beyond the limits of any real mouth/as I make breakfast/for two/while listen- Issue 7 brings together such disparate edition, 2006). political plausibility, it does raise interesting ing to Schubert. themes as the horrors of war, the subtleties Most of them are stories of self-discovery, questions about why Scotland has avoided One of those moments quietly experi- of the seasons, and the shadowy boundaries of life-changing moments. There’s a practi- the so-called ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland, enced, nicely caught. between love and sex. Contemporaneous cal realism to it, you recognise it as belong- and by presenting such a totalitarian ap- angst is woven expertly with the sweetly ing to the world you know can believe in proach to land-reform, poses the important nostalgic, creating a happy amalgam of work even if it is outside your direct experience: question of how the current community- Earth. Fire, Air and Water. that will have something to please most read- even as in ‘Over the Garden Wall’ where it is based land-reform process should evolve in By Robert Marsland ers. Throughout the voice is strong, which- about the disintegration of a personality; or the Highlands. ever of English, Doric, or Scots, is used in ‘Night’s High Noon’ which shows how But Witness is by no means a dry politi- ‘Magnificently kaleidoscopic: that’s Robert Among the highlights of this issue is a psychopath can depersonalise his victim cal book. Its story rips along at high pace, Marsland’s own phrase from his La Vie et la Eleanor Fordyce’s Bidin, which muses, in order to have no guilt about the pain he chasing the only person to observe a hor- Mort. It describes well the style of many of ‘I canna win awa; it’s far I’m fae./It’s fa I will inflict. rific massacre of all the residents of a remote his poems; glassy pieces of colour selected, am, an far I wint tae be.’ A short story, Red These stories are finely disciplined in Cairngorm village by the national military. collected together and shaken into sets of Apple, by Maggie Wallis describes the ‘clank construction. When the denouement ar- The witness, John, is an eighteen-year old lines. and bustle of real life,’ contained in the fam- rives you see how it could not have been fiddle-playing loner. On the run, and unsure It shouldn’t work but often it does, mak- ily kitchen. Keith Murray’s poetry focuses otherwise. All that precedes it provides all who he can trust, he finds a mysterious boy ing short sharp poems that catch an emo- on rediscovery in Manby, and the ‘womb- the detail of the preparation for it. No trick called Ninian, who suffers a disability called tion well; as in Thank You where he speaks innocent,’ watcher of a ‘coal-golden,’ sea. endings, no twists in the tail; all that pre- Fragile X and is unable to tell John where he of composers and the characteristics of their Knotbrook Taylor’s Ammonite describes a cedes it falls into place. belongs or who he is. In his search for a safe music which, expressed (his) soul/as though time, ‘before Sunflowers and mathematics,’ The first of the collection, ‘The Smell of haven for himself and Ninian, John endures (they) knew it intimately. Or as in Winter where and Elaine Kay’s Onslow Road imagines a Growth’, does it well. The child, the grow- a succession of ‘hero’s journey’ challenges he describes quite exactly those bleak dark home, ‘layered over with the smell of cloves ing girl, still plays with her doll, Pauline. including storms, violent attacks and betray- moments in a life when the dead state of and pipe smoke / drifting from your arm- She dresses Pauline, advises her, behaves like al, but also finds aid along the way, notably things feels as though it will go on forever. chair corner kingdom.’ a wee mother to her; and she still likes to rr

22 Northwords Now

REVIEWS CONTRIBUTORS r (continued from previous page) Stuart B. Campbell, poet, pub- producing business manuals and He is currently working on col- oil industry, was born in Wales go down to a rough bit of pond and try lisher, musician and mountaineer quality assurance tomes. In retire- laborations with two Scottish in 1971. He lived in London for to catch the tadpoles. But she is also grow- has recently had The Stone Op- ment, she is applying these skills artists. He is due to appear at the thirteen years before moving with ing up, observing the restricted life her eration, a new collection of his to more creative endeavours, edit- Edinburgh International Book his family to Deeside in 2005. poetry, published by Dionysia. ing prose for literary publications. Festival in August. mother lives, her one luxury the wearing Lesley Strachan is a teacher of of Marigold gloves to keep her hands nice; Debbie Cannon is an almost Robert Alan Jamieson is a David McVey currently on sab- Art & Design in Ullapool. full-time writer working on po- native of Shetland who tutors batical in Inverness, is a Lecturer trying to make sense of things she sees: like Laurie-Claire Wilson was born etry, screenplays and is completing creative writing at the University at UWS, has published 80 short her auntie Nina persuading herself and in Inverness and grew up in her first novel. She was winner of of Edinburgh. His most recent stories and hopes to live to see Mum to come shopping for bikinis at ancient Egypt. She currently lives the 2007 Scottish Association of book is Nort Atlantik Drift (Lu- Kirkintilloch Rob Roy win the a cut-price store, and Nina seeming to on a tangent, studying the Re- Writers’ Poetry Prize. ath Press 2007). Scottish Junior Cup. forget to pay for a bikini she has put in naissance and spinning on words. Mark Edwards lives and works Paula Jennings lives in Fife and Jon Miller is a part-time teacher her bag. Ryan Van Winkle is currently in Aberdeen. He has published works creatively with people who and writer living in and around Like suddenly noticing that Nina, who Reader in Residence at the Scot- short fiction in Northwords and have dementia. Her poetry has Ullapool. can seem so sophisticated with her ciga- tish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. Cencrastus magazines. He is cur- been supported by SAC Writers’ rettes and lipstick, has thin red lines on her Alison Napier lives in Suther- His work has appeared in New rently working on his first novel. Bursaries and a Hawthornden land. She recently abandoned Writing Scotland 26 and New skin, ‘like wee cracks in a blackbird’s egg- Fellowship. Her collection Sing- John Glenday works as an ad- a career in social work and is Leaf 24 (Bremen). He is a mem- shell’. (Gosh, how well Cracknell can find ing Lucifer is published by Only- dictions co-ordinator for NHS poised to relocate to Devon to ber of The Forest Arts Collective the exact little picture to make clear what women Press. she wants you to see!) Highland. His third book of po- finish her first novel and write (www.theforest.org.uk/) and etry will be published by Picador Donald Mackay, teacher and full-time. has had poems published in the And that’s when the child says to her in 2009. poet, is from Glasgow but has Golden Hour Book from Forest Gerard Rochford’s poem My mother, ‘Nina is a good girl, isn’t she’. And lived in Caithness for many years. Publications. Mandy Haggith is a writer Father’s Hand was in Janice Gal- then she takes her step forward, takes Pauline His most recent publicaton is living in North-West Sutherland. loway’s 20 Best Scottish Poems of Grahaeme Barrasford Young down to the tadpole pond where, wearing Kept in the Dark, by Mariscat She has recently published Cast- 2006 - SPL. Collections: The Holy returned to writing five years ago her mother’s Marigold gloves, she pushes the ings, a poetry collection, and a Henry Marsh’s first collection, Family and other poems and Three and has since been published in doll down into the mud at the bottom. And novel, The Last Bear. A First Sighting, was published Way Street. www.koopress.co.uk. over two dozen magazines and then the pond odour, the ‘smell of Growth’ in 2005, his second, A Turbulent recently in the anthology Celtic Freda Hasler spent untold years Chris Sawyer is a lawyer in the oozes into her nose. Wake, in 2007 (Maclean Dubois). Verse. And alongside the discipline of the struc- ture Linda Cracknell has the gift of making you see a whole picture with just the exact right handful of words. A startled pheas- Isabel Rogers ant is ‘a diagonal line of sleek russet feather trailing a clatter of shock’. The tweed of a From among those who answered our recent advert for an addition to the editorial team, we have invited Isabel gamekeeper’s jacket is ‘fracturing colour, Rogers to join Jon Miller and myself. Here she introduces herself to our readers just as was intended, to camouflage him against the hill’. ‘Glitter’ is about Jeanie, not quite fitting in within a small community. nd then there were climb mountains and write. wind themselves into your head. use it (see page 3 for details). She knows that what had looked like love three … I’m the newest The most important thing is The odd joke. We’ll read your words and could be ‘just the sparkle glued to a Xmas Amember and I’ve been that I am addicted to reading. This is Northwords Now, but may be able to send them out card that falls off when you brush it.’ asked to look after the fiction. Good writing: the stuff that eye- send us your stories from any across Scotland to get into other It is also worth saying that this publisher, What do you need to know? balls you round the room after corner of this planet as long as people’s heads. SALT, has, for The Searching Glance, I write; I read. I moved to the you’ve closed the book. Stories they are sharp and true. We want produced a very well designed hardback Highlands a while back from that leave their imprint on your to discover the good stuff. We book. n London to breathe clean air, retina. Echoes of phrases that have a PO Box number: please - Isabel Rogers

Where to find a FREE Northwords Now Northwords thanks all the locations below for their support in distributing Northwords Now. Especial thanks go to all the librarians who put us on display.

INVERNESS Findhorn Foundation, by Forres SOUTH Shetland Times, Lerwick W H Smith, High Street Moray Libraries Diehard Bookshop, Callander, Perthshire Shetland Arts Trust, Lerwick Costa Coffee and Waterstone’s, Eastgate Centre Moray Bookshop, Dunphail, Forres Dundee Contemporary Arts, Nethergate, Dundee Shetland Libraries Starbucks, Eastgate Centre The Ceilidh Place, Ullapool Borders Books, Dundee Blythswood Bookmark, Academy Street Ullapool Bookshop, Quay Streetl Anwoth Books, Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries & EDINBURGH Leakeys Bookshop, Church Street Loch Croispol Books, Balnakeil, Galloway Blackwells Bookshop, 53-9 South Bridge The Reading Worm, Margaret Street Sutherland Kesley’s Bookshop, Haddington Fruitmarket Gallery, 45 Market Street Borders Bookshop, Eastfield Retail Park Achins Bookshop, Inverkirkaig, Tyne & Esk Writers Scottish Poetry Library, Crichtons Close Inverness College, Longman Road and Midmills Lochinver Midlothian Libraries Scottish Arts Council, 12 Manor Place Inverness Museum Village Green, Lochinver East Lothian Libraries Bongo Club, Holyrood Road Comunn na Gàidhlig, Mitchell’s Lane Hebridean Jewellery, High Street, Stirling Libraries Oxfam Bookshop, Raeburn Place Hootananny, Church Street Fort William Ewart Libraries, Dumfries Borders Books, Fort Kinnaird Visit Scotland, Castle Wynd An Tobar, Argyll Terrace, Tobermory Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries The Elephant House Café, George IV Bridge UHI Millennium Institute, Ness Walk Pierhouse, Inverie, Knoydart HP Bookfinders, Brig o’Turk The Village, S. Fort Street,Leith Highland Print Studio North Highland College, Thurso Byre Theatre, St Andrews Filmhouse, Lothian Road U3A (University of the Third Age) Warehouse Theatre, Lossiemouth School of English, St Andrews University The Forest, Bristo Place Eden Court Theatre The Forest Bookstore, Selkirk Hi-Arts Infopoint, Academy Street ABERDEEN(SHIRE) GLASGOW Duff House Country Gallery, Banff ISLANDS, WEST AND NORTH Gaelic Books Council, Mansfield Street HIGHLAND AREA Aberdeenshire Libraries Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Sleat, Isle of Skye Centre for Contemporary Arts, Sauchiehall Street Highland Libraries and Community Centres Aberdeen City Libraries Aros Gallery, Portree, Isle of Skye Mitchell Library, North Street Highland Folk Museums, Kingussie and Books & Beans, Belmont Street, Aberdeen An Lanntair, Kenneth St, Stornoway Òran Mòr, Byres Road Newtonmore Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen Western Isles Libraries, Stornoway The Piping Centre, McPhaterStreet Tower Bookshop, Tain Blackwell’s, Old Aberdeen Hebridean Jewellery & Bookshop, Caledonia Books, Gt Western Road Dornoch Bookshop, High Street The Lemon Tree, West North Street Cromwell Street, Stornoway Tchai Ovna Teahouses, Otago Lane Swanson Gallery, Thurso Library Waterstone’s, Union Street and Union Bridge Locations on Islay Oxfam Books, Byres Rd and Victoria Rd Green Kite, Old Station, Strathpeffer Woodend Barn, Banchory Orkney Libraries Mono, King’s Court, King Street Neil Gunn Trust, Dingwall Funcy Pieces, Rhynie Pier Arts Centre, Stromness Gallery of Modern Art, Royal Exchange Square. The Nairn Bookshop, High Street, Nairn Milton Studio, Crathes Tam’s Bookshop, Stromness Borders Books, Buchanan Street

23 BLACK ISLE WORDS FESTIVAL 2008 Friday 19th – Sunday 21st September Cromarty, Fortrose and Resolis

Writing, myth and story-telling in the north Our guests, talking about their work, reading and telling Full details for all of this and more besides will be in stories, include Kevin Crossley-Holland – poet and the Festival brochure which will be available soon from prize-winning children’s author; Margaret Elphinstone – libraries, bookshops and other information sources novelist, short-story writer and poet; Margot Henderson throughout the region. and Ian Macbeth – storytellers; Kenneth Stephen and Jen Hadfield - poets. www.blackislewords.co.uk Jim Hunter will be providing some music and Jenny Or write to PO Box 5076, Inverness IV1 9AF Brown will talk about the activities of literary agents in Scotland.