A prized piece of of Burns kitsch for 25 January. It's backed with tinfoil -- probably sweetie wrappers.
End of May 2011 to tell the truth folks the time has been whizzing by and I have not been keeping up too well with all this. I have at least two sequences finished, the Cruachan sequence and the Burrel tapestry which is supposed to be published but its teetering on the point of publication. It's ready. I'm not. Some work for Stirling Castle writers including an important poem about Sir David Lyndsay. And bitty poems floating about everywhere, I have sent so few out in the last year it is ridiculous. I have only just managed to keep up with commitments for other writers and Poetry Scotland, which is not likely to have as many issues this year as usual.
There is a reason for all this, folks, I have been diagnosed with osteoparosis, and am beginning to respond to the treatment and feel a bit better. That's why I broke my wrists and why I felt so weak over the winter. I thought it was age and/or the dreadful winter. To recover, I need to go at my own pace
August: much stronger and planning the Callander Poetry Weekend, which page see. One or two trips into festival Edinburgh, most remarkably Kevin Cadwallender's Marathon reading at which I read poems in the pavement outside Forest Cafe at midnight, to much rowdy encouragement from the crowd.
A Burrell Tapestry
There are no pockets in shrouds:
poems from Lynn Wilson's Exhibition
Lower down page: The Sestina and Inversnaid
The above are just two needlework related projects. In the case of Burrell, it's mainly in the title. The medieval brightness of tapestries and stained glass were just one hallmark of his taste.
The Burrell story is completed, pamphlet length and is sitting in the queue. I have a letter from the Burrell Collection, to whom I offered it, one of those praising refusals one sometimes receives, which is great because it means they cannot object to its publication elsewhere. The poems cover the whole Burrell dynasty leading up to the life of William Burrell, the collector. The story has an amazing twist in the life of William Burrell's daughter. Here's Burrell thinking about Hutton Castle, a disastrous choice of home for his collection and family, though he never admitted that. It even occurred to me that D H Lawrence might have picked the name Constance in Lady Chatterley's Lover from this famous lady with a gardener, though more likely he was just punning on the virtue.
1935 Outside my Castle
Outside my castle I have flower beds.
Not trees or lakes.
Trees don't last long enough for me
and lakes remind too much of shipping,
or death by water.
My gardener is a good man,
he tends his flowerbeds quietly
a tapestry of begonias
forget-me-nots and tulips over green --
and my wife, Constance, likes him.
Anyone who fills a place
with flair, efficiency and grace
does all a helpless human can --
we wish too much of our lifespan.
Sally Evans
The other project is a series of poems about shrouds. They were written immediately after Lynn's exhibition. I caught up with Lynn recently and she was delighted with what she termed the artistic gift. We brieifly investigated doing an exhibition in Edinburgh for Lynn's birthday in May, but finding that practically all venues want at least six months notice, and given that Lynn is very busy working, we have not pursued that idea. It is amazing what can happen out of the blue, in any case.
There's more current work on the two feature pages: Stirling Castle writer's group and the E-trip to Chicago.
The Sestina and how it happened
The sestina is about to be copied here again because it is not in my new book the Honey Seller.
This darksome burn, horse-back brown
I went out to Kinlochard to help plan the Burns Supper. Kinlochard is a beautiful settlement on the way to the famous Inversnaid, the waterfall in Hopkins' poem. Inversnaid is, to me, one of the most inspiring places in this inspiring country. All the Trossachs is like this. In the woods beside the burn, the words fall from the trees and echo round the rocks: his rollrock highroad roaring down
Hopkins reached Inversnaid via boat from Loch Lomond. The land route is little but a forest trail beyond Kinlochard, through wild and uninhabited country, where you will see deer, birds, and glorious scenery, from which the people have been cleared. It is the Trossachs through and through.
Our host for the Burns Supper has a large farmstead at Kinlochard where he farms sheep, and has diversified to tourism (horses on holiday), forestry, music and politics. No prizes for knowing who he is, if you live in these parts,
Meanwhile back off the ranch.. .Patricia Smith the American poet was busy organising a double sestina write-in. Well, a paired sestina is what I called mine, two sestinas the first of which used words connected with the farm visit.
The second sestina took over when we went indoors and the ladies started checking the venue for the Burns Supper. This moved itself forward in time to the actual event, which has not happened yet. Other people in Patricia's group wrote very different sestinas. They had nothing in common with one another beyond the strange end-word pattern, which makes the form so puzzling to embark on. If you are lucky you end up with a poem.