A remote and wonderful waterfall on a hidden road in central Scotland, not too far from where we live, I visit it at least once a year, usually in spring when the side pools are full of tadpoles. By late June the road is all but impassable for small frogs migrating into the peatlands. I find this and other places in the Scottish countryside extremely inspiring.

I have taken part in many and varied poetry events in Scotland and throughout the UK, and one way of listing some of them is putting up some photos and links. My two most regular events are StAnza and the Callander Poetry Weekend. No one gets to read at StAnza very often, so this photo of myself reading in the Undercroft in 2008 is a special memento.

.... 

 

 

On the other hand, everyone who comes to Callander is invited to do a short reading, and even if that wasnt the case, I'm the organiser and host. Last year we were so crowded I didnt read myself. I thought no one would notice but they did, and I won't get away with that again.

                  ...  

 

I have so many other favourite pics of events, but I'll have to stop somewhere. For recent spectacle,  sound and ambience, it would be hard to beat Gaarriye's reading at Mirrorball in Glasgow in December. Etta Dunn has promised me a photo. Here it is, one of a group of six good pics with Gaarriye and Bill Herbert. And even better, here's a video of one of their poems, very much how they read it in Glasgow..

 

 

 

Events, performances and readings 2009: Liverpool, The Fly in the Loaf, Denny Writers Workshop, Stirling Castle Writers,  Chicago Calling (via Skype), Scottish Poetry Library (translations of Christopher Whyte poems),  Perth and Dundee writers evening at East Inchmichael, Callander Poetry Weekend including Cruise reading on Loch Lomond, Glasgow, Tchai Ovna, Adrian Mitchell event, The Bakehouse, Gatehouse of Fleet,  peace reading, St Johns Church Cafe (nowHendersons)

2008: StAnza, March 2008. Amnesty Poetry Reading, Newcastle. March 2008
Shotton, near Chester, Poetry Scotland Reading March 2008
Aberdeen Wordfest, May 2008. Nairn Festival, June 2008.
Balquhidder Book Festival, June 2008 . Stirling University Conference on Poetry and Translation: paper on C Whyte. July.  Stirling Castle Writing project: Castles in the Air, October. E-Trip to Chicago (reading in Chicago via skype) November.

2007: Durness John Lennon Festival, including poetry at Cape Wrath with Michael Horovitz. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, Poetry Kit event, summer 2007.
Stirling Centre of Poetry, Stirling University:  Home Grown Poets reading.
StAnza 2007, read in 100 poets reading, also won StAnza slam.

Talk as part of Magazine Day, Scottish Poetry Library, Autumn 2006.
Amnesty Poetry Reading, Newcastle. Autumn 2006

Word Birds:Aberdeen Literary Festival (Wordfringe), May 2006..
"Thanks for the Word Birds performance - it really was a performance, rather than just people reading poems, and that for me made it one of the best events in Wordfringe." - Haworth Hodgkinson, Wordfringe Festival Director

 

Other events have included: Poetry readings at: Stirling (SCoP), StAnza 07 (100 poets event) Callander Garden Readings, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Courtyard Readings, Poetry Association Scotland, Poems & Pints, Christopher North, Women Live, Fruitmarket Gallery, Western Bar & the Old Travers etc, Selkirk, St Andrews, Wick, Oxford, Ledbury Festival with the Long Poem Group, Liverpool Garden Festival, Morden Tower, Newcastle, Lit & Phil Newcastle, High Level Bridge etc, Arrowhead Poets Tour, etc.

Poetry Introductions at Stirling Book Festival, Edinburgh Book Festival, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Stirling University Poetry Conference (Wild Women Poets), Oban (The Mod!), Grindles in Edinburgh and Callander Poetry Festivals.

Talks on poetry, editing, etc at StAnza , Scottish Writers Association Conference, Livingstone Writers Group, Jean Sergeant Poetry Group during their week at Millport, Cumbrae, Ayr Writers Club, Stirling Adult Literacy, etc. Prize presentation at the wonderful, and now defunct Scottish International Open Poetry Competition in Ayrshire.

 

 

 The Tweets

"You'll be all right here, won't you, Marie?"

"Fine." Surely he could see that.

"Write." He probably wouldn't.

"You'll have to get a mobile phone."

They headed off down the path to the road, but having decided she belonged here, she wouldn't go with them. They disappeared with a wave.

She moved in through the open door, and looked back around.
  

Quiet solitude wrapped itself round the place again, as quickly and surely as if it had been waiting at cloud level all the time.

Birds began to move in the hawthorn, chaffinches, a sparrow, a bluetit.

Well, she was going to make that coffee. They'd forgotten all about it. Unnecessary perhaps, but she liked it, and who could object?

She thought she could hear the car starting up at the end of the footpath. So that would be them on their way.

This room was so much a garden room, you couldn't be in it and not be aware of outdoors. Wherever you looked were the mirrors of windows.

Marie looked down. She fidgeted with the little mats on the table, then walked to the dresser and stacked away the extra cups and saucers.

She could see the trees, those that remained, and in the gap was the field leading down to the river.

She wouldn't draw the curtains yet.

The coffee took a long time to cool down, and the sky took a long time to fade from the pink of sunset.

Marie lived on at the bothy for a good many years after that - and often forgot all about what had led her there.

_________________________________________________________
I am holding up the backwards novel for reasons of my own, which might well be artistic reasons. I also think it should not include the final (but first) tweet, but as I said I was not going to meddle with the tweets for the moment, I will not remove it for the moment.

_________________________________________________________

 

 Below, are notes, poems and parts of poems in progress which came out of Robert Lee Brewer's  Poem a Day project. last April. By June I was taking down the useless ones, and leaving only a hint of what was going on. I know there were a number of useless ones.

I'm doing Poem a Day for April on Robert Lee Brewer's project.

These copies may have amendments made after first sending them in to the project. Each is inevitably a fairly quick hit or miss draft or I wouldnt have time to do it at all. 

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/

Day one to ten are at the foot of page, from day 11 I started at the top again,, because it was too far down to scroll. Also I am changing the print colour for 11-20 and 21-30 just to break up the text.

Days 20 and 21. For the last ten days I am back at the top of the page, with a different colour. This is the first time I have written poems in the wrong order, for I have been out all day working and bee-ing and I found day 19's prompt complex and interesting but havent come up with a response yet. The 20th prompt, haiku, was easy, comparatively - I'm not saying haiku are easy to write, they're excruciatingly difficult to do really well. But they're relatively easy to knock off when you have to, as compared to a sonnet or lyric. (The second easiest form to produce on demand is the narrative, probably.)
The rebirth poem was written fairly easily first thing next morning after considering the Hume idea as I went to sleep.

20/22/04/2009 05:03:49 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Rebirth
I took this one down because it was prosy.
I now need to check Hume's dates to make sure 200 is accurate enough.



21/22/04/2009 05:09:06 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
21
haiku

 

pollen on my boots
we visit the new beehives
in the field corner

21b
about a haiku

taking a snapshot
turning words into paint
for quick pictures
crisp clear insight
photographic impressions

without similes
like those simplistic
light-boxes that burn
ferns or simple leaves
onto a plate

the outside intensified
the outer captured
the inner revealing
often a balance
juxtaposition

often an obvious
connection noticed
in fewer words - it takes
less to say more -
brush - a haiku

Day 22: the next is the theme of Work.

 

22/04/2009 15:39:20 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Work

I've taken about half this one down.
with that quick intelligence
that sat so lightly on him.
He felt like a passenger
in a meaningless train, with tracks
but no destination, stations
but no reason to get on and off.

He wanted to be the driver
in a different sort of train,
a smaller, more private one
where he knew all the passengers,
decided on the stations
and laid the tracks.

he forgot the way there and back
and instead began to see
the world as a place he could do things in,
a place he could make go somewhere,
where he could have conversations
with the like-minded
and the unlike-minded,
a place that would sometimes listen.

 

 

Day 23: Topic: Regret. I feel that regret is in every awareness of the past, and does not necessarily spoil the present. I wonder if this poem is a bit too confessional....a real incident, recent. Still the poem-a-day is for experiment, is it not. I did notice too,, after posting my poem, that the vast majority of the regret poems are about broken relationships... though I didnt see another one about long, long afterwards. 

23/04/2009 20:04:36 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
At a country auction

A friend said they liked this one and it was true.

Sitting quietly in my car
on a warm spring evening.
The trees reach the sky
and the river runs by.
It is quiet. Maybe the birds are singing,
but not with the bustle of morning.

Someone gets out of another car,
heads towards me where I sit,
and I am suddenly tense.
Someone I knew long ago.
I raise my hand to hide my face
then drop it.

He looks happy until he sees me.
Startled, he veers away.
I am richer than I was, happier,
don't look older.
When I walk into the auction,
I am confident, buy my pieces.

A beautiful country I live in.
In my book,
it would have been a shame
to live in another.
Birds sit on the telephone wires,
the sun sinks beyond the river.

You wouldnt think a poem about travel would hold me up but it needed a good think to come up with this one - written beside the beehive, appropriately enough. I have been noticiing that Ithink poets travel too much - all this performance travelling stops them from writing!

 

 

24/ 25/04/2009 05:39:46 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Travel

I took thsi oen down because I didnt like it. I am going off rhymy rhythm again, on the whole.

Getting near the end with 25. An event. I looked to see what kind of event and it seemed to be a public gathering, not a private accident kind of event. So:(and I'm starting to rhyme now we are near the end, I wonder why that is):

25:25/04/2009 16:57:30 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Beekeepers' Dinner

 

a bit stodgy but I'm leaving it up for another try at making it interesting.

Not a place for speeches, though these guys
are quick as lightning on the countryside,
but gossip, lore and something else besides:
the still contentment of the quietly wise.

They have the characters they seek in bees:
docility, good health and industry.
They're from all backgrounds, though stability,
jeeps and country gardens are part of these.

They often meet for talks with videos,
email each other, share tips, change their goods
in country barter: scour the hills and woods
for wild bees: what they don't know, no-one knows.

Tonight they've gathered for their annual bash
at Suzy's Diner, merry while their bees
cluster in dark hives in their apiaries
or make and use their honey. Here's their cash.

Enamoured of their colonies and hives,
they talk and listen of worker, brood and queen.
Each has a wife or husband rarely seen,
who wonders how their beekeeper survives,

hooked on the hive, this super-organism,
their whole life pointless without bees to tend,
plants to identify and frames to mend --
and puts it down to individualism.

 

First attempt to post this crashed so the comment will  be different and shorter, though the poem will be the same. This difficult topic (miscommunicaiton) I cracked by beginning to freewrite on the train to Edinburgh. It starts from a motto mistranslation joke.

26
Some truth in a motto  I like this one.

He interpreted his old school motto
Pas a pas on va bien loin
Step by step one meets Ben Lion

and one day he met Ben Lion,
a punk star from the D class
who had made his way unassisted

by London French or lawyers' Latin,
that bore such shocking moralisms
from late Victorian idealism.

She went to Queen Victoria Girls
for the toffee-nosed of that industrial
neighbourhood. Her mother wanted

a posh boarding school. You always had
the same chances as your brother.
A hard slow transition

between the old straitjacket
expressed by uniform and dress
and the more open society demanded

even by died-in-the-wool pundits
of today's situation. As life
aged them, distance melted

and she and her brother became friends,
using their old humour to understand
beyond regulation of schooling

and preference, beyond
background, laughing today
that Pas a pas they came bien loin.

 

From my point of view, these prompts are very hard- for this one, Longing, I reacted as I have to several prompts: oh no, I can't do that. Maybe it is sidestepping but I was quite pleased - at close range of course - with my solution.

2728/04/2009 08:24:38 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Margaritifera

 

I've cut some of this away.

 A pearl is awkward,
arises from a piece of grit
I can feel in my flesh.
I nacre it over

and for some years
out of my long dull life
on the fine river sand,
go about my business

till I no longer notice.
But for the world
to know of that pearl,
it must leave my body.

The next prompt is write a sestina - how could he. Or, he adds, a poem about not being able to write a sestina. If the final two days have such teasers how will people finish in time?..Here's the sestina, written out from illegible pencil on a revise-as-you-go basis...I'll leave it till the morning to post, as I might see whoppers by then.

28/04/2009 12:51:57 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Wild bee man
I can see theres something wrong, maybe its the group of rhymes or something, its a bit too discursive. I'd like to do this subject in another form.

He goes out checking on his colonies
in hollow trees and walls, south east or south
facing, among the forests of the wild,
and follows bees home from their foraging
from plants essential to their sustenance
and all because he wants to understand

how they survive in troubled times, to understand
the danger. He's lost many colonies
but some survive. What gives these sustenance
when bee diseases creep north from the south?
How do they solve their problems? Each bee's foraging
perhaps for medication in the wild,

herbs that they recognise as healing, wild
garlic, salve. Do they somehow understand
how to select for strength? Yet foraging
must keep their stores replete, for colonies
generate in shorter summers than the south
enjoys. Nectar and pollen, sustenance

for larvae, next month's new bees, sustenance
for queen and worker bees. They are not wild
but firmly ruled. The sun moves round the south,
and while they wander, helps them understand
how to return to their own colonies
after long and exhausting foraging.

The wild bee man's home from his foraging.
He also needs both sleep and sustenance.
As the sun sets he dreams of colonies
settling down in the darkness of the wild,
clustering in their combs. Do they understand
why they are working? Warmth from the south

will come to give them life. Their god, the south
sun, ripens flowers and trees for foraging,
sets free the fruit. Does no one understand
how everything that lives finds sustenance
and this is why he wanders through the wild,
to find and marvel at the colonies,

surviving colonies far from the south,
watching the wild bees at their foraging
for sustenance he'll one day understand.

28b
On the Sestina, this is OK so far as it goes wh is not far.

This is the form I love to hate,
the form that makes me wait,
the form for which I have to use a template.

This is the hardest kind of poem to write.
It puts up such a fight
from subject to the dawn of argument to daylight.

The form in which the strange, absurd
repetition of line end words
somehow fails to catch the dickybird.

Even when it's sitting there
finished, it turns on you a baleful stare,
waiting for you to realise there's next to nothing there.

Start with never: I'll never do that...but I did. Only one more poem after this.

29 - 30/04/2009 18:15:19 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Never underestimate waiting  I like this one. Up to a point.

A delay - someone's late.
Small talk is made, round a table.
Or on a train, in a car,
held up during a journey.
Evening will come, or morning,
and nothing has happened,
though something was expected.
The rain will stop.

Time is the great gift. In it
you can watch a bee working,
an ant climb a leaf.
You can sit still and recall
some moment filled with smaller
moments, am infinity of splendour,
while going nowhere at all.
Never underestimate waiting.

It is our way, to pretend
being busy has no end, time
must be valued and rushed. It must?
But I have a room,
filled with pictures and books
that I watch and read time and again.
They are my friends. A friendship
is not for rushing, it is for waiting.

With a friend, I can wait for anything,
a bus or a ferry, an answer, a reckoning,
for a tree to grow, something
slow like a walnut,
for a regime to fall.
my friend,
friend of friends,
never underestimate waiting.

30 -01/05/2009 04:56:07 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Farewell, April  OK  funny subject though.

No mean April this,
always the month of my birthday
and usually Easter.
Crocuses give way to daffodils,
here in our northern season
later than elsewhere.
Snowdrop stems still flop
mini melon seedheads,
where cherry blossom falls
and winds whip up tantrums
though they never last.
April, so welcome
when it arrives,
is left hurriedly,
often ungratefully.
Summer work piles up.
Farewell, April,
no mean April,
this is my final look.

11/04

12/04/2009 18:53:20 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Pink Suede Boots

didnt like that. not important enough.

It hasnt been plain sailing here. Have given up the highland glen theme, unless a prompt really goes that way - some definitely didnt. Most of the poems have gone in without sufficient revision. I took two to the writers group and had interesting ideas thrown at them, and can see ways to improve them as a result, but although I agree poems need to be worked through I basically do not agree with group revision of poems, I do not agree that there are two alternatives, group revision and self satisfaction, or "mutual admiration societies" as I have heard it put. I think a poem is coming from a self and is a gift from that self. This is one of the ways in which poetry teaching at universities is not doing poetry any good.

The next poem has to have the title So we decided to xxx. it is going to be murderous but at least I have caught up again today.

 

12/04/13/04/2009 13:22:39 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
So we decided to swim  Quite fun.

The road was closed for two days, while the flood
raged picturesque and inconvenient,
four-wheel drives only getting through
and official vehicles at that
but the third day the rain abated.
Raving to go, we sploshed
steadily through the sudden fords,
reaching the major network only
to find it, too, in disarray.
Lorries abandoned told their tale
as did the gangs of water-board
and council workmen freeing drainage
on the high cambers over flat moss,
the way not far enough from the river
that ran amok beneath the field-wide flood,
its loops traceable by treetops.
By the time we reached "civilisation,"
the horse town further down, it too in chaos,
the road behind us had been closed again,
three of the four ways round the river system
impassable. So we decided to do
what any half-sane person would do
on that ridiculous cloud-bursting day
faced with that damp, squall-sodden foray,
to risk our clothes and car and police pressure
and the rain that never let up at all,
despite improvements in the Forecast,
we decided to get back anyway,
to go back the way we had come,
back past the Road Closed notice
and the stranded four-by-four,
and it wasn't any drier than before,
so we decided if necessary to swim,
that's why we're so wet,
we decided to swim.

Sometimes facile poems are best, if they're zingy and zesty, like this one. Hobbies is a slight subject, anyway: that's my excuse. The 'ings' are a bit of a disaster, but you couldnt write this poem without them.

13/04/14/04/2009 12:20:18 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

No Time for Hobbies

No time for hobbies,
she's too busy
keeping bees and writing verse,
running a garden, cutting grass,
sewing - she's making a coat and dress,
picking up pebbles, collecting glass,
feeding the cats and watching birds,
playing the piano, songs without words,
arranging flowers in a crystal ball,
potting geraniums, painting the hall,
busy by night and busy by day,
reading, and listening to radio plays,
she's so, so busy, always busy,
far too busy,
she has no time for hobbies,
no time for hobbies at all.

Two poems behind : one day I had persistent mild migraine, did a small amount of gardening, watched the bees and did a bit in the shop, mainly when Ian called for help cos there were unruly kiddies, under their parents' admiring protection, whom I have a way with...we wont go into what way. Anyway some phrases came into my head for this poem so I'll try it now. It may not be apparent, but the theme for this poem is Love. I know what I'd like to write for the second poem, Not Love: a true incident when someone married in too much haste.

14/04/15/04/2009 18:07:43 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Betula pendula   A favourite, despite that thin line. could be put right.

His pint of beer
on the table where I sit waiting for him
to come back from his smoke.
Or perhaps a natter with someone outside.
He'll be back,
telling me something he's seen or noticed,
the meaning of something he heard.

I am in a cafe sort of place.
Surreal art hangs from the ceiling,
yes, the top halves of a score of trees,
betula pendula, birches,
newly felled, held vertical by wires.
Perhaps the leaves will come out.
I take his beer onto the gallery.

We lean there, chatting beside the trees.
I drink my orange juice.
Over the gallery rail, the nearest branch.
I push it. He draws me back, then smiles.
I'm driving when we leave,
driving through the dark.
We've set the whole forest swaying.


14/04 16/04/2009 18:53:33 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

The Imitation Love Machine

It sounded too good to be true,
the way she said "wonderful news."
I knew at once it wasn't so.
But there's no arguing with her.
By now she really ought to know.
It's easy enough to criticise
and in the past I've closed my eyes
to facts I didn't want to face.
But all the same I knew at once,
something that didn't add up straight,
something untrue, not gold but base.
Was this the love that turns to hate?
But fast, without a backward glance
to those who queried their going,
she and he upped and went to France,
were married with a tinker's ring.
There was no use remonstrating.
We gave them presents, ruby glass
and wished them well, their love to last,
but that was only six months past
and now they want to be divorced,
before you'd think they'd had the time
for even one good resounding row.
Nothing will grow or happen now.
What was it? What made them so keen
to fly their imitation love machine?

Now there should be one about a title from another poem changed, but I havent got that ready yet. That's my last duchess? Not waving but drowning?Now I have the title, Under Ben Bulben (Under Ben Ledi). It shouldn take too long to do the poem. [It didnt]. Sometimes the title virtually is the poem, and it was in this case I guess. In that it holds the argument, the basis of the poem, in its nutshell.

 

15: 18/04/2009 03:26:22 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Under Ben Ledi

 

This is a bit stylised but I'm leaving it up for now.

Yeats lies under Ben Bulben,
in the misty mountains of Ireland,
and Sorley Maclean lies high on the cliffs
facing his homeland of Raasay

but I walk under Ben Ledi
where I settled after my travels
having traversed the English of Ireland,
attempted the heights of the Gael.

Travelling in their lands,
I walked as they walked, struggled
to speak as they spoke in their languages,
hoping one day to speak like them

but in any case to stay in this country
these mountainsides, beanntainn,
the bens that held stature and grace,
dignity, truth in their peaks.

But I'm ready with the next one, an impromptu colour poem:

16/04/16/04/2009 18:35:15 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Red :     this is one of my favourites.

The dark red of the mulberry,
the almost black red of the berry,
the vivid red of bryony,
the confident warm red of strawberries,
the brilliant red of asters,
the pillarbox red of cherries,
the cherry red of little apples,
the vermilion of ladybirds,
the lipstick red of redcurrants,
the glossy red of black cherries,
the luscious red of fruits
on a warm summer's day.

The mid red of asters,
the posterpaint red of dahlias,
sophisticated rhododendrons,
the red of the pink,
the pink of the rose.

The duff red of pretence,
the fierce red of blood,
the pale red of pallor,
the red-eyed photograph,
infra-red unreadable,
red draining to dark
where all reds are indistinguishable
and hearts proud, blood drips,
flowers flop, fruits fall
cherries coalesce, raspberries sog.

Give me a cup of red bush tea
and I'll bring you a red bull a red dragon
red chessmen red armies red
paperbacks red gold red velvet
and I'll sing you the strength
of this strong colour.

The next one had to start with All I want is...it took ages to think of something I could want in that exclusive sort of way, so I came up with the key line and jigged the poem along to match it, rather simplistically (but I gave it an unusual rhyme pattern to add interest.)

17:18/04/2009 17:25:27 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

 I've taken the rest of this down, I like the rhythm but not the logic.

All I want is blossom on the plum tree.

Spring is coming quick as rain.
Snowdrops made the woodlands white
and aconites were gold again,
and now their flowers are out of sight.
Only their leggy leaves remain.
All I want is blossom on the plum tree.

All I want is blossom on the plum tree.

 

The next two had me puzzling, at a very busy time, and I eventually got up and did 18 in the middle of the night. Both18 and 19 are people poems, I dont find these at all easy. Interaction was 18 and it came from the Susan Boyle media happening. Anger, a difficult topic for me, comes at 19. Maybe I'll manage it straight off, maybe I'll carry the problem around for another half day. There was a recent incident involving anger which I discussed in a prose blog, but I wont use that instance.

18/19/04/2009 23:18:11 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

OK darling...

I've taken this down because it was temporary, journalistic.

18 is the only one I put up as a note on facebook because of its topicality, and it produced a good discussion and the invention of the term Topazicality for the genre of popular topical poetry. Invented jointly by Alan Jamieson and myself. I dont know whetehr I have sidestepped anger in teh following poem, but I discussed it in a way.

 

 

19
The dread emotion   this one is OK if you know it is about anger.

Never become physically mad, or stare
with bulging eyes, but let the hour
settle again, rest the nape of your neck
flat and serene. What next
you must do is take deep breaths
in an area of clear clean air,
if one is at hand. Anyway, cool
your ruffled mind, steer it away
from the dread emotion: dread
because it is heroic, catastrophic,
cathartic and understandable,
dread because it is a secret agent,
takes you unawares in a height
from which you may fall, choking,
roaring, exploding, smoking,
like a charred chassis, to no avail.
Control anger. Then you can calmly
and as nastily as you like, get even.
You can shift to strategy,
ice things over with nonchalance,
pretend you didn't know.

 

01/04/2009 09:43:55 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Glen Orchy, Amphibians and Man

Single track roads to the horizon.
You may walk or ride a horse
or take a comfortable old van.
Avoid the time of day when sun,
shadow-low, shines against you
and reflects off the sparkling water.

Pull up, reign your horse, or picnic
at your favourite waterfall,
its face worked back upstream
through tireless centuries
until the stone-age cairns
are some small distance down.

Here, past a modern shrine
of plastic daffodils, untouched
by such scarce visitors, are toads,
frogs, newts, copulating
in clear pools in the rock,
called to congregate each springtime.

Since our life began,
fish growing legs, unsteadily
reptilian, advance to land
moving away through dangers
to burst into a future known
only, and surely, by instinct.

 

Hmm. Might just have got away with that nice phrase solstice-low but its an equinox poem, so it has to go. Instead? evening-low. Which means maybe time of day needs changing, line above. Chain-reaction alterations are bad news.

I'm going to continue to present the poems openly here, but will not retain early drafts. They will show the posting time on RLB's site. These here are the correct versions. So far (two poems) I've seen small but vital improvements after sending them in in the rash excitement of creation.

 

02/04/2009 09:35:11 (Eastern Daylight Time,UTC-04:00
Outsider, Glen Orchy

The browns and russets his eyes photograph
surround him in the pelts of deer and fox
who with the birds are his companions
around the tinny caravan, his shelter.
His story doesnt matter any more.

The farmers know he's there. These things happen.
A curt nod's all he wants, and sometimes,
from the nearest one, come tools or bread,
equipment carefully explained-away.
Sometimes he'd almost welcome that policeman
who'll never look for him, that angered shade
from when he tried the impossible thing for some,
to co-exist in regiments of men.
He's half forgotten even how they speak.

New summer light is pure and good.
Unsought between his birth and death
he strides across the boulders to the bank
where no road follows, he alone deciding
if and when he'll reappear.

 

Here goes, day three. This time I really am going to wait a bit longer before sending in.Though possibly the objective view revealing mistakes will not happen until after it is on the page. I need to try hard to make this page do it.

02/04/2009 12:25:59 EDT
The problem with keeping bees

The problem with keeping bees is its romance,
deep in the glen. The keeper visits,
bringing his tools and knowledge into play.
Up here the air is clean, the colony
progresses well, finding willow
and a million blossoms as the days
open up to the sun, eyebright,
hawthorn, honeysuckle, heather,
or plants that march with humans and are used,
fireweed, thistle and dandelion.
The problem with keeping bees is permanence.

The problem with keeping bees is thunder,
rain stretched too long between each sunny day,
so that they mope, deplete their honey,
or half-hysterical, look for passers by
to vent their anger on, but there are none
although perhaps a badger comes and scents
their stores and swipes his way to some: a mouse
gains entry to their hive and causes strife.
Swarms fly in uncertain temper.
Keeping bees is fortune, chance and skill.
The problem with keeping bees is wonder.

Day four, animal prompt. First big lack of inspiration, perhaps because I have been so worked up about the bees arriving this morning. Going through the Scottish wild animals but nothing sprang into words at all. the bees themselves? Dont ask...plenty on the garden blog page. Never mind there's time yet.

Then last thing last night I began to make words about the red squirrel. Red squirrel neither to serious nor too slight, as all the other Scottish wild animals had seemed. Could externalise and merge it with landscape.

05/04/2009 01:45:57 EDT
Red Squirrel

trips from tree to stone
tips and tilts, loop-tail,
small paws grasp a nut
teeth nibble oval

surface ripples while a pool
by the inland loch
holds wild cold northern
water-lilies on its palm

silk shape scampers,
plants a future oak
in a pocket of soil
for the plump acorn

smooth then flight,
bush flicking in fright,
spirals bough, silent,
russet, nimble, slight

where loch shore waits,
wind stirs grasses,
no other movement,
firs feel less life.

Day five. A grip came easier today on the Landmark prompt, but the poem was a bit of a tussle. Fourteen-liner, sonnet-like, it has the twist but not the rhymes. I have to be in the mood for rhymes otehrwide they dont always interest me. In a way rhyming can seem too easy. Had to make sure it did not overlap with poem from Day One, as I am theming these poems to the highland inland landscapes, not a particular glen (though I might be thinking of one and you know which it is because I have said.) I'll let it sit for an hour or two before posting, as changes of line order and other confusions during the writing may need to be seen again after a look at something else.

 

05/04/2009 16:15:37 EDT
Landmarks

Hold still before these chambered cairns,
moss-overgrown stone burials,
collapsed beside the waterfall
above this inconspicuous pass.
Peoples in time so faint and lost
we dare not name them ancestors,
who lived and died on hidden slopes,
fish-wealthy, berry-laden, herb-sweet
foraging playground with dangers,
depths, rapids and darkness,
remain and remind, untouched
by archaeology, landmarks
of the realities we acknowledge
in the wilds where they have their say.

 

Day six: the real world gave me a gift for this topic, Something Missin. And dammit, another improvement (in the first line) noticed after sending.

 

06/04/2009 18:10:04 EDT
Treetop

Suddenly I see what's missing --
the pointed upper section of a tree
that grew a foot a year into my view,
obscuring this wide outlook like a tall
theatre goer in front of you --
not that I go to theatres these days.
I travelled cities in my youth, but now
our hilly country gives me everything
including a living. I won't leave.
But since I came here, one tall fir,
fine-shaped, not native to our wood,
speared thick against my backdrop slope,
touched, then passed the high crags, then began
to fill sky. Twenty feet of branches gone,
yesterday's clatter and thuds, forestry men.
Are they more likely to take the whole tree down
than let it blunder on without its crown?
They won't consult with me. I look uphill,
at steep footpaths and skyline where the deer
stare toward summer sunrise before dawn,
the larches giving way to pines and moor.
The foreground tree is ugly, damaged.
It may grow outwards, but the way it's sawn,
it won't grow upwards, so my view is sure.

Day Seven. Totally stymied by today's prompt, a clean or dirty poem.Took Squirrel and the Problem with Keeping Bees to the writers group and saw many possible developments / improvements of both poems. I dont think one poem has gone up yet that won't benefit from (and therefore need) revision. So Day Seven is light relief, produced between 00.25 and 00.35 on the 8th (Buddha's birthday). And I cannot make the whole sequence poems about the highlands, as in any case I will not have a sequence at the end, only a few good work-on-able poems and no order to them.

 

07/04/2009 19:23:11 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Light relief

Clean

There was a young lady named Jean
who was always incredibly clean.
She thought it was posh
to come round for a wash --
You could always smell soap where she'd been.

Dirty

There was a young student named Bertie
who was only happy when dirty.
He would lark anywhere
in the muck, and not care,
then he married clean Jean, did our Bertie.

Day 8 and I have been busy in my usual routineless way. Have not thought about this day's poem till last thing, after bee watching, gardening, potting on plants, running shop and doing minutes for an evening meeting. None the less we all have routines. So there is nothing to write yet...maybe after a routine snooze with my cat, whose routine is simple: eat, sleep, check round territory, sleep, sleep, check round territory, eat. 8 April is Buddha's birthday.

 

08/04/2009
09/04/2009 05:12:33 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
The job she left

She lets out the geese
looks for the bantams
checks the honeybees
feeds the pet lamb

chases the geese
lets out the pet lamb
collects the eggs
milks the goat

makes the coffee
with chicory and dandelion
picks the herbs
plants the lettuce

walks the dogs
throws grain to the bantams
watches the honeybees
all in the morning

routine routine
so much better
than the job she left
routine routine

 

 

Day 9, beginning to feel the pressure. A memory is such an easy prompt, everything pretty well is a memory, but could I get started? No.

 

09/04/200910/04/2009 05:06:33 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Memory

We walk on planes or spheres,
millefiore, tears,
a hundred thousand flowers,
grimacing faces.
When we look round we see
bright incidentals
unpack their words and scenes,
unrolling dreams

but longer shapes loom out,
indecipherable forms
through blades of grass. We guess
the horseman at the feast,
the ship at port, the sun,
fabled leviathan,
the sum of one plus one,
the textured sea or plain.

These memories we unveil,
patchwork, detailed, small,
though fine, do not explain
the meaning of the whole.

Prompt: Friday.  a really difficult one, for me:. these poems are beginning to flag. From tomorrow I am adding them at the top, I am tired of scrolling down.

10/04/200911/04/2009 13:55:18 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Summer Friday

He said, It's poet's day,
Friday in summer.
We'll all rush out of town,
the pen put down,
to catch the trains,
take to the roads,

invade the rooms
of country relatives,
walk their dogs,
ride their horses,
read their books,
and gossip with their friends.

He said. She smiled.
The Fridays of winter
were still not so far gone
from her mind,
long weekends
of a different kind.

She smiled. For there comes
a Friday in spring,
when the leaves open
that drop every autumn.
So on this summer Friday,
she said Wait, I'll come with you.