Castle Poems: December 2009
I have spent most of this term of the Castle project writing a single longish poem about the weaver in the tapestry shed. It went into a number of drafts and is just about finished. Here's this morning's more spontaneous one.

Castle Buildings in Mist

They fly above the mist,
a great stone jumbo jet
with fewer passengers.
A white shawl laps the rock
as seen by James the Sixth
not many suns ago --
at least it seems not so
as I walk the parapet
look down on grey-black twigs
attached to hidden trees,
or nearer, ghostly graves
in grass with colour lost,
in the high boneyard. Years
and eras vanish, a past
of roads, fields, river, walls,
in clouds below these halls.


Sally Evans

Castle Project expands: Doune Castle

 

In May 2009 we visit Doune Castle and Castle Campbell, to relate Stirling Castle to neighbouring castles and the regional history. Two poems written during the Doune Castle visit. (pictures and account on This Week page).

Perhaps because I had finished the April poem-a-day and was ready for more, or because I really liked Doune Castle, which I have passed almost daily for almost ten years, I crept away and wrote these two poems during the visit. Unrevised: both slightly scary, unusual for me. (The Castle didnt scare me but it did impress me.)

 

The Cellar  (Doune Castle)

The confident English-speaking actor
romping in the castle after a day
of filming, eyes the extras
over the stage bottleshop,
dreams briefly of Scotland
and the past, present and past
held in the extraordinary
season of acting
here in this godforsaken
cold wet forested region -
a castle, roof and warmth
of tree logs burning,
wanders into a cellar
through an archway, round a corner
and then the door slams,
rounded to fit, no handle,
four inches of wood,
a chill rises, no window.
The English speaking actor -
where is his confidence now?

 

The River  (Doune Castle)

Below the castle
the river bends.
How easily
you could disappear.
The river flows
below the castle,
our tributary burn
is swollen.
The castle dares
the swirling river
to eat away its rock
but it will never
in a thousand years
of floods in legend,
streets submerged,
succumb to the force
of the raging river
nor will the river
ever confess
how easily
you could disappear.

 

 

This writing group at Stirling Castle held from autumn 2008 - spring 2009 has given me a great opportunity to learn about Stirling from its most important building. I have written a number of poems and still have several unfinished poems and uncompleted subjects. I am delighted that Firewater Press will be publishing a booklet containing many of these poems along with other poems on related themes: mainly to do with people in the Scottish countryside.

I have still not finished all the work about the trees and grounds of the Castle that I would like to further complete. In particular the Walnut trees fascinate me. There are three beautiful walnut trees in the Douglas garden at the very top of the castle -- along with two old hollies, four limes and a maple.This is an amazing tree garden. There is also a huge twin beech tree on the edge of the bowling green on a lower (but still high and exposed) level and there are many old trees on the slopes around the Castle. And of course there's the graveyard.

We also made a visit to BBC Scotland.

 The poems I  still have  to write could be about the tree census taker of 1880, or the walnut trees I am planting in my own garden, or more poems connected with the great trees in Stirling Castle. These poems seem to work best when I get people in them alongside the trees.

I have written a longish ballad about the walnut tree census taker but it is a bit like a song and I am none too sure about it. Maybe I'll post it here. Maybe I'll develop it as I do so. By longish I mean about five typed pages, I think. but perhaps development will shorten it.

Ingin Lass (1870). Onions in walnut ink by.......

 

 This rose tree is on the wall of the steps beside the bowling green:

 

old white rambler rose

a lattice of black branches -

melting diamonds