Solway
Poem: Love unfolded then, like crumpled petals opening into sunlight, unfurling at the stroke of springas we walked the seven miles of estuary, reaching, after long mudflats, the beach, the windless...
View ArticleThe Harp of Renfrewshire
Poem: Contemplating a mapAnnals of the trilled R, gently stroked L, Lamenting O of local literature, Open, on this, their one-page book, a still Land-language chattered in a river’s burr.Small-talk of...
View ArticleRetreat
Poem: Once a month they escape the world of tube-trains, deadlines, traffic jams, to slip on country selves with their woollen shirts and cement-spattered trousers,slowing their pace in the time it...
View ArticleSongs for the Falling Angel
Poem: Prologue: The Song of the Falling AngelIt may be ten lifetimes or more before the Johnstones, Maxwells, Bells and Jardines find the song they need for the Falling Angel.First will come a hymn to...
View ArticleFastness
Poem: Across the isthmus and the broken neck of dykes we leave the low boasts of cattle, the sight of dry fields combed flat to baize. Here, in this fastness light and oceans blaze, tides collide,...
View ArticleSeasons
Poem: Skeich wes the hert i the spring o the year whan the well-sawn yird begoud tae steer an the plewlan’s promise gledened the ee atween Balgerran an Balmaghie.The lang het simmer cam an rowed the...
View ArticleCree Seasons
Poem: autumn creeleaves kaleidoscope amber, gold, russet, orange amadou fungus mushrooms migratory geese cry berries, nuts squirrel into banks autumn mists ghost inwinter creewords hibernate in cool...
View ArticleHydro Hotel
Poem: The derelict hotel, the tower on the hill, water in the tower, the height of the tower, the place I…The stairways can’t be trusted, the lintels are arch.The boy at lie knows the balance of the...
View ArticleAt Cairnholy
Poem: Chambered cairn: third millennia B.C.The Cairnholy sun dyed the cold sky red, dispensed with forests; made sea echo stone. For, in winter, Wigtown deals elements; lead us, like lapsed priests, to...
View ArticleThe River
Poem: 1. EVENING SKETCHNight squats on the grey estate: the river, the roads turn black. Up a deserted side-street darkness tears away from a nakedly lit shop-front: Mini-Cabs For Hire. Inside a man,...
View ArticleWhithorn and Elrig
Poem: The monks liked cats for company, I hear. I can believe it. Felines of ink and gold Arch the capitals, Curve into the celibate white. Scarlet badges if initiation Wait at the head of the Word....
View ArticleThe Banks of Fleet
Poem: I sing the bonny banks o Fleet, Where Nature spreads her various treasure; Frae fruits and flowers of every hue, To berries blae, and craps o heather. Thy peebled shores and sea-girt isles, Thy...
View ArticleSolway Tide
Poem: An unco sough i’ the gloamin’ An’ a flaff o’ risin’ win’, A glisk o’ stoundin’ waters By the weirdly licht o’ the mune, An’ the fell dark tide o’ Solway Comes breengin’, whummlin’ in. Whaur...
View Article'Scotland small?'
Poem: Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small? Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner To a fool who cries ‘Nothing but heather!’ where in September another Sitting there...
View ArticleA Galloway Burn in June
Poem: Brown burn water dropping Between the grey stones, The lapse and the murmur, The bright overtones Of cuckoo and curlew And faraway trill Of a lark; great blue shadows Stride over the hill: Breeze...
View Article
