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I remember Armistice Day from my childhood as a relic of an outmoded jingoistic attitude that nobody seemed to find relevant. Hardly anyone wore poppies, and nobody wanted to talk about the war. In Liverpool we were still living with undeveloped bomb-sites in the seventies, and we felt it was more than time we moved on and created something new and worthwhile.

So it seems odd to find it creeping back. I don’t think it’s altogether true that it’s some sort of plot to make our current wars seem acceptable and even noble, though I’m prepared to believe that governments are taking advantage of the phenomenon. It seems to come from somewhere else. A vague anxiety about our place in the world, a feeling that we are surrounded by people we can’t trust, and we need to believe that we can – and should – fight our way out of it.

I’m not buying it. I know that sometimes you have to fight. And sometimes you find yourself in a fight when you didn’t expect it. But mostly you don’t. Mostly there are better options you should try first. Mostly, war is the worst response you can make, the most destructive, and the most corrupting, and then you finish up having to negotiate anyway.

But today, with heroes on our minds, I am thinking of three heroes that I know, two in war-time, one in ordinary lfe.

One is Hugh Shields, a Lovat Scout in the Second Waorld War and an expert in explosives. He seems to have been in everything – Dunkirk, the D-Day landings, the Shetland Bus, helping the resistance in Norway. And then at the end he went to bring home prisoners from the Japanese prisoner-of war camps. What he saw there shocked hi. He held a six-foot soldier worn to a skeleton and light as a child in his arms as he died, and he knew than than war had achieved nothing. When the government sent him the forms to apply for his medals, he put them on the fire, and he wrote back saying ‘I have four sons, and I’m coming home to make pacifists out of the lot of them’. And he did. He took every opportunity to talk to the younger generations about the war, and encourage them to work for peace. He had alzheimers when we knew him, and his grip on the current world became more and more intermittent. But his last message was to our youngest daughter, encouraging her to keep on.

The second is Charles Rankine, who was a Japanese prisoner of war and suffered terribly. He told me how grateful he was to see the mushroom cloud at Horoshima, because he knew it meant the end of the war. Unlike Hugh, he never became a pacifist at all – in fact quite the reverse, he was often bitter. But as a mining engineer, he was forced to work on the Bridge over the River Kwai, and on one occasion he realised that the Japanese were about to do something with explosives that was going to kill people, and he warned them about it. To the end of his life he wondered if he should have done that, or if he should have let them go ahead, and sabotage the bridge. And when the camp was liberated the commander who had pistol-whipped him (among other things) came and asked for forgiveness, and Charles forgave him. And to the end of his life he wondered about that too. I always said he should, but as I get older, I realise the difficulty of those choices, and honour him.

The third is going to remain anonymous, because it’s an ongoing story and not mine to tell. But it isn’t only in war that people have to stand up for justice and discipline, and create peace and a new way of living. It’s something we have to do for ourselves in our ordinary lives, every day.

Here is a poetry competition which I can wholeheartedly recommend poets to enter.
First of all, it’s free. Red Squirrel don’t believe in charging for entrance to competitions.
Second, when I did it last year, it was a thoroughly wonderful experience from start to finish. I met the judges and heard them talk about the care they had taken to read and consider all the entries. The competition attracted work of a very high standard, so to be included in the anthology as I was, is a very affirming event. The organisation was terrific, and the award-giving was a warm and friendly occasion when we got to meet not only other Red Squirrel authors (likewise friendly and very interesting people), but also the staff of South Shields library and James Kirkup enthisiasts who turned out in force.

So if you’ve ever submitted your poem and paid £5 for the privilege (and more, sometimes, this year), only for it to disappear into a black hole, try this. No-one could guarantee prizes, but you can be sure you entry has been given all the care and respect you could want.

Details here

What a week this has been! Last weekend I was in Edinburgh for the Radical Book Fair and the AGM of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics but didn’t stay to check it out as I wasn’t feeling up to much, and couldn’t wait to get home. It turned out that I had shingles, which effectualy put paid to any plans I might have had for the week. I don’t think I’ve done much apart from sit by the fire and read thrillers and watch day-time television. My brain went to sleep and I couldn’t take in anything more demanding.

Outside, however, the garden, the fields and the riverbank moved into winter. It’s strange, you can hear it as you go out of your front door. There are new birds here, different songs, different flight patterns, movements where you don’t expect them. First it was waxwings, moving in a free-flowing mob through the village, over the bridge into Riverside, calling and slinking through the branches. The robins were obviously intimidated, displaying and singing fit to bust on the tree-tops and the top of the telegraph pole. They are still here today, but more scattered, less obtrusive.
Then on Tuesday and this morning it was long-tailed tits. It’s hard to see them; they are small and timid and neutrally coloured, but you can hear them all the time. They move about in bands too, and whistle to each other as they go. Whenever I hear them I think ‘fairy pipers’ and then feel rather ashamed -it’s such a twee image. But there it is (and never was piping so sad/and never was piping so gay too much Yeats in my adolescence no doubt).

The trees are magnificent too, losing leaves daily but such rich colours. From my window I can see the last remaining orchard in the village – the orchards of Cambuskenneth Abbey used to be famous – and behind it is the visual equivalent of the Spector wall of sound – a row of yellow Lombardy poplars, and in front of them some tawny beeches and a golden birch. I wanted to photograph it , but I don’t think I could convey the effect, and anyway it would involve the the foreground of other people’s houses.

The river is full now because of the rain and the spring tides. Sometimes seals come up from the Firth on high tides, and I thought I might have seen one on Friday, just a glimpse of a sleek head and a bac curving below the water. But as I watched, whatever it was came up again and rolled. It was much smaller than I expected, and surely that was a tail and a paw? I think it may have been an otter, the first time I’ve ever seen one here. The it slipped away, and left the river to these swans.

The Radical Book Fair, run by Wordpower Books at the Out of the Blue Drill hall in Edinburgh, is one of the most exciting of the year, and this looks like one of the most interesting events this year.

This year is a “mast year” when some trees – particularly oak and beech – suddenly produce massive amounts of seed. It doesn’t mean there’s going to be a hard winter, it’s just a dodge some trees employ to make sure that every so often there’s more seed than the local predators can cope with, and therefore more chance that some of it might germinate.

It’s a form of resilience building, which is a concept I got from learning about permaculture and which I’m quite interested in just now. The thing is, it’s easy to be green when things are going well. Organic is worth the price, you have time to walk instead of driving, it’s not cold enough to miss the central heating anyway and the garden is coming along quite nicely, so there’s lots of lovely food to cook with —- you know the score.

But what happens when things get ugly? You default to the car and the junk food, that’s what. Or I do anyway.

So here’s what I learned about resilience.

Start slow and get it right. I’m going against the drift of my whole personality here, as I’m a great one for the clean sheet and the big picture. But don’t do that. Make small, well-thought out changes, and let them bed in. Habit and experience are your friends.

Make your life as easy and efficient as you can, within your green parameters. It’s difficult enough going outside the mainstream; if you add elaborate schemes and gadgets to the mix you are asking for trouble.

Expect to fail. Build in fall-backs, like freezing meals in batches so good food is as quick and easy as a carry-out in a crisis. And think of what might go wrong. Can you still cook if the electricity is off? or the water? What happens if there’s a flood (we won’t get inundated in our village, as the water will flow onto the other bank of the river, because it’s lower, but we might well be cut off) or heavy snow?

Don’t see green options as an extra, or a choice, because if you do, it will become a burden and expendable. Stop thinking you are doing the world a favour.

Make it fun. Build in beauty and joy and peace. Do what you love.

This post was inspired by what happened around here when life got crazy, but there are many people out there who are busier and even more up against it. How do you build in resilience?

On Saturday I went to the Poetry in Motion event at the Scottish Poetry Library which forms part of the Africa in Motion film festival. Five poets were there, mostly from Zimbabwe, but including Yinka Ekundayo from Nigeria, as well as Mara, a story-teller from Kenya who compered the event and contributed some thought-provoking stories between readings.

It would be easy to be side-tracked by some of the issues raised by these poets. ‘Diaspora’ turns out to be one of the main concerns of the poems in my forth-coming collection (it wasn’t my intention, but that’s what happened), and it was fascinating to see the take of the new generation on the themes of extended family, exile, (“When did soon become a decade?” to quote from Kennedy Madhombiro), and homesickness – “We sleep with eyes open/ we dream in tears” (Emmanuel Sairosi).

I can’t help comparing Luka Bloom’s Chicago
In the city of Chicago
As the evening shadows fall,
there are people dreaming
of the hills of Donegal.

which conveys nothing more than a rather faded nostalgia, compared with the writings of men who live their family lives on the phone or the internet, who remember the smell of roast mealie and long for the sun in a grey country “where colour is like sin” (Emmanuel Sairosi again).

But really I want to introduce the poets. They were excellent, especially Emannuel Sairosi, and Tawone Sithole who co-founded Seeds of Thought in Glasgow (“a non-funded urban poetry group, hosting regular poetry and acoustic music events in Glasgow, and beyond. Not your average kinda fluffy cloud poetry, its a fusion of beat / comedic / urban and Conscious poetry”). This pretty much describes his poetry, which was rhythmic, wittily rhymed, upbeat and confident. Seeds of Thought is a group I’m going to be following up.

Special thanks for this wonderful event should go to Stefanie van der Peer of Africa in Motion and Richie McCaffery, who organised it all.

The brilliant poet Nalini Paul is organising a weekend residential writing retreat on the island of Westray – which sounds like a fabulous combination to me! The cost is £250 all-inclusive, per person, covering accommodation, meals and workshops. See https://www.facebook.com/l/951874IKeACX3FilaFFoyG9VgRQ;www.westmanse.co.uk/whats-on-at-the-manse.php and click on “What’s on at the Manse” for more information.

This lovely book was launched at the Callander Poetry Weekend, one of the Die-Hard Metallic series. It is a collection of the recent poems of the terrifyingly prolific Sheena Blackhall – she produced a whole pamphlet of childrens’ verse on a flight to Vietnam for a wedding – and includes poems in Doric and English, poems written in song and in ballad form as well as in less structured forms, poems about animals, landscape, language and poetry and a lot of poems about death. Death is the big topic this year and almost everyone at Callendar had at least one poem about it.

Sheena’s poetry is both lively and thoughtful, profoundly reflective, lyrical and comic. And sometimes all in the one poem. She is hard to categorise – and would resent the effort to do it, as the witty New Cottage Industry points out. She us popular and accessible; her pamphlet The Win and the Rain which was written for the Tsunami appeal in Aberdeen, sold out completely. But there is nothing superficial or ephemeral about it. A poem from it, The Birth of Death is included in this collection, and still moves even after other catastrophes have pushed the Tsunami out of the headlines.

The picture below shows two of my favourite poems, but it also shows one of the features of the Metallic design – the ‘trip to Jerusalem ‘ binding which allows the book to open flat. The publisher Ian King gave us a demonstration of this process, pointing out that it was cheap and easy, and if you can make your own books, no-one can stop you writing what you like. But I’m afraid the longer he talked, the more convinced I became that it is actually very difficult, highly skilled work requiring a more than the average amount of dexterity, dedication and good judgement, and will not be attempted by me any time soon.

Yesterday’s post was, quite rightly, all about Sally and the other stellar poets at the Callander festival. However, I have some news of my own that I am just busting to tell.

My first collection, working title Wherever We Live Now, has been accepted by Red Squirrel Press and will come out about this time next year. Here you can see what I wrote about the wonder of nature (no, I hadn’t submitted by then!)that is Sheila Wakefield. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be working with her and joining the line-up of marvellous poets she publishes – Eleanor Livingstone, Nalini Paul, Colin Will, Kevin Cadwallender, Colin Donati, Andy Jackson —

I could go on, but even after four days I’m too excited to concentrate. I’d forget someone wonderful and be mortified.

All I can say is, watch this space.