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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer


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  • A Few Updates

    bookshelves floor to ceiling, two wooden steps in front of them

    I have a new computer, which is very lovely in many ways, but I am struggling to find the photos I uploaded yesterday, so until I learn the file management system on this beast, there will have to be old photos. This is one of my library, which was set up last year. Although it has a lot of books in it, it is mostly used for a chill out space for those of us who need a break from the chatter when we’re all together, and for crafting. Sometimes I feel rather uncomfortable about having so much space and access to books, when some people, especially the younger generation, find themselves struggling with access to resources to support their writing, so I’d like to find a way to share this. If you are a writer who needs to borrow or consult books that I have, let me know and we’ll see what can be done.

    This is a bit of a distraction from my main intention which was to remind everyone about the poetry event at the Little biggar Festival on 28th October. The Facebook posting reads:

    Biggar-based publisher Red Squirrel Press invites you to an afternoon of Red Squirrel Press poets and friends in aid of MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank, held in Biggar & Upper Clyde Museum on 28th October.

    Featuring some of the best-known names in poetry, WN (Bill) Herbert, Dundee Makar and Professor of Poetry, Sean O’Brien, multi award- winning poet and Emeritus Professor, Colin Will, writer, musician, former Scottish Poetry Library and StAnza International Poetry Festival Chair, award winning Biggar-based poet Lindsay Macgregor, Andrew Forster, poet and literature development worker and was previously Literature Development Officer for Dumfries and Galloway. Elizabeth Rimmer widely-published poet, reviewer and editor, author of four collections from Red Squirrel Press and editor of the eco-poetry discussion website Ceasing Never.

    Tickets available from https://www.biggarlittlefestival.com/literature/red-squirrel

    There is another upcoming reading in Stirling on 4th November as part of Paperboats Day for Nature, but I will post more about this later when further details are available.

    Also, I am sorry to announce that I am going to stop sending out my newsletter. I used Mailchimp, but as the parent company has announced its intention to scrape content in order to train AI, the potential for copyright infringements eems too high to be worth it. I’m looking for alternative ways of keeping in touch, as there are some subscribers who don’t follow me elsewhere on social media, but in the meantime, I can be found on BlueSky, (mostly poetry) Mastodon (mostly politics and environmental stuff) and Instagram (herbs, cooking and gardening). That’s a lot, and I’ll probably refine it as the platforms develop, but that’s where I am just now.

  • Between the Human Places

    We have been watching Kaos on Netflix, and I am very much enjoying the portrayal of Orpheus as a narcissistic dysfunctional pop idol draining Eurydice emotionally in the service of his art. Many years ago – about twenty, I think, which shocks me now I think about it – I wrote a poem sequence called Eurydice Rising, which started from this very premise. Orpheus falls for Eurydice because she is crazy and strange, and when she becomes happy and stable he gets bored – no inspiration – and she retreats into a deep depression. Orpheus falls apart

    Moniage 1: Orpheus in the Wilderness
    Orpheus deserts his post. Her flight
    is like a magpie raid on his whole life –
    what isn’t gone is broken, pulled apart.
    Only the harp goes with him, and he plays
    in doorways, under arches, in the space
    between the human places. When he sings,
    the trees bend down to listen. No-one else will.

    He is lost without her, and demented,
    follows strange girls home, asks who’s hiding her,
    shouts obscenities at those who pass him by.
    He hears voices in the dark, and follows them
    out into wilder places, to be alone.

    He comes on children, picking brambles,
    noisy, carefree, quick and neat as birds.
    They do not notice him, and go their way
    unfrightened, and he hears the women call
    them home to breakfast. When they are gone,
    the silence stirs him like a changing wind.
    He says, “I used to do that, long ago.”

    He thinks of berries shining, intact, black,
    the small hairs tickling his outstretched palm,
    the scratches worn like war wounds, and the brag
    of secret places, where there’s loads still left.
    That’s when the door opens, the shadowed way
    beneath the grey rock, to the other place.

    It gets a bit complicated after that, because there are several versions of this legend, one happy, one sad, and I replicated both. In my take on the classical version, Orpheus really wants Eurydice’s eerieness. He looks back at the underworld, and loses her, and his life. But in the northern version, he succeeds – he recognises the inspiration within the ordinary world, allows Eurydice her own choices and her own ability to come into the light,

    And then, the fairytale conclusion –
    he finds beyond his garden gate,
    in the orchard, sunlit Eurydice
    .

    There was a lot of musing about the role of the artist, and the value to society of art, and it seems quite timely to bring this up again, what with the cuts to funding from Creative Scotland and all. I know, oh I know – money is short, Scotland is on a fixed budget, unlike independent governments, and when push comes to shove, I’d rather see bairns fed and pensioners kept warm (though artists too have bairns, and some of them are pensioners). But still, there is more to say.

    We went to see the Grit Orchestra this week and they played a piece called Karabach. It came out of Martyn Bennett’s experience working in refugee camps in Armenia, and before the orchestra played, they ran the actual recording which inspired the piece. A little girl is singing to herself, very beautifully, very unselfconsciously, while in the background you can hear the sound of bombs falling continuously in the distance.

    This recording is not just poignant and moving. It doesn’t just inspire outrage that we can do this to people. There is no moral to be drawn about resistance to evil, or the beauty of the human spirit. It simply tells us that art is survival. We don’t just need it, it isn’t just therapy – though it can be therapeutic and consoling and inspiring, of course. It is simply the expression of who we are. Creativity cannot be regarded as a luxury to be indulged in when the real important stuff is done. Once human beings are physically safe, creativity – music, stories, visual arts, drama – is their next most vital need. It’s how we build community. It’s how we access spirituality. The self-righteous who complain about unemployed people having television, refugees going to poetry classes, the provision of music classes rather than job ready training see other people as less than human.

    When we weigh up our priorities, we have to do better.

  • Halfway Through August already?

    Yes, it is. The festivals are on in Edinburgh, the grandchildren are back to school (oldest for the last time, good grief!)There are apples ripening on the tree and my social media is full of posts about blackberries and fungi. Swifts are gone, the first wasps and house spiders are beginning to show themselves, and we have three (3!) tomatoes in the greenhouse. I’m going to have to find some form of heating for the late springs and cold wet pretendy summers we are probably going to see from now on.

    branches of an apple tree with a lot of small apples between the leaves

    I am saving dried flowers and herb seeds now, and already looking at the garden with an eye to next year. I’m planning a brash vulgar row of pots of tulips in flamboyant reds and golds and purples along the front fence, and concentrating all the cool white classical bulbs in one lavish pot by the front door. There will be a tone of clearing and weeding to be done and clearly some things have settled in rather too well and will have to be curbed.

    It’s almost three years since we came here, and I confess my first strategy was mostly centred on how to get everything in. I’m beginning to feel I know the place a bit better now and some actual design work is possible. I’m starting with the magical border, the one with the Nine Herbs in it, which is dominated by mallow and elecampane, both of which are twice the size I expected them to be. They will have to be cut back and the mallow may well have to be moved altogether, though as it is currently about eight feet high, I dread to think how much work that will take. I’m planning to add mullein and some more marigolds, because it needs a bit more colour, but I’m looking for something red or purple for impact.

    part of a stem of marsh mallow, focussing on the open flower, a delicate pink with violet stamens

    There is a lot of focussing on design going on in other parts of my life now too. As people who have met me in real life may know, I came to a complete standstill earlier this year, following last year’s turbulence, and I have being doing a lot of rethinking and rediscovery. I got very discouraged about my writing, and indeed about almost everything, and most of this year has been about sorting myself out.

    I’ve had a lot of help and support from many of my fellow poets, and The Midsummer Foxes has had an injection of enthusiasm and inspiration. The non-fiction book I have been planning actually has a structure now and I have hauled myself out of the habit of rampaging in all directions and trying to get everything in (bit of a theme developing here, no?). I’ve learned to acknowledge the amount of time I put into my caring responsibilities, and the impact this has on what I’m able to do, and also the amount of experience I’ve built up in other fields, which gives me strengths I didn’t know I had.

    So following all that, I am planning a new website, which means, after about twenty years, leaving the Burnedthumb domain behind. It will launch sometime between the equinox and hallowe’en, and its function will be slightly different from this one. There will be fewer blogposts, mostly containing updates, and the sort of content I’ve been putting here will be in the newsletters – seasonal reflections, short reviews, bits of herbal knowledge I’ve come across and so on. I want to write more longer form pieces for publication elsewhere, which I will link to as they arise.

    So please sign up for the newsletter (link on the Contact page) if you like this sort of thing. I’m using Buttondown because it won’t harvest your data, and it’s easy to unsubscribe, and letters go out around every six weeks or so. There will be more news about this as I go on, and a bit of a tweak in the shop, maybe a sale offer or two.

    the culinary border. A bush of broom and thyme in the background, floweing chives and oregano in the middle, with an upright rosemary to the left. Foreground, right to left, lemon thyme, winter savory and sage with a random marigold seedling growing through it.

  • The Wee Gaitherin

    Squirrel poet Edwin Stockdale minding the sales desk at the Red Squirrel Press showcase. Books by Judith Taylor, Helen Boden, Hazel Cameron Elizzabeth Rimmer and Edwin Stockdale on the table.

    Stonehaven may well be my new favourite Scottish town. In spite of the nightmare of cancelled trains, the journey turned out to be lovely – I must admit, Scotrail staff are enormously kind and helpful if you get caught up in this kind of thing. I was only just thinking how much I missed the open fields at harvest time, but going up through the East coast big sky country, there were fields of wheat, packed heavy and still in the gentle morning sun – how good the weather was! – hayfields all harvested and open to the sparrows and finches, cows and sheep, white houses knee deep in the hedgerows and little green wooded river valleys.

    Stonehaven itself is lovely. I’m not sure what I was expecting – something industrial and abandoned perhaps – but it isn’t like that at all. Its seaside resort days are past their best, but the lovely stone houses are still there and the main street and market square have interesting shops and evidence of a thriving artistic community. And there’s the harbour and the sea, though I didn’t have time to see them.

    The Festival is brilliant. It is very well-organised – communications from the organisers have been uniformly timely and helpful, and the venue Number 44 Hotel was very generous and hospitable. I hope they made a packet from all the poets and friends who came, because they deserved it. The contributors are a rewardingly diverse bunch – different levels of experience, different genres, different backgrounds – and the audience was the warmest and most receptive I’ve seen in a long time. I sold a book, and bought three – that’s how these things go – and we swapped books and news and met and made friends as happens at all the best festivals. And heard some great poetry.

    Seven Red Squirrel poets

    The squirrels: From left to right – Carolyn Richardson, Edwin Stockdale, Judith Taylor Helen Boden (behind), Elizabeth rimmer, Tim Turnbull, Hazel Cameron.

    Thank you to everyone who organised, participated, attended or otherwise enabled such a lovely day. Especial thanks to Judith Taylor who organised the showcase in the absence of publisher Sheila Wakefield who is still battling long-term illness, and to Edwin Stockdale who – with Judith – manned the stall. I’m really looking forward to furthering my acquaintance with both the Wee Gaitherin and the lovely town of Stonehaven next year.



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