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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

Poetry

  • One Leaf, One Link

    On Friday I went to the launch of the anthology created by the One Leaf, One link project in Perth. It was run by an organisation called Plus, a user-led mental health service funded by the NHS. The project ran for over a year, and produced a tree hung with leaves created in all sorts of different media,by school-children, pensioners, support workers and clients, friends and well-wishers, and poems which were mounted on hand-made paper, and beautifully displayed.

    At the end of the project an anthology was been created by Jackie Proctor, the project leader. It will be sold in Perth library in aid of the work of Plus. It has Walking on Water in it, on a page of blue and white marbled paper she chose for it.
    This was the book that was launched on Friday.It was a lovely occasion. Margaret Gillies-Brown, whom I knew from the Callander Poetry Festival, was there, and there were speeches, well-deserved tributes to those who had been involved, a song by a local primary school, and some very good chocolate cake, iced in red and with autumn leaves on it.

    I have thought for a long time – that art therapy needs to have genuine artistic aspirations and respect for production values to have any value as either art or therapy. Workshop anthologies sometimes don’t reflect this – they can be rather poor quality and rely on loyalty from the friends and relations of those participating for their success. But not this one. Jackie’s vision and craftsmanship have produced a book that is lovely to handle as well as beautiful to look at.

  • new work

    Today I started work planning the new novel. I thought I would give myself a break and spend some time just doing poetry and short stories, but no. I appear to have a novel compulsion, and I’m going to give in. It is going to be called Recusant, at least at the moment, though as it has already had three working titles in its short and flickering life I don’t see that lasting. It is going to be set in Scotland and in the present day, which is something of a relief after all the historical research I had to do last time. It’s going to have music in it, because I can’t do any more art, and archaeology, and wildlife. And it is going to feature one of my favourite characters from a story I wrote two years ago which got rejected a lot.

    There is a poetry project going on too, which I will talk more about as it happens, both here and on the Lúcháir blog, about Scotland and Ireland, the links between them, the shared traditions, the common history, the things that divide and separate, and my own journey from my Irish past to my Scottish present.

  • poetry in the garden

    We just had a wonderful weekend in Callander at Sally and Ian King’s Poetry in the Garden Festival. I notice a fair degree of cynicism about festivals in some quarters – Susan Hill is really bitter about them, but this one would revive the most jaded publisher. There were about fifty poets all reading over the three days. Some of them are in groups like Clylevlom and Onya Wick, but most were individual performances. There were young poets, old poets, Gaelic poets, Scots poets, English poets, some writing in dialect, some in translation. We had a poetry and jazz session, exhibitions from publishers, and a discussion on poetry and fiction. We met up with old friends and made new ones. We walked around the town, enjoyed Sally’s garden, bought books from the shop, and ate a tremendous amount of lovely food.
    And get this. The whole festival was free. No-one making money out of it at all. It was just for the love of poetry and friendship.
    All I can say is, if poetry in Scotland survives the credit crunch, climate change and cultural meltdown we seem to be going through, we’ll all have Sally and Ian to thank.

  • migraines and such

    Not much has been happening because I have had the world’s worst migraine. Research into this phenomenon implies that it can be triggered by computers, bright lights, noises, perfumes, heat, stuffy atmospheres, dehydration, humidity, food, (any kind of food), food additives, some sorts of medication, illness, shock and anxiety. Nobody has actually cited breathing while female, but it surely can’t be long.

    I will be reading at Sally and Ian King’s fabulous Poetry in the Garden Festival in Callendar on Saturday evening, 6th September. You can find out more about this three day poetry party at the Poetry Scotland website – see links.

  • still revising

    Almost completed the tinkering with Saracen Woman and she will be trying her luck again next week.
    Now I am re-thinking the Lúcháir blog, as life seems to have overtaken me, and beginning to think very hard about some elemental poems. Also about a holiday in Ireland which may actually happen. Also about Poetry in the Garden which is very much happening. I will need to read some new stuff, I think. We have had Eurydice for two years now.
    The ‘x’ key on my keyboard is sticking and it’s amazing how often you get to use it, and how odd your text looks without it. Is there anything you can do about sticky keys, or is it just time to cut my losses? I have the tiniest keyboard in the world, as I have very small hands, and though there are several normal keyboards in the house, I will certainly miss this one.

  • meeting heroes

    I went to a book launch last night. Anne Connolly’s book ‘Downside Up’ is indeed very fab, lots of poems about Ireland and her family, but not cosy or nostalgic, just thoughtful and beautiful.
    However, I also met Christine de Luca. And behaved with some enthusiasm.

    Christine de Luca is one of my favourite poets at the moment. She is from Shetland, and writes in Shetlandic as well as English, and this gives her poems a texture and multi-layered resonances with Old Norse and with Scandinavian poetry. She says it’s hard to do, though as Shetlandic poetry has to appeal to Shetlanders (otherwise what’s the point?) and then you find yourself writing to a niche market and restricting your options. She doesn’t give into this, though. The poems in Parallel Worlds are not backward looking, not rural idylls or ballads. They bring new words, new perspectives to poems that could have been written wherever poetry is a serious art form. She writes in English too, and then you see how a different language shapes your thought differently.

    I think there’s no point in being a poet if you can’t take Orpheus’ stand and say
    ‘All the words will be available to me’. I admit I was thinking about the big fancy grandiloquent words that I was sometimes made to feel weren’t for the likes of me, Liverpool Judy that I was. Especially when the trend for vernacular poetry came in. But it cuts both ways. All the words means ALL. Dialect, academic, technical, street words, rude words, foreign, antique, abstract, ugly words and neologisms.
    I admit it takes some skill make them pull together coherently. But some people can, and I aspire to it.

  • well done daughters

    Naomi graduated last Thursday, and it was brilliant. She got a first! She didn’t tell us, at first because she was waiting for confirmation and then because she expected it to be announced (which it wasn’t). So afterwards she said, Oh, you haven’t seen this’, and flashed the certificate and there it was.
    An utterly wonderful moment.
    Katherine and grand-daughter were there too, which was lovely.
    Looking over poems this morning, trying to work out what needs revising, what could go on the lúcháir blog and what could be sent out. It’s a whole new way of thinking and constructing thought and playing with language, and now my brain is waking up again after all the arthritis nonsense, I am loving it.

  • thinking like a poet

    I am trying to get my head back into poetry, since I have been thinking solidly of Saracen Women for about six months. It is harder than I expected. After weeks of allowing my thought to relax and unfurl and unravel gently and build slowly into whatever I wanted, I now have to try something more lateral and spiky, more concentrated and allusive.
    I’m reading Tom Paulin’s The Secret Life of Poems, but I haven’t yet got past thinking how hard I got smacked for writing about poetry like that when I was at university. Fashions change in criticism, as in so much else

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