It’s a fortnight since I’ve posted anything on this blog, and even longer since I’ve added any herbs. Blogposts are piling up – southernwood, oregano and marigolds, and reviews of Niall Campbell’s Moontide and Richie McCaffery’s Cairnare all owing, as well as updates on poems from the new collection which will be out in the word before too long. Itb will take a while to catch up with it all, but here’s a start.

The older grand-daughter is back at school, and the younger is at nursery. I hope the world is ready for them! During the holidays we have had a lot of family time, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and welcoming family from the south. The big thing that has caused this long hiatus was the saga of the bath.

We have had the previous bath for many years, and, thanks to the hurly urly of family life, it was a bit scratched and rusty. So we thought we’d replace it. Two days, it was going to take, with a bit of fancy footwork to add a fixed shower screen (rather than the insecure and frankly inadequate curtain we had). Well. It turns out that the original bath had not been installed by the best workmen you’ve ever seen, as it wasn’t flush to the wall, or even level, resulting in some very dodgy silicone filling, which had leaked. So we had to replace plaster board, and the tiles stuck to it, and have supporting framework built in to square off and level up the floor and walls. And the electrics for the shower hadn’t been properly isolated—

So it took three weeks, and the house was full of plasterdust and the sound of drilling and hammering, and we were all camping out in places where we could get showers. It’s done now, and it looks really good (barring a bit of painting to touch up some of the alterations) and it works well.

Writing hasn’t quite gone by the wall. The Territory of Rain is coming together, and I’m collecting notes and ideas for the herb (and related) poetry. It may include folk music. And blues. And, possibly, flamenco. It’s going to be an adventure!

Ok I’ve cracked and it’s only ten o’clock. here is the story of the only guy I ever knew who was in the First World War.

War Hero to Me

He was no child’s idea of a war hero,
quiet and polite, inclined to be grumpy,
stumping along with his stick
and his thick old man’s glasses.

He shared a house with a pal,
in a relationship no-one would mention
until it was legal. They kept themselves
to themselves until he fell ill.

He told visitors then of the Great War
his time in the Royal Flying Corps,
When he’d been magnificent, a young,
flighty experimenter in the new planes.

He’d dodged untried anti-aircraft guns,
flew blind in bad weather, carried
untested weapons, learned to fight
a whole new way of making war.

‘They’d load us up with bombs’, he said
‘and send us over the Channel to bomb
Germans, and strategic targets.
No such thing as non-combatant then.

We’d find a quiet field with no houses.
And leave them, fly home and say
nothing to anyone. You couldn’t go round
dropping things like that on people!’

I was digging through a file called poetry dump and I found this. Not my usual sort of thing, and perhaps a bit obscure, but what do you think?

Runes for a New Millennium

after Havamal, from the Poetic Edda

I pulled all-nighters
to get the job done.
Between the Java and the Red Bull
I learned fail-safe runes

Know how to google them,
know how to download them,
know how to code them,
know how to encrypt them.

The first rune I know
is unknown to agony aunts,
therapists, life-coaches, counsellors.
Quick-fix it is called.

I know a second, that street-wise dudes
must learn if they want to be cool.

I know a third; when the going gets tough,
this will give me the edge.
This will see off the competition.

I know a fourth: when the shit hits the fan,
this rune will make sure
that nothing sticks to me.

I know a fifth; when I go into the meeting
No matter who is on the board,
I always close the deal.

I know a sixth; if I choose to use it,
when the merger happens, I will keep my job;
My rivals will all lose theirs.

I know a seventh, more powerful than any.
With this I will keep my figure
as strong and slim at sixty
as I was at sixteen.

I know an eighth, a gift for drivers.
With this I can always find parking space.
I have no fear of tickets.

I know a ninth; I can charm
the young and talented and beautiful
to find me irresistible.
My lovers will never leave me.

I know a tenth; when conscience racks me,
I can send guilt and remorse packing.
There are no skeletons in my cupboards.

I know an eleventh; the paparazzi
Can get nothing on me.
No-one knows where my bodies are buried.

I know a twelfth, which I tell to no-one.
Age will make me good-looking.
Illness will be afraid to mess with me.
And death – what’s that all about?

Wasn’t that a time!

This year’s StAnza was one to remember. It is my opinion that this Festival always scores very highly on many fronts – the range and variety of events and poets attending, the reasonable ticket prices, the backup in terms of local accommodation and places to eat. It makes it a great place to meet people you only ever see on line, to catch up with friends, or to buy poetry from a proper shop instead of resorting to Amazon.

This year it was better than ever. Last year the Byre Theatre closed at short notice a few weeks before StAnza was due to start, and the organisers had to find alternative venues, not only for events but for the festival hub. To their everlasting credit, they succeeded brilliantly, but this year the Byre has reopened, and so many people commented on how nice it was to be home. The Byre is a lovely welcoming building with display spaces and meeting spaces as well as performance areas, so it made all the difference to the atmosphere and to the stress levels of the staff to have it operational again. I was disconcerted to find that the general population of St Andrews didn’t seem to know it had happened, so somebody was missing a trick! But please, good people of Fife, support it generously, or it will just go again —

I wasn’t there long (it was a serious mistake to miss the poets’ market on Saturday- that will never happen again!) but I did go to see the John Burnside reading. Impressive as ever, it was outclassed by the reading of Tishani Doshi, a poet from India whose powerful poems on love, heritage, identity, and philosophy will stay with me for a long time. I visited Angela Topping’s Lightfoot Letters exhibition in the Heritage Museum – a delightful building with a lovely small herb garden – scoured the bookshops, took part in the open mic, got the first copy of Nikki Magennis’ new pamphlet from Red Squirrel, meeting buddha in dumbarton, and caught up with several friends.

Enormous thanks should go to the many staff and volunteers who make StAnza the well-organised hassle-free stimulating experience it is, but I should make a special mention of Festival Director Eleanor Livingstone. She makes it look so easy, but the amount of planning, communicating and preparation which goes into that effect must be phenomenal. Thank you so much, Eleanor!

Into the Forest This was one of my favourite Christmas presents!

It is an anthology of poems about trees, inspired by and drawing on the work Mandy Haggith did as poet in residence in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanical Gardens in July 2013, and in keeping with her long-standing work in environmental conservation, she is donating royalties to the organisation Trees for Life – an organisation for which I have great sympathy and respect.

This book should not be seen as a fund-raiser, many examples of which produce nothing better than a rag-bag of more or less compatible poems demonstrating more good will than good judgement. Mandy Haggith’s own long ecological and poetic practice, her scientific training and her choice of the Gaelic Tree Alphabet to structure the book, have inspired and informed her selections, and her learned notes drawn from the folklore and cultures of many parts of the world, give the book a shape and coherence that it might otherwise have lacked.

The poems reflect a wide diversity of subjects, eras, forms, languages and themes. Scottish poetry is well-represented, and the Gaelic poems in particular are a delight. There are wll-known poets, like Seamus Heaney or Kathleen Jamie, Thomas Hardy and Robert Herrick, but also newer voices, like Judith Taylor, Chris Powici and Jane McKie. Sorley Maclean’s Hallaig is in it, and Sylvia Plath’s Blackberrying. The quality is sometimes a little uneven, but I wouldn’t have been without John Estabrook’s Tree Farm (which I first knew under the title Logs to Burn) although it is little more than doggerel. I was especially pleased to see how few poems are simply lyrical descriptions of well-loved trees, but deal with trees as symbols, settings, characters in their own dramas, as well as natural beings. Poems are dark, or complex or funny, scientific, magical or nostalgic. A poet’s response may be religious, political or personal as well as aesthetic. It makes for a rich mix, its potential for uncontroleed sprawl and tangle kept in check by careful editing, and excellent production.

Sometimes I feel that there is still a perception outside the poetry chatter, that poetry ought to be romantic lyrics about nature, and inside our little enclave, that eco or nature poetry is just a bit sentimental and lacking in intellect, innovation or engagement with ‘the real world’. This book disproves that, and though I hope that this anthology, which because of its subject matter, must appeal to a wider audience than the usual poetry suspects, will also prove to be a valuable introduction to new poets, new poetic forms, and new ways of dealing with old subjects.

Thanks to Bridget Khursheed at PoetandGeek for inviting me to take part in this. Since last summer I’ve been watching the blog tour wind its way round the weird and wonderful poetry places I frequent, and now, it’s my turn. Here goes!

1) What am I working on?
I’ve a couple of projects under way just now. I’m working on my second collection, The Territory of Rain, which will come out late next year. It’s a little like Wherever We Live Now, in that there’s a lot of birds, weather, rivers and trees in it, but it’s taking a rather different tack, as I’ve got into thinking some more about our ways of knowing, thinking and talking about the earth, and how the earth shapes our thinking about ourselves and our way of life.

I’m also putting together material for something called (at the moment) Half a Hundred Herbs, which is beginning to take shape on this blog. It isn’t going to be a herbal, or herbal reminiscences, or lyrics about herbs. There will be some poems, but also some reflections about the way we use herbs as symbols and archetypes in areas like medicine, learning, feminism, spirituality and politics.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My poetry has developed in fits and starts, and it shows. I did my first degree in the days when it wasn’t considered necessary to study contemporary literature, so the most recent poetry I did was Keats, and what I liked best was the metaphysical poets. To make it worse I went in for Old English, Old Norse and Medieval literature, and didn’t read much modern stuff until I discovered Kenneth White in the nineties. I think his work sounds a little dated now, but it introduced me to the Imagists and to haiku, and showed me that poetry didn’t have to be lush and emotional. Then I mixed in my years as a folk singer learning the ballad tradition. It makes for rather spare, philosophical and compressed rather than lyrical poetry.

3) Why do I write what I do?
My brain seems to be wired for short bursts of concentrated attention, and poetry suits that very well. I write about what I notice, what I like, what moves or disturbs me. I’m not sure I write anything more than ‘Wow, look at that!’, and I try to find the way I can best make it palpable and interesting to other people.

4) How does your writing process work?

A poem makes a shape on a page, or a line and a half that makes me sit up and take notice.And then, over the next days, weeks, even years sometimes, I look at them and wonder what they are for, and where I was trying to go with them, letting them take their final form. Sometimes it’s an inadvertent phrase from a journal, or a mental note of something I’m trying to remember. Because I have significant caring responsibilities for family members I can’t plan too much, or corral dedicated chunks of time for writing, so it’s a bit like hunter-gathering just now – random forays into language, bringing back scraps and seeing what I can do with them.

And the next stop is: Emma Wilkinson’s blog.

Emily Wilkinson is an artist-maker and wordsmith who creates using mixed-media, textiles and words. Her work is concerned with place, environment, emotion, journeys and transformation. Through emphasising sense of touch she explores the poetic relationship between materiality and language. After studying at Bridge House Art in Scotland, Emily has exhibited in Ullapool, on the Isle of Mull and has had work published in Earthlines magazine.

Now, according to the terms of this tour, you are supposed to invite three people to follow you, and this hasn’t been easy! For one thing most of the people I follow have done it already, and secondly, one person I’d love to have you visit is in Tanzania. But her blog is live, and full of fascinating poetry so please go to

Cora Greenhill’s blog https://coratanzaniania.blogspot.co.uk.

And then Roselle Angwin’s blog Qualia and other wildlife, at  roselle-angwin.blogspot.co.uk

Enjoy!

Last night I went to a lecture given by Dr Michael Kirwan SJ, which I expected to be about Gerard Manley Hopkins. Certainly it introduced some of Hopkins’ poems, and also the poems of Czeslaw Milosz (which have been on my list of things to look up for ages, but you know how it is) for which I am really grateful. I’m now a fan!

But really, what it was about was the relationship between spirituality and culture. And much as this is a subject which I find endlessly fascinating, what I was less fascinated by was the opposition thrown up in the course of the lecture between the isolated, alienated, individualistic poet, the free-thinker, the creative, as opposed to the theologian, the intellectual, the organisation man, the analyst, the law-maker, the scientific observer. (You may think there are a few questions begged there – science and theology? – but this was a Catholic group and we don’t have those hangups.)

If you’ve been reading this blog any time, you’ll know where I stand on the poet and community (If you haven’t you might like to look at The Symbolist Conundrum or So whose is poetry anyway). But such an opposition these days is looking not only invalid but outdated. The success of the Split Screen anthology shows that poetry can speak to popular culture not just about it, and the rise in performance poetry shows that people outside the writing community are engaging and responding to poetry in wider areas. The excellent blog Poets against Atos is only one example of poets wanting to speak to and for their communities. And I’m sure you can find lots more. It’s fair to say that Michael Kirwan’s aim was to nudge stereotypical thinking away from the hardline and into more flexible open spaces, but I did feel I should point out that actual poets were way ahead of him!

But somewhere along the line I began to think of other oppositions that we take for granted. Between science and poetry. Between imagination and intellect. Between intuition and observation. Between emotion and objectivity. These oppositions don’t work well for me. As an educated and articulate woman I am often assumed to be ‘intellectual’, and therefore in need of having my imagination and emotions liberated in order to be creative. The end product of this process is at best confusion and we won’t go into the worst.

But this map of the human personality hasn’t always been such a given. One of the seminal texts of my life is The Cloud of Unknowing, one of the first and best prose texts written in Middle English. This was life changing in many ways, but led me to read the translation by the same author of a work by Richard of St Victor called Benjamin Major. In this heavy creaking allegorical work, the imagination is a function of the intellect, and sense experience is a function of emotion. Imagination enables understanding and good judgement, and observation and sensual response motivates the will to love. It was only last night that I realised how weird this will look to the so-called ‘western mindset’. But it totally makes sense to me.