BurnedThumb

Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

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Turning into Winter

Winter here is a time of opening out, rather than closing in. When the leaves begin to fall, great gaps open in our horizons and we can see further out across the fields and towards the hills out eastward and the castle to the west. Evenings and mornings, skeins of geese fly over the house, west in the mornings towards Flanders Moss, southeast at night, down the river to Batterflats and Skinflats. The light is dimming by half-past three, and it is dark by five. There are fieldfares – one crashed into our bedroom window last week – and redwings, quarrelling with migrant blackbirds for the last of the rowan berries and I heard three robins singing against each other in the early twilight across the river, and long-tailed tits peeping to each other in the hedges. The fields have been ploughed, and some of them have already been sown. The deer sometimes come back to the riverbank now the building work has finished. There have been frosts, heavy rain, and some very strong winds.

Gardening is all but finished for the winter. Only the marigolds are still pushing out the last few rain-battered flowers, and the first winter jasmine has appeared.

I am about to package up the seeds I saved – marigolds, evening primrose, teasel, nigella, and the tiny seeds of nicandra physalodes (the shoo-fly plant), which are hidden in its exotic papery seedcase, which you can see here, stained with inky blue. I have put it in a vase with honesty teasel and nigella seedheads because it will keep that dramatic colour through the winter.

My attention has turned to indoor activities, cooking, learning to make sourdough bread, thinking about Christmas (already? I know!) and planning sewing projects for the dark nights, and new poetry and herbal blogposts for the new year. But there is still plenty of autumn colour,

and plenty of berries for the migrating birds. These are cotoneaster berries, which might even attract waxwings if the weather is cold enough. Far from shutting up shop, the territory of rain is opening its doors to winter.

November 8, 2019
Back to the Source

A spring along the Linn trail in Ayrshire

I am reading Seamus Heaney’s Preoccupations, a paperback first published in 1985. Some of it was later reproduced in Finders Keepers in 2002, particularly the essays Mossbawn and the very timely Belfast, which recalls what it was like to live there at the height of the Troubles (how can we think of those days returning?), but some of the writing on Wordsworth, Yeats and Hopkins was new to me. I find that I don’t agree as much with Heaney as I thought I did, but he made me look again at the source of my poetry, and it has helped me clarify a few of the ideas swirling round in the back of my head. It has been a grounding experience, in more ways than one.

Reading this kind of thing is a very different experience now that I have written enough poetry to have an informed opinion about the writing process. I am struck by how Heaney divides poets and poems into separate and opposing camps – poets of thought and poets of sensation, poems which seem to arrive as naturally as giving birth, and those which are forged and designed, poems which seduce and invite surrender, those which impose and convince. There is a masculine-feminine dichotomy going on in these essays, without value judgements or preferences, but clearly defined – feminine is going within, becoming inspired, responding passively to the vision granted, masculine is being captivated from without, shaping and designing.

In the ‘feminine’ style, we aren’t talking simply about the innately gifted genius who produces without effort – it’s work, alright, but the Rilkean work on your life to get your ego out of the way and let the poem happen. And it isn’t simply about mastery in the ‘masculine’ – the effort is to liberate rather than dominate. But try as I might, I don’t get this. It doesn’t reflect my writing experience at all. The preoccupation of some writers with analysing the disparate ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sides of their work and personality seems to me to be a very male thing. A woman, who frankly, has to take any writing life she can get, is more likely to think about being her ‘self’ – whatever that may be.

Breaking Through Gravel
for Deborah
My Muses have nine children.
They go mad, lose their jobs,
live on rolled oats and vegetables.
That’s how they write. In three languages,
in trains, in kitchens, in libraries,
on the back seat of the bus. They write
about sex and history and fairy tales,
the shape of a sonnet, splitting the atom,
where the rent is coming from. Their lives
are made of food, and soap, and meetings with strangers,
the family china, slammed doors, a child’s stamped foot,
the hurt silence, the stolen kiss,
the need to write.
The art of women is not a quest, like the whale,
but salvage from a storm of perplexity.
It is unlicensed, defiant, pervasive
and inevitable as starlight,
or the trajectory of the lily of the valley
disregarding gravel, and breaking the tarmac
with unapologetic, overwhelming joy.
From the sequence Eurydice Rising, published in Wherever We Live Now

Going ‘within’ does not seem to give me ‘vision’ or a hidden life. It is more like a gathering of strength which helps me pay attention to the world, rather than battering off the walls like a demented bluebottle, less like revealing secrets than being plugged into the mains. Considering the world ‘without’ is not to be inspired by something I must shape and master, but entering a conversation with what’s around me. Shaping a poem is more like a housewifely cherishing than forging steel. Writing, for me, is a more mutual and integrated, less polarised process than either style Heaney talks about, but this does not mean it is necessarily less strong or subtle, or on a smaller scale. It depends not on being seduced by or mastering my inspiration, but on being grounded.

rudbeckia and rosehips

October 24, 2019
Introducing Burnedthumb

When I first developed an online presence, this is what it looked like. I was providing authentic Latin for a computer game my daughter was developing – Latin, it turns out, was made for alien court cases – and I thought I might do a lot more of this, as well as translations. It never happened. People who wanted ancient languages for curses, spells, prophecies or plain ordinary geeky purposes were very soon able to learn , everything from Old Norse to Elvish and Klingon on the internet, and didn’t need me. And I found myself increasingly absorbed in my own poetry – and eventually, editing. But the idea I dimly felt when I started and later expressed in the Burnedthumb poem, was that it is a poet’s job to cross the boundaries between one language and another, and between one species and another, listening and learning wisdom.

This came out in the Eurydice sequence in Wherever We Live Now, in the Huldra poems in The Territory of Rain, and was behind the ways of knowing poems in Haggards, and more explicitly in The Wren in the Ash Tree. But since Haggards came out, there has been a slump in my poetry. I’ve written a bit, but I’ve been very ambivalent about it, wary of staying in my comfort zone and merely repeating myself. I’ve also been very busy editing, which turned out to be very helpful in ways I couldn’t possibly predict. And, if you’ve seen the events page you’ll see that lately I’ve done some readings, including newer poems, and a workshop. I’m not going to discuss those in detail, but all these combined factors have helped me develop the theme and structure of the next collection.

Occasional comments about my work have seemed to imply that my personal life was missing from my work, and that this poet wasn’t so much ‘scarred, accidental, listening’, as invisible, perhaps in hiding. This threw up a dilemma that was psychological as much as poetic. It wasn’t just that I believed my personal life was uninteresting or irrelevant to the poetry – the poet is always implied in a poem, no? But I appeared, when I thought about it, to be invisible and in hiding from myself.

There are people who take this to pathological extremes, lumped together under the heading of dissociative disorder. I haven’t experienced anything serious enough to classify as pathological, but I have had enough fleeting and partial experiences to realise that it is not the most creative or comfortable way to be. Recent events have forced me to reflect on what it means ‘to be a person’, and the kinds of knowledge someone has to possess to know that she is a person. Crucial to this is the work of Julia Kristeva whose concept of the human as a ‘speaking being’ inspired The Wren in the Ash Tree, the writings of a Scottish medieval philosopher, Richard of St Victor (who may even have lived in the Abbey of our village), as well as the writings about herbs which led me to think about the ‘ways of knowing’ valued by different cultures.

I’m going to be writing about self-understanding and perception, about belonging to a place or a community, and artistic expression and language. Some of it may well be quite personal, but mostly it’s about being human in an age where that concept seems increasingly up for debate. Since I’ve started reading the recent poems, the book has come alive in my head, and it will be called Burnedthumb.

Banner for the original Burnedthumb website

September 26, 2019
A Charm of the Haggard Herbs

When I was translating the Old English Charm of Nine Herbs, someone talked about writing a modern one, and I took it as a dare. This year I have been out and about in the haggard – a strip of land between the road and the river, and now you can see them all.

A Charm of Nine Haggard Herbs

We are nine, a triple trinity
of leaf and flower and fruit,
a gift to blood and bone and breath.

Elder is first, the gift of summer,
white flowers to clear the skin
and banish cold from heart and lungs.

Hawthorn is home to birds and fairies.
Its flowers smell of death, but its berry
is good to strengthen heart and veins.

Though yarrow’s flower is small and dull,
its feathery leaf is used for staunching wounds,
its bitterness heals and mends the skin.

Clover, beloved of bees and sweet
as a loved girl’s footprints, is remedy
for coughs, and quickens growing plants.

Comfrey, with its deep roots, its strong
leaf growth, mends bones, and brings up
deep-lying minerals in the soil.

Dandelion, the piss-a-bed kidney herb,
has power to cleanse, to bring down
the over-mighty, encourage what is sluggish.

Wild rose, bright baubles on its thorny stem
for winter sweetness, calm, and strength
against fevers and grief of heart.

Plantain is used to clear poison. Rub the leaf
to soothe the bites and stings of insects.
It is so low underfoot, yet mighty.

Bramble, a tangle of thorn, and things
that buzz and sting, its dark and glowing
berries are the joy of autumn.

We are nine, we are closer than you think
in the wild and unregarded places in between.
We are haggard, and we survive.

July 17, 2019
50 Years Ago

Robert MacFarlane was talking on Twitter this week about herbals, and asked if anyone had one or used one, so I said I had made one and then I thought it might be interesting to show you mine.

my herbal

I suppose it is fifty years ago, give or take, since I created my first herbal. You can see that There have been a few changes over that period – the smaller, faded and discoloured pages are the first ones – we didn’t have A5 paper in those days, and my handwriting has developed some since then. It isn’t in the original binder, either – that succumbed to hard wear several years ago, and I now have a very robust one from Staples.

My drawing skills haven’t though! That little yellow picture of peppermint was cut from an original paper bag of Ricola cough candy – which I still buy – and the little picture of salad burnet on the bottom page was laboriously traced and coloured, but bears very little resemblace to the real thing. These days I rely on photos, which are quicker and give me much better results.

I’m still adding to it, as I learn more about the place plants have in our lives. I have used it to cook from, make medicinal teas, skin balms, pot pourris and more recently, to dye from.

I used it for the Half a Hundred Herbs posts, the Haggards poems, and for the background for my translation of the Charm of Nine Herbs, and I’m using it now as material for the ‘inspired by herbs’ newsletters. That’s not bad, for fifty years!

July 4, 2019
Inspired By Herbs

Last month I began a series of letters called Inspired By Herbs. It includes a featured herb, and a related poetry prompt. Here is an extract from the first, inspired by chickweed:

Latin name stellaria media. Other English names bird’s eye, chickensmeat, cluckenweed, mischievous jack, skirt buttons, tongue grass, murren
Scottish names chickenweed, arva/arvi chickenwir in Shetland
Gaelic fliodh/fliogh (affliction)
Until last year, I hardly noticed chickweed in my garden or on the roadside. It needs rich moist soil, and warmth, so it doesn’t thrive where it gets walked on or mowed, and I simply hauled it out along with the hairy bittercress and wild forget-me-not which are the prevailing weeds in my garden. And then I discovered all the things I could do with it, started to look for it, and discovered it everywhere – in the greenhouse, under the rose bush, growing out of gutters and between cracks in the pavement.
from the chickweed newsletter about the herb

This is not simply the familiar ‘write what you know’. Writing about herbs poems is plagued with people regurgitating ‘what they know’ in a way that is evocative and emotional, – you can see words like ‘calm’, ‘pleasant’, ‘soothing’, ‘sleep’, even in the herbals I’ve quoted. And it can lead to flabby and sentimental writing that has nothing to do with either the herb or the writer but simply reflects the way they want to feel.
I’m going to suggest you start your poetry with writing what you can learn by close observation, disregarding prior knowledge and familiar associations.
from the chickweed letter, about the writing

Writing is not compulsory! But some of you have, and one person even sent me her poem, which was lovely. The next letter goes out on the 21st April, and is about woodruff. It isn’t too late to sign up – the form is on the contact page, and as it is hosted by mailchimp, it is easy to unsubscribe if it isn’t what you’re looking for!

April 10, 2019
Latest News and Some Upcoming Events

This is a ragbag of a post, but if you don’t do Facebook you will have missed some interesting bits of recent news.

Firs ts that the second imprint of Haggards has sold out ( I still have a few though—-). The third imprint has been ordered and will be available from Red Squirrel Press as soon as possible, and I will have more copies to sell in the shop too. Neither Red Squirrel Press nor I charge for postage and packing within the UK (please add £2 if you live abroad). And I will sign any that you order from me.

becoming botanicals

This is a glimpse of the new anthology Becoming Botanicals, in which I have a poem. You can find more information on the post, which also includes a link to the fundraiser, and a glimpse of the perks on offer. The proofs are coming out very shortly, and publication will be in June. But don’t you think it looks lovely?

Then another anthology I was involved in, Umbrellas of Edinburgh, which was edited by Claire Askew and Russell Jones and published by the ill-fated Freight, is now going to be reissued by the imaginative and innovative Stirling Publishing (nothing to do with where I live, the reference is to the Commissioning Editor, Tabatha Stirling). It’s going to have a new cover, illustrated maps, a new foreword and some new poems, and should be out by Christmas. And as part of the project, some of the poets (Harry Giles, me, Gerda Stevenson and Alice Tarbuck) will be filming a reading of their poems in situ. My poem, Grassroots in Edinburgh, is going to be filmed in the Meadows, and it’s all very exciting.

A third anthology I’m involved in, Scotia Extremis, is going to have an Edinburgh launch in Blackwells on South Bridge in Edinburgh, on the 3rd of May at 6.30pm.

Now, switching to my editor hat, three poetry collections I’ve edited are going to have launches in the next week. On Saturday 6th April at 1pm in the Scottish Poetry Library, Red Squirrel Press will be launching books by John Bolland (Fallen Stock) and Mandy Haggith (Why the Sky is Far Away). And on Tuesday 9th April, in the Scottish Writers Centre, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, John Bolland, Jon Plunkett (whose debut, A Melody of Sorts I edited), Anne Connolly (Once Upon a Quark) and Thomas Stewart (Empire of Dirt), will be reading from their new publications. It has been an enormous pleasure to be involved with these books, and the events should be a delight.

April 4, 2019
Spring in the Territory of Rain

geese heading north

This photo was taken at Gartmorn Dam, on a cold but sunshiny morning. It was lovely to be out – there were signs of spring everywhere, celandines, blackthorn blossom, a wren singing on almost every bush, robins in full courtship display, and the first chiffchaff calling in the trees around the dam.

celandine

I’ve had all my markers for spring, now – the first celandines, curlews, oystercatchers, and, yesterday, skylark song over the fields to the east of the village.

cuckoo flower

I took a walk up to the haggard I had especially in mind when I was writing Haggards. New leaves of yarrow, comfrey, nettles, (especially nettles), horsetails and vetch are showing already, and celandines, shepherds purse and whitlow grass.

whitlow grass

Ivy berries are ripe now and I braved a tangle of nettles and brambles to get some for the start of dyeing experiments for this year. I’ve saved some roots of yellow flag and meadowsweet too, and when someone in the village was thinning out a birch tree, I got hold of some bark pieces, so the first dye-pot of the year will be happening today. Last year’s experiments were very satisfying, but this year I am determined to be more meticulous in following the instructions, to see if I can get some reds, purples and maybe green.

blackthorn blossom

I have been sowing seeds too, so while I’m watching the simmering colours, I will be clearing away last year’s debris and planning for the summer. The garden has survived the winter pretty well, with daffodils, primroses, violets and wind anemones, and the best news of all – in spite of the crow which scooped a lot of frogs out of our pond, there is frogspawn!

Over the next month I’ll be looking out for the return of migrating birds – the swallows usually come back in the last week of April – and watching the tadpoles grow. I’ll take regular pictures of the wild flowers in the haggard, propagate a lot of herbs from soft cuttings, and listening to the dawn chorus. By the end of the month there may be fledgling sparrows – they are always first to hatch – and the gull colony will be looking for nest sites.

wind anemones

March 28, 2019
Becoming Botanicals

Anthology, due out in June

becoming-Botanicals is an exciting new publication featuring contributions from over 50 international artists, researchers, and practitioners who are passionate about rekindling and re-examining our human relationship with plants. Artworks, essays, poems, and provocations sit side-by-side in this multi-disciplinary kaleidoscope of botanical ponderings in the form an Herbal Encyclopaedia. —-
The book features 46 entries from over 50 international artists, researchers and practitioners spanning 6 continents–beautifully fusing academia, scientific and ecological research, art, and creative practice.
Objet-A Creative Studio.

Last September there was a call-out for submissions to this anthology, a joint project between academics at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, and The University of Wisconsin-Madison. As you can imagine, this is just my sort of thing, and I submitted some of my herb poems. The Herb for Nightmares, about thyme, was accepted, and it will feature in this lovely book will be out in June of this year.

In fact there was a lot of good quality response to the call-out, and the publishers soon found that the project needed to be bigger than they first expected. Publisher Josh Armstrong writes:

When we first began the project, we imagined that we would print a small pamphlet with a few essays. With the overwhelmingly positive response from our call-out we decided that we should create a more full digital publication to feature more entries than we could in print. BUT–then we thought that we should follow our ambitions and the positivity of the contributors and have decided to publish all 46 entries that we selected; thats about 140 pages!
Josh Armstrong, editor

In order to deal with this expanded project, Objet-A Creativity have set up a fundraiser at Indie-go-go. The perks look very interesting! So, if you find this subject interesting, please have a look at their page, and consider pre-ordering some of the products available.

March 18, 2019
StAnza 19

The StAnza banner at the Poets’ Market on Saturday

This year’s StAnza was one of the very best (I always say that, don’t I?), no, really, it was. There was the usual mix of good things – excellent poetry, meeting up with friends, the warm welcome, rotten weather, but this time StAnza felt very special. I don’t think I did quite as much as usual, but there was time and space to think, and write and generally focus on poetry. This year, I got to think about editing, as two poets I have edited were reading. This is John Bolland whose first collection Fallen Stock, was launched in the Innes Bookshop on Saturday.

I did get to see a lot of good poets – Menna Elfyn was the standout one for me, and John Burnside, whose work I used to love, and then not so much, seemed back on form with some excellent new work, and a speech that, while it wasn’t full of new ideas to many of us, made a rousing and unequivocal assertion of the right and power of poetry to deal with politics. There was a lot about translation, which fascinates me, though I never do as much as I think I am going to, and poets from many different countries – Colombia, Catalonia, the US, Hungary. And poetry in many different forms – plenty of performance, links with music and film, and art.

The artist Nichola Martin had an exhibition in the foyer of the Byre of still life works with literature, which included this one, featuring (right at the bottom) Haggards.

Please go to her website, for a much better picture of this!

Upstairs in the Byre, artist Lindsay Turk and poet Jon Plunkett held an exhibition of artwork responding to poetry. I had the pleasure of editing this book, and Lindsay’s artwork sets it off beautifully. At the Poets’ Market on Saturday, sales of this book were brisk, and the entire first print run sold out. A new imprint is being rushed out even as you read this!

Lindsay Turk’s cover picture for Jon Plunkett’s A Melody of Sorts

I have been to other festivals, but you quickly realise that not every festival is like StAnza! It isn’t just the vision, and the wide-ranging scope if the events, but it’s the meticulous organisation. Hosting so many events in such a short space of time, accommodating so many poets – and making sure they get where they were supposed to be at the right time is an enormous achievement, but thanks to the staff of the Byre, all the cheerful volunteers and the Herculean efforts and enthusiasm of Eleanor Livingstone and Annie Rutherford, it all flows like clockwork, and there is always an atmosphere of friendly calm and willingness to help. No detail seems to escape them and they remember everybody’s name, which would defeat me. We could not be grateful enough for the work they do!

March 12, 2019

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