K_\=I<<c`k\iXipdX^Xq`e\f]k_\Efik_

Efik_nfi[jEfn Issue 32, Autumn 2016

FliC`m\j8i\Jkfi`\j
A\ee`]\iDfiX^?\e[\ijfei\af`Z\j
fek_\Xikf]d\df`i
Gf\dj#J_fikJkfi`\j#<jjXpjXe[I\m`\nj
`eZcl[`e^KfdGfn#D\iipe>cfm\i#8e^ljDXik`e#
>\fi^\>leeXe[=\Xi^_XjDXZ=_`feecX`^_
 <;@KFI@8C :fek\ekj
T he art of telling stories and
making poems is very old and
very new. In this issue Jennifer
Henderson describes the popularity
and sheer durability of memoir and
3
4
Our Lives are Stories – Essay by Jennifer Morag Henderson
Poems by Tariq Latif & Jean Atkin
how so called ‘ordinary’ lives shine 5 Scarface – Short Story by Merryn Glover
so brightly for being lived outside (as
well as sometimes inside) the celebrity 6 The Ballad of Jolanta Bledaite – Poem by Tom Pow
limelight. The real world turns out to
be a pretty amazing place, which may 7 Culloden Moor – Essay by Marion McCready
be not quite so surprising when the real
world turns out to be the Highlands of 7 Creatures of Habit – Short Story by Rebecca Smith
Scotland.
Roseanne Watt’s article looks at a 8 Our Mam, But Not All Of Her There – Short Story by Douglas Bruton
newer way of getting into the nooks and
crannies of life, the filmpoem, where 9 Poems by Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh
word and image blend and merge to
renew our sense of people and place. 10 Cloud Inversion – Short Story by Paul Brownsey
It feels good to know that both
the pen and the camera, the page and 11 Poems by Peter Gilmour, Chris Agee and Henry Bell
the screen, are there to record our
memories and desires, our passions and 12 The Swimming Lesson – Short Story by Nick Holdstock
dreams. The technology may change
but we are, in the end, story-making 13 Poems by Kirsteen Scott, Donald S. Murray, James Andrew, Ingrid Leonard,
animals, and all the better for it.n Olive Ritch & Marie-Therese Taylor
14 Squalls – Short Story by Chris Lamb
Chris Powici, Editor
15 Poems by Ali Whitelock, Pàdraig MacAoidh, Richie McCaffery & Maggie Rabatski
16 Largiebaan: a place and a mind – Poems by Angus Martin
18 Poems by Meg Macleod & Yowann Byghan
19 Poems by Kenny Taylor, Catherine Eunson, Edith Harper, Jane Swan Fuller
Maggie Mackay & Joan Lennon
8kK_\Efik_nfi[jEfnN\Yj`k\1
nnn%efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb 20 Breathing with Cameras – Essay by Roseanne Watt
Filmpoems by Roseanne Watt 22 Nine Worlds – Poem by George Gunn
Gaelic poems in translation
Reviews Extra 24 Widow Kharms’s Guesthouse – Short Story by Gabrielle Barnby
How to download Northwords Now
to an e-reader 25 Poems by Maoilios Caimbeul
26 The Mirror – Short Story by Lily Greenall
27 Poems by Karin Slater, Howard Wright, Rhoda Michael & Josephine Brogan
28 Reviews
nnn%]XZ\Yffb%Zfd&^iflgj&efik_nfi[jefn&
31 Contributors’ Biographies, Where to Find Northwords Now

Efik_nfi[jEfn`jXkn`Z\p\Xicpc`k\iXip ;\j`^e\i =ifekZfm\i`dX^\ KfjlYd`kpflinfibfec`e\#^fkffli

dX^Xq`e\glYc`j_\[YpEfik_nfi[j#Xefk$ >ljkX]<i`bjjfe ÊK_i\\>\e\iXk`fej#@jc\f]?Xii`jËYpDfe`ZX n\Yj`k\1efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb
]fi$gifÔkZfdgXep#i\^`jk\i\[`e=\YilXip nnn%^ljkX]\i`bjjfe%Zfd N\cc\i=IGJZfgg\ibefYY`e^%nfi[gi\jj%Zfd K_\e\ok`jjl\`jgcXee\[]fiDXiZ_)'(.%
)'',%:fdgXepeldY\iJ:)/',,*% JlYd`jj`fejkfk_\dX^Xq`e\Xi\n\cZfd\% K_\[\X[c`e\]fijlYd`jj`fej`j).k_
K\Z_e`ZXc8[m`jfi K_\pZXeY\`e>X\c`Z#<e^c`j_#JZfkjXe[ AXelXip)'(.%Pfln`cc_\XiXYflkpfli
9fXi[d\dY\ij KfepIfjj XepcfZXcmXi`Xekj%Gc\Xj\jlYd`kefdfi\ jlYd`jj`feYp*'k_DXiZ_)'(.%
8[i`Xe:cXib:_X`i #MXc\i`\9\Xkk`\# k_\n\\Xggj_fg7flkcffb%Zfd k_Xek_i\\j_fikjkfi`\jfij`ogf\dj%:fekXZk
Bi`jk`eG\[ifaX#8ee\DXZc\f[# [\kX`cjÆXe\dX`cX[[i\jjfiXeJ8<$j_flc[ K_\9fXi[Xe[<[`kfi
KfepIfjj 8[m\ik`j`e^ Y\`eZcl[\[%N\ZXeefki\klienfibk_Xk_Xj f]Efik_nfi[jEfn
\[`kfi7efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb efJ8<%:fgpi`^_ki\dX`ejn`k_k_\Xlk_fi% XZbefnc\[^\jlggfik
<[`kfi nnn%efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb&X[m\ik`j\%Xjg GXpd\ek`jdX[\]fiXccjlZZ\jj]lcjlYd`jj`fej% ]ifd:i\Xk`m\JZfkcXe[
:_i`jGfn`Z`# Xe[9Ži[eX>~`[_c`^%
\[`kfi7efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb JlYjZi`gk`fej JlYd`jj`fej_flc[Y\j\ekkf1 @JJE(.,'$.0)/
K_\dX^Xq`e\`j=I<<Xe[ZXeY\g`Zb\[lg
>X\c`Z<[`kfi XkcfZXk`fejXZifjjJZfkcXe[%J\\c`jkfeG*( K_\<[`kfi#Efik_nfi[jEfn
If[p>fidXe# K_\]\\]fi`e[`m`[lXcÊ_fd\$[\c`m\ipË`j™-]fi -B`gg\e[Xm`\CXe\
\[`kfi7efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb )`jjl\j#Z_\hl\jgXpXYc\kfÊEfik_nfi[jË% ;leYcXe\
G\ik_j_`i\
8[m`jfip>iflg =B(,'?B
AfeD`cc\i#G\k\iLig\k_#GXd9\XjXek

) Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
FliC`m\j8i\Jkfi`\j
A\ee`]\iDfiX^?\e[\ijfe[\cm\j`ekfjfd\?`^_cXe[d\df`ij

people who have travelled far and wide from

“This is the oldest of all their original homes.The jobs they have done
Highland adventures and will vary from the traditionally Highland to the
more exotic, from whaler-turned-London-
be the last. It is heartening and policeman Jock Murray in The Whaler of
heart-breaking.Why do people Scotland Yard to Norman Macleod, the Mod
gold-medal-winner in The Leper’s Bell who
go on thinking they can make a plays the pipes for Brigitte Bardot, as well as a
living out of a hill croft?” whole lot more besides that no one could do
justice to in print except himself.
-Neil Gunn, introduction to Katharine Dolina Maclennan is one of the many
Stewart, “A Croft in the Hills” islanders who tells her story of leaving home
in An Island Girl’s Journey, an autobiography
which was composed using recordings of

T here are many memoirs published

about Highland life and by
Highlanders: most simply, they can
be arranged into two groups – the stories of
those who stay on the land, and those who go
conversations as a starting-point. Best known
as a singer and actress, Dolina Maclennan
became involved in the folk music scene
when she moved to Edinburgh, becoming
friends and sharing the bill with many of the
away from it. From her home in Abriachan, best-known names in Scottish culture, such
Katharine Stewart recorded the dying days as Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid
of the old crofting way of life in A Croft in and Billy Connolly. Many people ended up
the Hills. At first, her cheerful narration and at informal ceilidhs at her house after poetry-
optimistic outlook on life carries the reader reading sessions as part of the group known
on a wave of enthusiasm away from the city, as the Heretics.
but she doesn’t gloss over the physical toll The Heretics evenings, recently revived as
of hard work, the hard winters, the death of wills him to succeed and sympathises with his back to the 18th century, bringing to life the part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival, combined
livestock, or the precarious fight with solvency wife Joan when, after various ultimatums are doings of a Highland estate with fascinating performance poetry with the Highland idea of
that crofting brings. Katharine Stewart died finally met, she forgives him and they forge a detail and through intelligent, humorous a traditional ceilidh, and one of the performers
in 2013 in her 99th year; she used to say that life together. writing. at the original nights was the author of two
she must surely be Scotland’s oldest working A different type of memoir focuses on the Another classic Highland memoir is Hugh of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent
writer yet her memoirs leave behind the image places of the Highlands: the mountain memoir. Miller’s My Schools and Schoolmasters, which Scottish writing: Ada F. Kay, otherwise known
of a woman who was always young at heart, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is the tells of his upbringing in Cromarty in the as A.J. Stewart. Ada, with her dramatic red
who had a great feeling for the Highlands classic meditation on why hillwalking holds early 1800s and his work as a stonemason, hair, believed that she was the reincarnation of
and their people, the sense of community such an attraction for so many, a masterpiece geologist, writer and church reformer. King James IV of Scotland, and she used to be
and connection with nature. “Experience had of nature-writing that goes deeply into the Understanding of Miller is enhanced when a familiar sight walking in her black, fifteenth-
taught us that the worst hardly ever happens,” Cairngorms. Others prefer the thrill of a set his book is read in tandem with the modern century-style leggings and cloak through the
she said cheerfully, “and if it does, it can challenge: The Blind Man of Hoy is by Red biography of his wife Lydia, by Elizabeth Old Town in Edinburgh. Her book, Falcon,
usually be turned into a best.” Szèll, a writer whose climbing career was cut Sutherland. Memoir often shows how was the memoir of James IV, written in the
Richard Frere has a similar sense of short when he discovered, at the age of 19, that interconnected the Highlands and its people first person. An astonishing piece of work, it
optimism in Beyond the Highland Line, though he was going blind. However, with the help are with other places, and Lydia’s biographer’s does contain some new insights into James’
he did not share Stewart’s antipathy towards of friends and instructors, he realised he could own memoir, Of Sinks and Pulpits, tells not life, and climaxes in a heartbreaking ending.
machines and modern living.What he wanted continue, in some fashion, with the sport he only the story of Elizabeth Sutherland’s move Falcon’s companion book is Died 1513 – Born
was to live as close to his beloved mountains as loved. Beginning again on indoor climbing to the Black Isle and her career as a writer, 1929: an extraordinarily lucid and disturbing
possible, as cheaply as possible, but preferably walls, Szèll gradually built up his confidence, but also of her time at Edinburgh University description of the disintegration of an
also while making a quick fortune. The and began to dream again of a challenge that and as a minister’s wife in both the Borders intelligent mind.
trouble was, his enthusiasm for starting new he had always wanted to tackle: climbing the and in Africa. Written in an unusual format, Ada F. Kay was originally a playwright, and
schemes wasn’t matched by his success. One Old Man of Hoy, the sea stack that stands off with the action told in the third person – a founding member of the Scottish Society
of the many Highland memoirs to feature a Orkney. His eventual extraordinary ascent of “I cannot write this memoir of my middle of Playwrights, and the most high-profile
very understanding wife, Frere installed his the stack was filmed for the BBC, and Szèll’s years […] from the personal pronoun because Scottish biographical project in recent years
young family (two children under five) in book captures the same nail-biting tension the person I was so long ago seems to have has probably been Rona Munro’s trilogy of
three connected, converted railway carriages that the swooping scenery of the film induced little connection to the person I am now” – James Plays, produced by the National Theatre
at Carrbridge.The unusual building had been – the slow inching upwards, the elation of a Sutherland includes ‘reflections’ at the end of of Scotland. These finish with the dramatic
designed as a temporary summer dwelling, piece of work well done, and the realisation each chapter, which meditate frankly on how on-stage dressing of A.J. Stewart’s troubled
but after he makes it (barely) liveable they that climbing is often not so much about she now sees these events of long ago. James IV, but offered an immersive look at
reside there for around five years, inviting physicality and the landscape but about the It is extraordinary, given this wealth of James I, II and III, with the three full-length
all the neighbours to eat sumptuous cakes at interaction and trust between people. material, that so many people come to the plays able to be watched over successive
weekly afternoon teas while surrounded by Not everyone enjoys climbing, but making Highlands expecting to find uncultured nights, or all in the one day, with on-stage
sometimes near-total chaos. Frere survives the particular experience in some way people out of touch with the modern world. seating allowing some audience members to
a direct lightning strike on their metal- universal is the hallmark of a good memoir. That idea ought to be entirely impossible be in the very heart of the action.
framed house, and a motorbike crash, sees A focus on one particular event gives an to believe after reading any of the memoirs Highlanders will continue to write about
his poultry all die from salmonella, watches immediacy and vibrancy, but an autobiography written by Highlanders who go away from their experiences staying on or leaving the
his mushroom crop destroyed by storms, and written when the person is old enough to the land. Highlanders are generally good land, but there are new trends. There is a
comes through more than one disastrous fire. make objective assessments about their whole travellers – not least because almost every strong focus on personal identity or identity
His co-workers, friends and family seem to life and its place in the grand scheme of Highland idyll is reached by a long journey politics, while the children of those who came
catch his bad luck, with broken collar-bones, things can give us something else. Memoirs of down a terrifying road populated by terrifying here to try to live self-sufficiently have their
broken fingers and horrendous sawmill a Highland Lady, written by Elizabeth Grant drivers – and the lack of opportunities for own perspectives. Jackie Kay is the daughter
accidents, but they remain steadfastly loyal to of Rothiemurchus for her children, takes us work and education in this area for many of a Nairn woman who left the Highlands
the inherently likeable Frere, and the reader years mean that there are many stories from to work as a nurse, but her memoir Red Dust SS

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- *
Road takes her mother’s relationship with her
Nigerian father as only one part of Kay’s own
journey as an adopted child. Meanwhile, the Gf\kip
internet and the growth in self-publishing and
small publishing make it easier for everyone Tricks of light Westray Wifie
to share their stories. Bloggers are perhaps too Tariq Latif Jean Atkin
aware now of just what their potential reach
might be to write as unselfconsciously as they I sprinkle refined flavours of the sea, Cock-eyed, hunched on cracked flags, she’s blowsy
used to, but people still do write versions over slices of okra, ginger and garlic. among the stones, the bones, the midden left
of their life story online. Simon Varwell, Add a measure of turmeric-powdered by cattle tied indoors through the long-nights,
Inverness-based travel writer and author of sunlight and a handful of small red their bellies swollen, udders shrinking,
the now defunct satirical website Inversnecky, chillies to the generous melt of butter. ribs sharp as groynes at slack,
blogs occasionally at nnn%j`dfemXin\cc%Zf%lb I inhale the rich sizzling scents. the lack of fodder.
and is also involved with twitter project @
Hi_Voices, or Highlands and Islands Voices, a For days now the hills have been frozen Propped so long on a throughstone,
rotational account where different individuals under dense layers of snow. For days now she leans over the tether-posts,
take over for a week at a time to tell their the cold has set in the pores of my bones. over the hungry, sweltered cows.
stories – a new form of super-short, image- The bare wiry tree is smeared
linked immediate, unreflective memoir for a with water droplets that refract the low light She is her belly, brought to bear.
digital age. creating a multitude of glimmering fruit;
There is an extraordinary range of She – the line of her brow, her wide
biographical / memoir experiences from the glistening granny smiths, opaque plums, scratched eyes, her claw of ancient hair,
Highlands, and certainly not enough room to tangerines and sapphire berries. her two high breasts, her broad haunch –
mention them all in a short article – without This is not the tree of life or of knowledge
even going on to those who explicitly base but of hidden components of light revealed. she’ll see them through the dark
their fiction on real life (Jessie Kesson’s The I love the tingling warmth of the sun to drop their calves
White Bird Passes, for example, or the social on my brow. If our bodies were prisms at Noltland’s inching
commentary of Jane Duncan’s My Friends door of daylight.
series). then our actions and words would refract
It is relatively easy for everyone to record the true colours of our hearts. to draw blood, to draw spring,
something of their life in one way or another, I nourish my body with generous bring milk, be
and, handled carefully, it is something that can helpings of spiced okra and nan bread. the quickening
bring a lot of happiness and value not only to I sip milky tea and watch the tree
the person telling their story, but also to their become bare black under a raven blue sky.
wider family – and, in the case of a published
memoir, to a much bigger audience as
well. n

NEIL GUNN NEIL GUNN

2016 2017 2016 2017

THEMES THEMES
Adult Poetry and Short Story Adult Poetry and Short Story
“Wrong is a difficult word” “Wrong is a difficult word”
“Knowledge is high in the head, but the salmon of wisdom swims deep” “Knowledge is high in the head, but the salmon of wisdom swims deep”
Secondary school Secondary school
“He loved the darkness” “He loved the darkness”
Primary school Primary school
“He was wakened by a loud knocking at the door” “He was wakened by a loud knocking at the door”

TO ENTER GO TO TO ENTER GO TO
w w w. h ig h l ife h ighland. com /nei lgunn w w w.h igh lifeh igh lan d.com/n eilgu n n
OR OR
visit any Highland library visit any Highland library
The closing date is Friday 3rd March 2017 The closing date is Friday 3rd March 2017

+ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
‘O h, isn’t he marvellous!’ Sian
cried, as she lifted layers of tissue
away.
‘A real beauty,’ said Hector, the museum’s
Director of Antiquities, pushing his glasses
JZXi]XZ\
Short Story by Merryn Glover
both embarrassed and pleased that Josie had
brushed the dandruff off his shoulders, washed
his glasses and secured them with the barest
strip of fresh tape. Everyone was expectant
and excited, chattering and giggling, licking
up his nose. They were always greasy and teeth and shooting looks at the cameras.
speckled, and for three weeks now had been Everyone, that is, except for Sian. She hadn’t
joined in the middle with a wad of sticky
tape. Sian wondered if he had any intention
✯ been seen since her coffee was delivered at
8.30.
of getting them replaced, or even repaired. Josie’s phone went off.
They looked old enough to be one of his Like your breath, she thought, tightening had arranged all the pieces of Ancient Central ‘Sian! How’s things?’ she said brightly.
exhibits. her mouth. Asian Art into their glass cabinets, angled ‘We’re busy, busy here, of course – great
‘We’re very lucky to have him,’ Hector ‘To gain power over the Dragon-Man,’ the spot lights and cleared away the boxes, turnout. You on your way?’ Then her brows
went on and grinned at her, bits of lunch Hector went on, spreading his clown fingers tissue and bubble wrap. Hector was triple- shot up and her mouth formed a little circle
clinging to his teeth. as if about to perform a trick. ‘One did not checking his inventory as Josie secured the last of surprise. ‘Oh dear…. Oh that’s terrible,
‘Aren’t we, darling,’ she cooed, not kill –’ descriptive panels to the walls. He had written Sian… Oh, how awful…’ She looked at
addressing him but the figurine, whom she Sian’s phone went off. She set the figure the texts for them weeks ago - detailed and Hector, with full horror-face. ‘No, I definitely
lifted in her gloved hands like a baby. ‘What a back in his tissue, peeled off her right glove and meticulous – and protested at Sian’s red pen ordered… Perhaps they – heaven forbid – do
priceless little monster you are.’ slipped the phone from her linen trousers. slashing through his drafts, re-written them, you think they gave me the wrong coffee?!
It scowled at her. 12 centimetres high, the ‘Josie! How’s things? We’re busy, busy up suffered more slashes, and finally arrived at a Oh, nightmare! Can I help? What shall we -?’
man had big muscles, stout legs and a thick here, of course.’ It was the intern, an eager little series of impoverished sentences that he felt She listened for a while, sighing and shaking
rounded beard. He wore a bone-coloured thing who was more interested in trying out were more like tweets from London Fashion her head, then said, finally. ‘Of course, don’t
skirt with eyes to match, but the rest of him her own ideas than learning from the experts. Week than illuminations on these priceless you worry, Sian. We’ll manage. We’ll manage
was greenish black and covered in scales. ‘Oh yes! Meeting the Education Secretary – antiquities. just fine. You just look after yourself.’ She
‘Careful!’ Hector said, reaching out his goodness, is that the time?! Right, tell him ‘People don’t want to read long-winded clicked her phone off and turned to Hector.
own gloved hands, but failing to prise the I’m on my way. Oh and be a love and ask essays, Hector,’ she had insisted. ‘All that’s in ‘You’ll never believe,’ she said. ‘Sian’s had
thing from her grip. ‘He’s probably at least him what he wants to drink and run out to the companion book. Short and sharp for an allergic reaction and can’t come out.’
4000 years old.’ Starbucks, will you? The usual for me. Thank the gallery walls.’ It felt like a travesty to him, ‘No!’
‘I know. I paid for him.’ Well, not her you, dear!’ And she hung up. ‘You’d better but he had to admit (grudgingly and never ‘Swollen lips, red rash all over her face.’
personally, of course, but in her recent crack on here, Hector,’ she said, discarding the out loud) that Sian’s changes had boosted the ‘Oh dreadful - does she need help?’
and much-celebrated position as Museum second glove. ‘Nobody’s going home tonight museum’s numbers, funding and reputation ‘None whatsoever. She’s got tablets, she
Director. Her latest triumph was to till we’re done.’ And she clipped out of the beyond measure. If not for her, they could says, but will just have to go home and sit in a
commission this exhibition of ancient Central room in her stilettos, leaving him cradling never have afforded Dragon Man and the rest. dark room for the day.’
Asian art and to secure little reptile man as Dragon Man like a holy relic. But he still couldn’t decide if she was good ‘How awful - the poor thing! Whatever
centre piece. For an eye-watering sum, for the place or ruining it. His one comfort has she reacted to?’
admittedly, but worth it. She was establishing Downstairs, Josie — who had a History first was that in the twice-daily guided tours, he Josie shook her head, eyes wide. ‘Something
an international reputation for this place from Cambridge and was doing a Masters in could tell the whole story behind each object fishy about her coffee, perhaps. Starbucks
and had persuaded donors, investors and the Museum Curating at Edinburgh University and hold his audience in rapt attention, as had must have changed the recipe without telling
Culture Secretary that serious money was – pushed through the main doors of the been his custom here for nearly thirty years. anyone. That’s ruthless big business for you.’
required. She was good at persuasion, good Museum and down the street to Starbucks. Indeed, many of the regulars came more She threw up her hands. The nails were
at directing, good at money. Frankly, the The Education Secretary merely wanted tea, for his commentary than for the exhibits. freshly polished. ‘But it means you and I will
Museum was lucky to have her. which she could have whipped up in the Certainly, his mother did. have to do the honours, Hector. How about I
‘Yes, of course,’ Hector stuttered. ‘Bronze staff kitchen in seconds, but Sian wanted a At 5.30 Sian walked in, crocodile-skin bag handle the hellos and official opening bit and
Age, from the Oxus civilisation.’ Skinny Latte, which, seemingly, could only be slung across her body, briefcase in one hand you do the tour for TV?’
‘Indeed.’ procured from the multi-national café giant and a sheaf of papers in the other. Hector agreed at once, of course, and was
‘Lived in Northern Afghanistan, southern that Josie despised. There were a lot of things ‘Press will be here at 10 for the opening super impressed by how well Josie stepped
Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan.’ He moved she despised at the moment, not least the and STV want to film a bit of the first tour up to the mark with a witty little speech and
his hands in little circles, mapping the territory. fact that her summer-long, twenty-hour-a- at 11.’ charming welcomes, knowing all the names.
With his white gloves and booze-ripened week ‘internship’ with Sian was unpaid. She ‘Oh, goody!’ Hector clapped his hands. Anyone would think she’d practiced.
nose, he put Sian in mind of a clown. only suffered it for the museum experience, He’d never been on the telly before.
‘Shame he’s been damaged,’ she said, the tick on her CV and dear Hector, who ‘I’ll do that one,’ she said and waved the Later, on his tour, as the cameras rolled
stroking a gloved fingertip down a gash was a boring old windbag but also kind and papers. ‘I’ve got the full texts on all the and the VIPs smiled, he swelled into his full
that ran diagonally across his face, narrowly passionate and, in truth, had taught her more artefacts and will bone up tonight.’ stature. Regaling his little audience with the
missing one eye. about treasuring the past than anything else He stared at her. They were his texts. story of each object, his eyebrows leapt, his
‘No, no! That’s The Scar.’ Hector looked in her education. Josie had moved from From a life-time of learning. And she was eyes shone and his hands created in the air
at her with eyes wide, bushy brows pushing joining the staff jokes about him and trying to going to bone up? In an evening? the empires, battles, rituals and ruins of the
up to his hairline. She waited for him to evade his spontaneous lectures to affectionate Josie, frozen mid-step with a small panel in ancient world. As children’s faces fell open in
expand, but clearly, he was waiting to be asked, respect and actually paying attention. And her hand, was also staring. wonder and adults stood entranced (and Josie
waiting for her to seek his greater knowledge, just as Hector ascended in her esteem, like ‘You’ve been so thorough, Heckles,’ Sian gave a manicured thumbs-up from the back
to accede he knew more than her. Damned if a constellation growing bigger and brighter said, slipping the papers into her briefcase. of the room) his voice reeled them in like a
she was going to give him that pleasure. in the night sky, Sian had slid the other way. ‘Made my job easy. Why don’t you do the magician, a powerful wizard, a high priest at
‘Oh, of course, the scar,’ she said. ‘Silly me.’ Initially awed by her intelligence, her ability afternoon, tour? Oh and Josie,’ she pointed the holy altar.
She turned the statue over, touching the ends and her flawless style, Josie had become a manicured hand at her. ‘If you pop out ‘And this astonishing figure,’ he concluded,
of the legs where feet should have been and increasingly sick of being little more than a for my coffee first thing, that should set me unfurling his fingers before the scale-covered
the twin holes top and bottom of its lips. Her PA, running errands, tidying the office, filing up for the morning’s labour! You’re a star. statuette,‘is called Scarface. These dragon-men
curiosity was killing her. things, and – most demeaning of all - scuttling Toodle-oop!’ And she swept out, not noting of Central Asian mythology represented the
‘You know about these incisions?’ he asked, out for drinks and salads armed with Sian’s that Josie was failing to display much in the violently malevolent forces of the underworld
searching her face. extensive instructions on banned foods. way of celestial sparkle. – they were feared and hated. But they could
‘Oh go on then, Heckles, give us your ‘I have horrific allergies,’ she had said, not be destroyed. Oh no! This is what you
spiel. Good practice for tomorrow.’ She forced handing over a printed list. ‘No anaphylactic By 9.45 the next morning, all the dignitaries had to do.’ And here he held up a finger, his
a smile. reactions, thank god, but can’t touch these and press had arrived and were milling about audience dangling like fish on a hook. ‘You
He beamed back, his eyes disappearing flavourings or fragrances or I’ll turn into in the foyer with fizz and canapes. Josie and must make a slash across the right cheek and
into folds of mottled skin. a reptile.’ Dragon Woman exposed, Josie Hector stood with the other staff in the front insert nails in the tiny holes above and below
‘This…’ he said, trying to take it from thought, but never said a word apart from lobby, she in high heels and a borrowed linen the lips – see here? - thus preventing the
her again, but failing. ‘Is a Dragon-Man. A polite murmurs of sympathy and agreement. suit, with a French chignon and make-up Scarface from speaking. For you see, the only
mythical being that represents the evil forces She needed a good reference. lending sophistication and a pair of pearls way to have power over the dragon-men was
of the underworld.’ dangling at her ears. He wore dark brown not to kill them, but to silence them.’ n
By the end of the day, Hector and Josie trousers and a favourite tweed jacket and was

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- ,
 K_\9XccX[f]AfcXekX9c\[X`k\
Y%C`k_lXe`X(0.*[%JZfkcXe[)''/

YpKfdGfn

The story of Jolanta Bledaite - * consistent with the prodding of

nothing good in it, you’ll see. a knife were found; also bruising.
A child from the fag-end In the last month of her life, The dividend: £200.
she was spotted begging on the
of history. Her teenage edge of town – a plastic cup *
parents unbuckled. Drink
drove her mother on the road. held out – to add to her wages. The youngster held her legs, while
She was invisible to shame, the other snuffed her with a pillow.
* as she worked towards her dream. ‘I felt bad after,’ the youngster said.

Early years with Grandmother - * ‘I smoked a couple of cigarettes.’

ten houses, one track, the forest Jolanta was laid in the bath and,
all around. The old woman One of those she lodged with with kitchen knives, the other
in a damp house in Brechin
wouldn’t light a fire till night, no was a young Pole – blue-eyed, *
matter how cold. The small rooms
smelled of earth and ash. It was this baby-faced. She confessed to him hacked off her head and her hands
how much she’d saved. He told while the youngster held the bag.
* another, more experienced man. Blood bloomed in the water. There

for Jolanta, or else the drab * are times in this story you want to
Soviet tower block, in which look away. Her broken body, they
her father tended his cancer. Experienced in the snake-pit of life. crammed in a wheeled suitcase.
Soon the pair of them had a plan.
Like someone in a fairy tale, Early one morning, when no one *
she said, Papa, don’t worry,
I’ll get enough to buy a house. was around, the two entered They took the bus to Arbroath with
the room where Jolanta lay the bag of head and hands. There
* reading. They taped her wrists are also times when this story presses

She took a few English words * on your senses. Did the other
and, with humility, set off take pity here? Or did he sit
for a land where the only and ankles. They taped over on the aisle seat, as the youngster
her mouth. They found her card,
rung clear to her was the last one. but not the pin. They would kill her *
No, it’s not a news story yet.
(But it doesn’t turn out well.) if she would not tell. At first, stares out over a countryside
she gave a wrong number. (What rousing itself with spring; a chill
* she couldn’t know is that nothing east coast day, but bright, the sea

The fruit fields of Angus don’t grow * edged everywhere white, as the
money, nor is Brechin quite weight of the head – a weight only
Shangri-La, but Jolanta came, would save her. Disposal bags the cursed will know – bounces
had been bought.) The youngster
picking daffodils in spring, smoked a cigarette. Her eyes *
berries in the summer. A van
picked the migrant workers up must have been on him, pleading. slightly on his lap, the edge of a
The smoke drifted to the ceiling. finger pressing on his inner thigh.
* Silence. Till they heard the other They weighted the bag and threw it

early mornings and they put in * in the sea, as if already it was beyond
twelve hour shifts each day. People memory. The next day, the same
who knew her then say she was on the stairs, his cold intent. with the suitcase in the harbour.
He sat astride her and let her
a good worker – Aye never feel the end of his knife. Marks
any bother - but she was shy
and kept herself to herself.

- Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 * * *

The tides at least were on Jolanta ‘s is the story of Jolanta Bledaite. We sent you one of our children
side. Two children – sisters – found I said there was nothing good and this is how you send her back.
the bag with Jolanta’s head, washed about it. That is, except for this: Or perhaps they simply stand,

up on Arbroath Beach. Subsequent local people raised money so that as the wind moves through the trees,
searches discovered the hands. her remains could be flown home. and think of the berries waiting
It was a lot of evidence to work on. She’s buried three kilometres to be picked beside a distant sea.

* *

Soon the culprits were arrested. from the village in which she was
While the other remained casual, a child. If someone visits her grave -
dismissive, the youngster, weary, and, in country cemeteries,

confessed. From fragments, it was they like to converse with the dead -
possible to tell Jolanta’s what do they say as they drink
sorrowful, betrayed life. So that a vodka and smoke a cigarette?

:lccf[\eDffi :i\Xkli\jf]?XY`k
Short Story by Rebecca Wright
By Marion McCready

Our blood is still our fathers in front of the Kotel, or the Western Wall as it’s
better known, pressing my hands against the
something else; we drew out slowly a batch
of dried heather tied up with bright red wool.
I found the shed snake skin the summer I
turned thirteen. The summer we moved
to the new house. It lay abandoned and
spent on the pile of woodchips, basking in
the sun. The fine hair on my bare legs tingled
And ours the valour of their hearts huge warm sand-coloured stones, saying my The intricate crisscross pattern of the fresh with danger. I poked it with a long stick, and
own private prayers beside crowds of people blood of the wool bound the heather sticks then, when I was sure it was just the crisp
(Inscription at the entrance to Culloden Moor) side-by-side right along the length of the into the shape of a ram’s horn. I thought of shell of a snake, I carried it home at arm’s
wall, each lost to his and her own thoughts the fingers that tied the wool, the hands that length.

W hen we came back to Culloden,

it was early evening, not another
soul was there. The moor came
alive around us - no gimmicks this time,
no satellite tracking headphones explaining
and meditations. Though here there were no
crowds, soldiers with guns, no hot sun burning
my lips and drying out my mouth, no shawled
women surrounding me; the cairn also felt
like a sort of holy place drawing people from
pushed the heather deep into the gap in the
stones.
We stood silently before the cairn caught
up in our own timeless bubble; even the
children were uncharacteristically quiet. The
We put the thin skin on the bookcase in
the hallway, in the shape of the adder it would
have been, stretched from Austen to Du
Maurier. Dad explained over roast chicken
and Yorkshire puddings how snakes yawn to
each battle action as you walked across the across the world, many of whom trace their only sound was the occasional flutter of flags shed their skins.
moor, no echo of the wall-to-wall cinematic ancestry back to this site, this battleground, shaking in the wind - red flags representing The summer I turned sixteen, I lay on
screening of the battle in the tourist centre. glimmering in emerald shades beneath the the government battle line of soldiers, and the grass by the beck thinking of a boy’s
Just the land itself stretching for miles, the midsummer setting sun. in the distance the blue flags, high on white voice, his hands, his smile. I heard a splash. I
heather-thick ground pulsing with insect life, I took a notion to search between the poles, of the Jacobite line. I folded up the watched an adder twist in the shallow beck,
empty of the clamber of tourists wandering cracks in the stones for a message, a letter letter and gently pushed it and the heather its diamond markings darker in the cool
the maze of paths. perhaps - like they do at the Western Wall - back into the cairn, as far back as it would water. I wondered if it was the same snake
Odd shapes of jutting rocks, memorial leaving scribbled prayers, words for the dead go. whose skin I had carried back to the house.
stones, mark mounds of the dead - some pressed into every conceivable and reachable I like to think of the organic, heather heart I remembered Dad’s words - they can have
buried where they fell. The bodies of the opening in the stones. I slowly walked around beating in the middle of all that stone tied up in up to twenty babies. A family of baby snakes,
Jacobites, those who could be recognised, were the circumference of the cairn, mound of its red veins of wool. I think of the Orthodox I thought. They’d grow up. Fall in love. Shed
buried in mass graves together with members memory stones, peering in between the Jew who stopped me, tied a bracelet of red their skins.
of their own Clan. The moor hills glower on cracks. I’d almost completed my circuit when wool around my wrist as I left the Jewish The summer I came home from my first
the skyline, the clouds change colours like the I noticed a glimpse of something white tucked Quarter of the Old City, Jerusalem. year at university was the hottest in forty
bubbles my children love to blow around our deep into a fissure. I called out excitedly to my Stones, red wool, heather, flags, messages years. I was taking Media studies, English lit. I
garden - floating and turning in the air; the husband and son who were exploring nearby for the dead; the connections played on my bought my first ever broadsheet newspaper in
salty smell of the Moray Firth never far from stones; my five year-old daughter was further mind. Words and symbols - all forms of the the local post office and felt a thousand miles
us. away and lost in a dream of buttercups. I human need for communication. tall. I opened it on the grass by the beck and
I made my way to the main memorial reached for my son’s stick and gently hooked The clouds thicken into a dirty quilt. I fought with the strange paper. It crumbled
cairn standing like a giant stone thimble on the white flicker in the dark crack like a take in one last look of the stretch of land, a between my nail bitten fingers. I didn’t
the right-hand side of the moor. When I fish and drew it out. A letter from the Clan rash of buttercups wavering in the dull light, understand the articles. Even the headlines
came to it and touched the rough grey stones Mackenzie Society commemorating the dead the grasses leaning. In my hand I carry stems were written in code. A different language. I
pattered with silvery constellations of lichen, at the battle of Culloden. “For All The Fallen” of heather plucked from the moor; my own lay back to listen for snakes and think about a
I thought of Israel three years earlier. Standing it said in bold at the bottom. There was symbol of remembrance. n man’s voice, his hands, his smile. n

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- .
D a says as how things’ll be different
and we’ll have to get used to it and
we’ll need to help out. That’s what
being a family’s all about, he says. Then his
voice shrinks small as a hiss-spit-whisper and
FliDXd#9lkEfk
8ccF]?\iK_\i\
become and a bright and dancing yellow light
is suddenly and briefly there in the room with
us, but no one smiles or thinks it cheery.
It’s not easy for Mam to get up from the
chair. Da rushes to help, and there’s a noise
he says we is to tell no one. On no account, that Mam makes somewhere in the back of
says he. If anyone asks, we’s to say she’s been
sick and now she’s better and nothing more
Short Story by Douglas Bruton her throat, the same noise as Granpa used to
make when he bent to pick up dropped keys
than that. or spilled money. And Da walks her slowly
Only, I’ve already told Mrs Parks and she from the room, and it’s like when women
works in the shop and I know she’ll tell the ✯ are helped from gravesides to waiting cars
whole town. Like she told about Mr Harrow and they lean on the men. There are words
and what he did with Miss Linda Martin doors, and it comes in at the last and is too clock move past four and closer to five and missing in her going, for she says nothing but
behind the church one Saturday night and tired to eat sometimes, and that’s what mam we sit and watch; and I pray. leaves like shadows leave when the sun goes
him a married man; it was a sin and should’ve means when she says she’s dog tired. She Later, Da brings things in for tea. He’s been down, and it’s early to bed that our Mam is
been God’s business, but Mrs Parks told it to says that maybe she’ll close her eyes for just away in the old truck and there’s a smell of going.
everyone buying a morning newspaper, telling a minute and we’re not to let her sleep past beer on his breath. He says we wont eat at Da has to wash our faces, same as he’s been
it like it was something that had slipped out five o’clock. table tonight and there’s no need for forks. doing for more than a week now. Me and
of the pages of those papers and was missing. Prune pours the grown-cold cup of tea she He’s brought in chips and battered fish, all Prune, we’ve got used to the rough cat-lick
And didn’t she tell everyone and his dog what made for our Mam down the sink and we wrapped in newspaper, and the air in the he gives to our upturned faces, and used too
the school teacher did with Emma Barr and it sit on the sofa, sitting like we do in church, room is suddenly warm and smelling of fat to the smell of the cloth which is sour and
wasn’t nothing more than kissing, but Emma our backs straight and our prayer-hands and frying and vinegar. And though we do old. And Da has to tell us a story when we’re
Barr was short of a few years and so it was all clasped in our laps, and we watch Mam not turn it on, we sit in front of the tele and to our beds and he tells the one about Hansel
wrong. And I told Mrs Parks about our Mam, sleep, a silver spittle thread unspooling from we sit in eating-silence, which is not the same and Gretel and the trail of broken bits of
and then Da saying we was on no account bread laid to lead them back home only the
to tell no one, but everyone would know by birds have eaten every crumb so the way back
now. She smiles, our Mam, and she says a cup of tea would be is missing. And there’s something about the
There’s a car pulls up outside the house way Da tells it that makes me want to cry and
and it is old Tom’s taxi and it’s clean as a just the ticket, and she sits in her chair and she smiles again; I can see from the way Prune is looking at the
whistle or a new penny, except there’s mud but it’s not really like mam’s smile. Something is missing. door and not at the pictures in the book that
on the tyres now and I can see by his face that she’s feeling the same.
old Tom isn’t pleased and he steps on tip-toe And Da stands to put the light out and
shining shoes to open the back door because her open mouth. And we look for the thing as church-quiet. Prune keeps looking at Mam ‘Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs
he prides himself on being a gentleman. In that’s missing from our Mam, a space in her to see if it’s alright and I keep looking the bite’ he says and it is like a song when he
the back of the taxi is our Mam. Da goes out clothes, just on the left side, a sag in the front same, and Mam picks at her food like a bird. says it, only it’s a sadder song tonight. Then,
to help and he slips old Tom a little extra to of her dress, the thump of her heart pressing That’s what she’d say if it was us, and she’d tell because Mam disapproves of Da’s talk of bugs
make things right. against the cloth. We listen too, hearing the us to stop picking, and she’d ask us what was in the beds that she makes, and the sheets that
Mam, home from the hospital, and when rattle in her every breath and maybe the small wrong, and she’d say as how boys’ll like us just she keeps clean, boiled in a hot take-your-
she steps into the house it’s like she’s a stranger hammer of her heart or maybe it’s the fright- the same if we’ve a bit of meat on us. I want breath-away soap soup slopping in a great
or a guest, and we make a fuss over her as full hammer of our own hearts we hear. to say that to our thin as paper Mam, only I copper pot that she stirs with a wooden stick,
we do the minister in his black frock when And I don’t know about Prune, but I’m don’t. I just think it. because Da knows Mam will have something
he calls twice a year. And we tell her as how praying then. Da says prayers can do no harm, ’Sgood, Da says with his mouth full, and to say about his bugs in her beds, and he can
we’ve missed her, just like Da told us to say, only he don’t put much store in ‘em. And I’m it’s an effort to say anything and we can see hear her cross-words against him even though
which isn’t a lie because we have missed her. praying that when she wakes it’ll all be as it that. And Mam don’t give any show that it is quiet, he adds a wish for us to have sweet
And Prune offers to make a cup of tea for was before and Mam will sit up and scold she’s heard what he’s said and so Da don’t say dreams.
Mam, milk and two sugars and you put the herself for sleeping during the day and she’ll anything more. But we don’t sleep, and we don’t dream,
milk in the cup first so it tastes right, tastes scold us too for letting her, though they won’t The dog gets to lick the newspaper sheets not Prune and not me. We lie still as the Lady
the way Mam likes it. And I plump up the really be scold-words. And she’ll dance into when we’re finished, and there’s chips and fish Alice Fell who sleeps in the church and she
cushions on Mam’s seat, the one she always the kitchen and sing, and all the clatter of the still in Mam’s paper so the dog isn’t sure at is cut out of stone and a dog that’s like no
sits in, and she’s been missed these past few pots and spoons and the kettle will be like a first and it looks to our Da to see if it’s alright. dog I ever saw sleeps at her stone feet. And I
days and no one has sat in her seat in all the kind of music. And Prune and me, we’ll point Then, its tail wagging like flag day, and it eats can hear Prune breathing and I know she can
time she’s been gone. our noses in the air and breathe in and know without tasting anything, eats like it thinks hear me. And we listen for our Da sometime
She smiles, our Mam, and she says a cup of from one breath what is for tea or for supper. Da might change his mind and take the fish climbing into bed with our Mam and the
tea would be just the ticket, and she sits in her But Mam just sleeps and the hands of the and the chips away. Da burns the licked clean sound of him finding her in the dark, the
chair and she smiles again; but it’s not really newspaper on the small ash that the fire has sound of the bed shifting and Mam moaning
like mam’s smile. Something is missing. Like and Da making a noise like the horse blowing
when Prune lost her two front teeth, both air. We strain our ears to hear, knowing if he
in the one day, and then she smiled and it finds her then there’ll be smiles over breakfast,
was not like Prune’s smile at all. Same with Mam-smiles and Da-smiles, and Da kissing
our mam, only not teeth but something else Mam and touching her diddies through her
is missing. clothes when he thinks we’re not looking, and
She seems smaller than our Mam, too, both of them laughing. But she’s got only one
shrunken and hunched, more skin and bone diddy now, our Mam, and the whole town
than before, and like I said something missing. knows because I told Mrs Parks in the shop
And she moves slow as creeping when she how the other’s been left in the hospital. The
moves to her chair and it’s as if she nurses a doctors took it from her, I told Mrs Parks,
pain somewhere deep inside. When Da asks if and when doctors have taken something then
she’s alright, she says there’s nothing between they don’t ever give it back.
her heart and the world now and it takes a And tonight Da sleeps in his chair
little getting used to is all. Da steps out then downstairs and the dog lies on Da’s cold-stone
for a smoke and to breathe. feet. And maybe that’s just his way of getting
Me and Prune, we’re waiting, but Mam used to it, and that’s how it’ll be different
don’t take us into her arms for hugging like from now on, like he says. I tell Prune it’ll be
before. She says sorry, and how she’s just dog alright and she takes a breath and she says she
tired, and she means tired as the dog is when knows it will, but there’s something missing
it has been out all day working the farm and from what we both say and the minister
running sheep up and down the hill and its would tell us it’s faith as we don’t have and
ears sharp to whistles and clicks since early maybe he’d be right. n

/ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 ;~`ec\=\Xi^_XjDXZ=_`feecX`^_
Reifreann 2014 2) Ròbot air an Oir Aois
Sìos leathad breac sleamhainn na beinne,
1) Coire a’ Bhreacain siod seann ròbot fuamhaireil meirgeach 1) Eagal Ron Tinneas Alzheimer
Sgrìobh Seòras Orwell 1984 air Eilean Diùra. a’ tuisleachadh le stàirn is le gleadhraich Bruadar.
Chunnaic mi pìos mu a dhèidhinn air an tv o chionn greis. tro iomairean làn chàl is snèipean. A’ siubhal mòintich lem mhnaoi.
Thachair tubaist bàta ris aig Coire a’ Bhreacain. Thairis air talamh rèisg.
E fhèin, a mhac òg trì bliadhna dh’aois, Crùbte am broinn eanchainne loisgeach
agus dithis dhaoine eile san eathar a bha seo mar luch bàn air bhoil ‘s ann an èiginn Mise a’ gabhail ceuma ceàrr
a chaidh a ghlacadh le sruthan-lìonaidh làidir mise ri spàirn le luamhanan reasgach ‘s a dol fodha suas dham mheadhan
‘s a tharraing a dh’ionnsaigh a’ chuairt-slugain mhòir. mus tuit mi sa mhuir fhuar dhomhainn. ann an làthach a thòisicheas
Bhris an cùl-mhotair dheth agus thuit e sa mhuir.
Ach rinn iad a’ chùis air iomramh gu creig leathann air mo shlugadh gu slaodach.
far an deach an eathar fodha. Las iad teine an sin. A bheil mo bhean còmhla rium dha-rìribh?
Ri h-ùine chaidh am faicinn le iasgairean giomaich. Teaghlach Ciamar an dèan i cobhair orm?

Tha sinne dìreach às dèidh ar reifreann 1) Mànas an Lagaidh An gabh mo sheacaid a chur dhìom
air neo-eisimeileachd a chall. An t-iasg a’ leum an-diugh san allt, ‘s a chleachdadh mar ròpa?
Alba mar eathar air a dol fodha cha mhòr na òmar trìd-shoilleir fon ghrèin. No an gabh a sgaoileadh air mo bheulaibh
ann an cuairt-shlugain Orwellach,
ann an Coire a’ Bhreacain de bhreugan. Faileasan an t-srutha drileannaich air a’ chlàbar mar ràth-sàbhalaidh?
a’ dannsadh air duilleach nan craobh. Ach an dèanadh seacaid a’ chùis idir?
Ach mar Orwell fhèin, cha deach ar bàthadh. Agus mur eil mo bhean dha-rìribh an làthair
Ràinig sinn creag nas àirde na na garbh-thuinn. Iomadach òir-dhuilleag an fhoghair
Agus las sinn teine a tha a’ loisgeadh fhathast. a’ cur car san doimhneachd dhonn-ruadh. an cluinneadh cuideigin eile m’ eubhachd,
a-muigh an seo air a’ mhòintich cheòthach
Nam sheasamh an seo air creig ghainmheach. a’ dol fodha ann an lèig air cùl luachrach?
2) Baga Dòrnaireachd An t-uisge cas fodham a’ siubhal seachad.
B’ ann dà mhìos às dèidh an reifrinn Saoil a bheil geata-feansa ann,
a bha an co-là-breith agam. A-mhàin orts’ air a’ bhruaich thall tha m’ aire. a ghabhadh togail far a bhannaichean
Seasgad ‘s a sia bliadhna dh’aois. Am math thu a-chaoidh m’ fhacal tuaisteach, gus drochaid a dhèanamh?

Cheannaich mo mhac cion-fàth mo chlach-thilgeil san aibheis, Tha sin uile gu lèir cho mì-choltach.
baga dòrnaireachd mòr dhomh. mo chnàmh ‘s mo mhaistreadh mar ghrinneal. Dè mu dhèidhinn geugan beithe, ma-tà,
Chòrd e rium glan. nan robh doire faisg gu leòr oirnn?
2) Do Ghàire
Bha e dubh, dearg, agus geal, Gad chluinntinn A’ sìor dhol fodha agus m’ imcheist a’ fàs.
leis na faclan follaiseach ri lachan gàire Mar an saighdear truagh ud sa Chogadh Mhòr
‘Lonsdail Lunnainn’. san rùm eile. a chuala mi mu dhèidhinn air an telebhisean.

Lean mi orm Mar eas àrd caol Esan a’ dol fodha fad làithean
ga leadraigeadh de èibhneis gheal ann an sloc grànnda eabair, ‘s a chàirdean
fad seachdainean. thar creig mo chridhe. a’ fàilligeadh air a shlaodadh a-mach às.

Air a’ cheann thall Fon àm a bha an truaghan bochd

bha mo ghàirdean goirt. 3) Cò mheud itealan? an àirde dhan amhach aige sa pholl,
Siondrom tunail charpalaich. (Airson m’ ogha Callan, 18 mìosan) bha e gu tur air a chiall a chall.
Cò mheud itealan
Chuimhnich mi an uair sin a chunnaic sinn madainn an-diugh Ach an uair sin dhùisg mi sa rùm agam.
nach eil càil nas riatanaiche a’ dol thairis oirnn Dhùisg mi rim mhnaoi ‘s rim mhac
ri linn còmhraig na co-chothrom. tron ghuirme? air madainn bhrèagha dheàrrsach.

Sin agus cridhe ciùin. Thar craobhan buidhe an fhoghair

fon a thogas tu le aire 2) Inneal-èisteachd
nad chorragan beaga Nam stad sa choille-samhraidh
iongantas dearcaig is duilleige? a’ rùrachadh ann am pòcaid lèine
Sàidh-Fàidh airson m’ inneal-èisteachd
Cò mheud itealan ach an cluinn mi nas fheàrr an oiteag
1) Gàidhlig Ghalàgtaga air na thomh sinn madainn an-diugh a’ tha sèideadh tron duilleach uaine.
Siolandair gleansach tiotànamach is mise nam laighe na ‘s iad a’ sgèith os ar cionn
bhroinn. tro sgòthan nan speur?
Capsal-fànais na ghath-solais a’ tolladh damhna dorcha
nan speur. Os cionn na seann chraoibh-ubhail Pàipear Maidne
Lannsa-leighis a’ tro-lotadh cràdh iongarach na bithe. fon a thog thu nad làmhan beaga
Àiria drùidhteach gam thogail nas àirde na fuaim fhèin. cùramach na h-ùbhlan uaine ud leugh
a thuit sa ghàrradh le ugh
Mise air thuras bho na chaidh gus na dh’èireas.
Sàr-Ghaeilge ri leughadh is àrd-èibhneas orm. gus an cur còmhla san t-seada
An impis leum-hàidhpeir gu ceann-uidhe nam bàidh. airson nan lon-dubh acrach bochda
Cluainean glasa, uisgeachan ciùine Talamh an Àigh. nuair a thig fuachd a’ gheamhraidh
nuair a thig fuachd a’ gheamhraidh.
Uair a thìd’ a-mhàin bho àin an Latha.

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- 0
A fter two hours there is no sign of
the man. Gary is aware of himself
only as an object of suspicion
hanging around in a lane where big houses
with cupolas and porticos lie in the silence of
:cfl[@em\ij`fe
Short Story by Paul Brownsey
He is gaunt, older than she, but straight-
backed as a soldier. The angle in the wall
masked his approach.
‘Oh. Darling. Hi. Hello. Couldn’t the
garage—?’ She folds her arms over her nipples.
wealth beyond high hedges and serious gates. ‘Yes, I wondered that, too. Why you didn’t do
His awareness is given sudden voice: ‘Are it at once?’
you trying to make up your mind which
house to burgle?’
✯ ‘Well, I didn’t notice him dropping it—‘
‘So you can’t be sure the money was his.’
The growly voice has enough joking tone The ribbed sweater with leather patches
to avoid rudeness but not enough to eliminate at elbows and shoulders confirm a military
a warning that she isn’t joking. She glares out impression, though avant garde architecture
from behind high spiked gates. She taps the does not seem a colonel’s natural habitat.
gate with a garden trowel, as though belatedly If she asks What for? he has no answer. He storeyed house that appears to have been built ‘Garage hasn’t got the part.’
to attract his attention. seemed a nice old boy…We sort of clicked…There on a corner of land sliced off by leylandii ‘Well, not sure, but, well, no-one overtook
‘Oh, no, I’m just waiting for someone.’ was something about him that drew me to him… from a bigger demesne. Between visible metal us and when I walked back the money was
‘Waiting for your accomplice.’ Her face has All are inadequate answers to a challenge girders, its walls seem made of rocks and glass lying just where he’d stopped to take out his
the wrinkles of sweet-old-ladyhood; her eyes about loitering in the lane for two hours. fragments compounded together. The front hankie.’
are a border guard’s sighting someone of the ‘You can leave your name and address. If door is concealed within an angle. ‘You’d better go,’ the man says. He goes
wrong race. I hear of anyone meeting your description, There’s an instant smile and a cool-edged indoors without looking at the woman, then
‘No, no, for a man who walks a dog here. I will let him have it.’ Unspoken: and inform tang of vanilla from the blonde young woman turns to say softly, ‘My wife does not want
Well, he did yesterday.’ the police if there are any burglaries. in tight denims who opens the door to his to be bothered by your tuppeny-ha’penny
Her silence informs Gary that this won’t But the truth shall make you free, honesty ring of the bell. Nipples press their outline stories about lost money.’ As he vanishes she
do. will protect him. He pats his pockets. though her shiny slinky mallard-green top. smiles and shrugs.
‘A spaniel sort of dog, brown and white, No pen. ‘Sorry to bother you.’ No cancer behind The door that shuts on their lives shuts,
on a retractable lead. We got talking because I ‘Wait.’ Her mansion might have been these nipples. Probably. Unlike Alison’s. ‘I too, on yesterday’s promise. A promise of
got caught up in it. The lead. I couldn’t make designed by Rennie Mackintosh. While she wonder if you can help me find someone something pure, something real.Why, oh why,
out whether he called it Molly or Milly. He is inside it, two small tulip-shaped windows who could be one of your neighbours.’ couldn’t he have just have taken the chance
was quite elderly, but his hair was still fair. He in the stylised turret keep him in their sights. ‘We don’t know the neighbours.’ Her and replied, Right, let’s meet tomorrow and walk
went to the village school here, then away to After ten long minutes she returns to hand a laugh invites him to find it funny, too. ‘We’ve above the clouds?
Glenalmond. Not thin.Wearing—is it called a pencil and a used envelope (“Miss J. Braid”) just moved in. My husband’s out.’ But suppose Gary’s lie had paid off and
camel overcoat? It looked very good quality.’ through the locked gates. Writing his name ‘Well, you might have seen him walking she’d said something like, ‘Oh, that sounds
So the man was rich and it would be easy and address is like signing a police confession. his dog, this man, a spaniel sort of thing, like Len McMeechin at Dumfoyn House at
for Gary to mug him in a discreet lane of She nods dismissal. She watches him until he brown and white, called Molly or Milly. He’s the top of the lane, it’s got, like, a parapet, he’s
overhanging boughs. is out of sight. quite old, but he’s got a young face and a full wonderful for 80, used to own a big firm that
‘Very friendly and easy to talk to.’ That In front of a tree towards the foot of the head of hair, a big cloud of fair hair like a little hired out excavating equipment, branches all
was true, as people ordinarily speak. Yet it lane, he halts, defiant as a teenager turning boy’s. He looks like life hasn’t damaged him.’ over the country, his wife died last year, sad.”
wasn’t true, it tidied too much away behind his music up loud. And when he notices the He waves the £40. ‘I want to return some Mightn’t it have been self-defeating? Whatever
a conventional phrase. ‘What he said was cassette still dangling from its branch, the money he dropped walking his dog in the the old man had conveyed—offered?—it was
ordinary enough, about how strict things hope that was corroded by her suspicion is lane yesterday.’ like something glimpsed in the background
were when he was a boy, the belt at school renewed. ‘Oh, that’s so sweet!’ She leans a shoulder of a photograph, not what you were supposed
and church twice on Sundays, but”—and he As he and the old man had neared the against the door jamb, thumbs in belt loops, to be looking at. A name, an address, a history
realises as he says it that this is not an acceptable turn-off for the Highland Trail, Gary had nipples leading the conversation. ‘You’re from giving rise to expectations—these would
justification for his being discovered in the been halted—had even for one confused up in the village?’ stack up in the foreground, diminishing what
lane—“how he talked was different, somehow, moment thought it was there because of the ‘No, Glasgow. I was just out here hiking could be detected in the margins…
not like I was a passing stranger.’ old man—by something hanging by a piece yesterday.’ …But here, where the lane meets the
Yes, that was what it was not like. But of green twine: an audio cassette, not in its ‘And you came back today just to return main road through Killarin, is a man walking
what was it like? Twenty-four hours haven’t box, slowly twirling. his money?’ Her smile goes all over him, a dog. No, it’s not him, and the dog is a white-
produced a clear idea. No wonder he failed to ‘It’s like—do you know Doon Hill at approving. footed boxer, but it is suddenly obvious that
seize an opportunity that is now, in retrospect, Aberfoyle?’ Gary had asked. ‘The trees at But from the eyes of the old man had Gary should have asked a dog-walker for
precious. the top have hundreds of things tied to come neither approval nor disapproval, information, for there is a freemasonry of
‘He is not a friend of yours, then.’ them—strips of cloth, mainly—with messages only attention so selfless that conventional dog-walkers.
‘Oh, not a friend, we’d not met before.’And attached, prayers: that someone will find a job responses and promptings had no power to No lie this time.
anyway, can an old man like that be a friend of or get money or someone will love them. chivvy you. ‘Excuse me.’
a guy like himself? ‘We didn’t exactly arrange Someone will get better. Some association Behind her in the hall a large wall mirror The man is quite young, but this is disguised
to meet today but he sort of suggested it.’ with fairies and magic. All a bit silly.’ gives back Gary’s earnest eyes, his full head by a flat cap and a large pear-shaped body.
Explain, says the silence. Magic is invoked here, too, by the dangling of hair still almost entirely black, his puppy- He’d halted before Gary spoke, apparently
‘See, I was out here on a walk, a hike, cassette. Milly or Molly had swerved away fat cheeks with the experiment of designer to allow his eyes to follow a schoolgirl in a
down the lane here and along the Highland from it with a whimper. Dogs are renowned stubble, his unassuming zip-up jacket and skimpy black skirt that she repeatedly pulls
Trail, a bit of it. You couldn’t see the loch to for sensing things that humans usually can’t. cargo trousers: Alison had loved that person. down with a coarse comfy functional tug that
the north because it was covered by cloud but Perhaps a prayer is recorded on it, perhaps ‘I just took another day’s leave.’ has nothing to do with the poised allure you
you could see the summits above the clouds. music as an offering. How touching to expect ‘To let someone have some money they’d might think she’d been aiming at. When he
We had a bit of a discussion about whether the the occult powers to have the equipment to dropped? Oh my God! That is amazing. What turns to Gary he widens his eyes and purses
correct phrase is cloud inversion or temperature access an obsolete medium. do you do? You are a good person.’ The arms his lips and nods towards the girl, inviting a
inversion. ‘I expect someone found it in the are fervent but the embrace is over before he shared appreciation.
‘He said it would be ever so exciting—he undergrowth and strung it up so that whoever realises what is happening. The press of her ‘I’m looking for a man—‘
actually said ever so—being up on the hills in lost it would find it easily if they came back body against his was as quick as though they ‘Each to his choice. Can’t help feeling you
sunshine when they were islands in a sea of to look for it.’ The old man’s words had been were playing a new form of playground tag miss an awful lot, though.’
clouds. I said I couldn’t go in that direction the sensible explanation; but something using quick body-body touches. Tagged by ‘No, not like that.’
today—yesterday—because of where I’d was transmitted through his speaking them her nipples. It wasn’t that with the old man, surely.
left my car, and he said, like he knew there for which the puzzling word grace keeps ‘I’m just in local government. Trading ‘No, someone who dropped some money.
would be, ‘There might be another cloud suggesting itself. standards.’ He walks a dog in the lane there, a brown and
inversion tomorrow, so you could come back You can’t, though, knock on a door and ‘Look, we’re having a party on the 22nd white spaniel called Molly or Milly.’ He waves
tomorrow.’ ‘ say you’re looking for someone whose words to meet all our neighbours. You must come! the money. ‘I wanted to return it to him.Very
Even the slightest resemblance of that to transmit grace. Gary transfers two £20 notes You’ll probably meet your man there to give tall and upright, rather imposing. A big bright
an arrangement to meet has drained out of it from his wallet to a pocket, handy to flourish him his money.’ halo of fair hair, like an—‘ He’d been about
under her judicial gaze. in support of a lie. ‘“And why did you not hand it to him to say angel’s. ‘A nice old boy.’
‘I was just, like, hoping to see him again.’ He retraces his steps and chooses a single- when he dropped it?’ ‘A brown and white spaniel called Molly?

(' Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 Gf\kip
No, I don’t think I recognise him.’ The
disavowal in that him embraces anyone who
knew him.‘Perhaps someone from Craigholm.
Come along, Shamba.’ The boxer licks Gary’s
shoe with delicate reverence, then stares up at
him, the savagery of her boxer jaw eclipsed
because through her eyes comes pure patient Oh, Tell Me What Was on Yer Road Moonrise, New Year’s Eve
compassion from another world. Henry Bell Chris Agee
‘Uh—Craigholm?’
‘The Doolally Dump. The rest home, Portishead pier’s not special it’s rust The moon rose behind us.
whatever it is.’ and concrete and no pavilion. We turned to face
‘I’m not from Killarin.’ But there,
‘Ah! Well, we didn’t want it here, I can tell there after your father’s death a dolphin its full large dial
you. But these old houses are so large... After breaks the surface and you know it’s him. low over Bloody Foreland.
Archie Lindsay died it was sold for some sort I know it’s not.
of—well, not the really serious cases, but, you Across the water the lights at the top It cast its wavering
know, people too fond of the sauce or life of the power plant chimneys start to blink on phenomenological foil over
gets a bit too much for them, stress, that sort just at the moment the dolphin leaves.
of thing. Not the sort of place you want in a But then, the bay’s whale-road and seal-road.
village like this. Children... it is getting dark. A wisp of cloud
‘They got planning permission, though.
They go in for pet therapy.’ Irony lies heavy At the wedding you talk about him twisted a half-veil
on the phrase. ‘A bloody great pack of dogs and the dolphin and you read ‘Wild Geese,’ over its shadowy
and the inmates pat them and look after them because geese are the souls of the dead.
and take them for walkies. Your man could And as you read it, we hear flapping and honking, seas. A scudding bank
have been one of them. They don’t pick the great fat Canada Geese land first topped it
dogshit up, either.’ in the graveyard; they’re souls visiting bones,
I couldn’t make out whether he called it Molly having crossed the water and found you. like a matador’s hat,
or Milly. Or he switched between Molly and Though I know they are just geese. then blocked it
Milly because he wasn’t sure what was the
name of a dog that was one of the common with a backlit darkness.
stock of the Doolally Dump. Spindrift’s suds
‘But would a patient from there have £40 Offerings
in his pocket?’ A last attempt to save the day. Peter Gilmour fled the rising tideline
‘Don’t see why not. Place costs a packet in a tumbleweed
to stay.’ When I left out food and drink for her ghost,
The look that neither approved nor I realised I must be going mad. of moments
disapproved and freed you was nothing but Even though many many years had passed whitening the night.
gaga vacuity. How could he have been taken in since she cut her throat, I had such thoughts,
by the babble of someone in a home?—He’d and made lists of snacks she might appreciate, Glad your old Dad’s
been on the brink of saying, Right, let’s meet also the hours when I should put them out. still here? Give me a kiss.
tomorrow walk and above the clouds; he’d traipsed
out here again today, using up holiday leave, I would promptly take them in the next day, It’s good being
to look for an imaginary once-in-a-life-time disappointed, in spite of myself, together, huh?
opportunity. Someone whose job is clamping that they had not been touched. Some animals,
down on scams to save the public from their it seemed to me, had nosed them, sniffed them, That was always, of
fantasies falls for fantasies himself! but apparently gone no further. course, the real reason
And actually, cloud inversions are very rare: I would put them out again the next day.
that’s what the internet said last night. for our time
‘Well, thanks anyway.’ Gary pockets the Once I had set out a glass of red wine, in Donegal.
notes with a decisive air of that’s-that-cleared- for towards the end she had been a lush,
up. The girl walks haltingly, engrossed in her and it had been spilled on the front steps for Jacob
mobile, still pulling her skirt down every few quite badly. I stopped to inspect the stain
steps. If Alison had lived they might have had and, as I did so, a fierce wind arose
a daughter. She might have had the shrewd as if to blow the ill sense out of me.
mean eyes of this girl. Gary mimes a glance
at her and gives the flat-capped dog-walker Blew, instead, the picnic down the garden,
a man-to-man smirk in farewell. He says, many of the things she had truly loved,
‘Goodbye, Shamba,’ but now the boxer refuses grapes, apples, yoghurt, mince pies, oranges,
eye contact, lowering her head as if sad about chicken legs, pork pies, bread and humus, cheese.
something.
He hurries to his car. He drives fast. No- I left them to the wind and the animals
one in any of the cars he approaches or and to whatever else, whoever else,
passes, drivers of sensible vehicles on ordinary was grimly harboured there, where the woods began.
sensible errands, would ever lurk in a secluded
lane on the off-chance of something pure,
something real—what the fuck does that even
mean?—from a stranger they had a mundane
chat with the day before. He’s been as daft as
the time he made his secret journey out to
Doon Hill and fastened to a tree a beautiful
black and silver tie, a gift from Alison, with a
useless message that was neither a prayer nor
the mere expression of a wish: ‘Let Alison’s
cancer go into remission.’ He does not notice
that for the second day in a row there is a
cloud inversion over the loch to the north.n

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- ((
 K_\Jn`dd`e^C\jjfe
Here are some interesting smells: onto her hands. A simple matter that only
required a simple, mundane answer. She could
Chlorine have said she picked up the wrong packet— a
Nutmeg burst packet —in the supermarket. Or she was
Perfume Short Story by Nick Holdstock in Alice’s kitchen and saw the jar and thought
Fear to herself how many years it had been since
The temple of someone you love. she even smelt it. Either reply would have

Which of these does not belong? You will

✯ worked. I would have gone to sleep.
Tariq is looking at his feet. I say, ‘You seem
probably say ‘fear’, that it is not a smell. alright.’ Which should be perfectly clear: this
But most of us know little of fear— we the pool. But improbably, he and Macraw are we look like fools than something happens is my thumb twitching, pointing directly
often confuse it with worry: our choice of best friends. They are a double-act in-waiting to them. down.
shoes, the state of our hair, where we parked for their audience, their victim, who stands As adults, we are expected to have self- But Tariq, like Susan last night, does not
the car. before me. I have already denied him mercy control. We are supposed to contain our fears, seem to hear. As with her, there are seconds
There is nothing everyday about fear: it twice this term. Then I walked the few steps to keep them submerged. To tell ourselves of shock. But with him, that’s all they are. Not
heralds catastrophe.You breathe it in, through to my office, opened the green metal cabinet, we’re mistaken. She loves us. She wouldn’t. a panicked search for a lie. Not an attempt to
your nose, through your mouth. Its odour drew out the brown pair of trunks worn by There are many reasons why she does not make her voice casual when she says, ‘Don’t
is bitter and tight. Like pencils crushed into six years of boys. I do not know who they answer her phone. know.’
shards. Like chalk dust in the nose. But it is belonged to; they were here when I arrived. ‘My stomach. It hurts. I think I’m going ‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ I say,
not these other smells. It is only itself. Being neither black, nor dark blue, they are to be sick.’ and then Tariq looks up. He stares and says,
So yes, fear is a smell. I know this, and so not even regulation. It is as if they were left Tariq brings his hands to his belly, even in a voice now steady, ‘No, you’re wrong. I’m
does Tariq, standing in front of my office and for the sole purpose of shaming. groans a little. The action is so overdone that sick.’
saying he has forgotten his swimming trunks. ‘Let’s see your elephant,’ shouts Nisbett I actually smile. On seeing this, he half-smiles He glances at the water, adds, ‘I’ll probably
For the third time this term. from the shallows. I point at him and say, ‘Be back, looks slightly less afraid. He is trying throw up.’
He looks at my white face. I look at his quiet.’ My words bounce off the walls and to reassure himself. To think away the fear. It sounds like a threat. He fears them more
brown face. He says, ‘I thought they were in water; the echo is a shout. Which of course is possible.There are reasons than me, and probably with good reason. If I
my bag.’ But they do not stop swimming and for everything: for why I might let him off (a so much as touch him, I could lose my job.
‘Did you?’I ask, then breathe in sharply. I splashing; Nisbett even looks pleased. No sudden swell of pity); for Susan having her hair Whereas they can hold him under. Punch
consider his desperation. The quick glances doubt he will say, with a sneer, that I have a cut short (just because she fancied a change); him in the balls.
he throws at the pool already containing his ‘You’re going in,’ I say. This time he does
class. not say ‘wait’ when I go in my office. I look
And because I have taken a deeper breath, at the folders, letters, the photo on the desk. I
or because he has distracted me, my resident
The question then is how this nutmeg got onto her hands. A and Susan just before her surgery. She is pale,
smell shifts. Instead of fear, there is chlorine. simple matter that only required a simple, mundane answer. smiling bravely. Her head is on my shoulder.
I am walking miles of hospital floor while She probably thought it her last picture; I’m
surgeons cut into Susan. After four hours, I sure we both did. I am kissing her long brown
was sure she had died: there could be nothing hair. Burying my nose.
left to remove. soft spot for Tariq. The truth is that I dislike for her getting rid of her fleeces (the new tops And what you smell is never just perfume.
I force the air from my nose. This is not him as much as Nisbett.Though nowhere near do look better); for her drinking more (well, No matter how expensive, how evocative its
chlorine.What we call ‘chlorine’ is something as puny as Nisbett, he is as poor a swimmer. why not?). For why, when I kissed her palm name, the scent of it means nothing until it
else besides. It is the odour of things from His arms and legs could do the work, if only last night, there was the odour of nutmeg. is worn. Then what we smell is no longer
the body reacting with chlorine. Urine, skin, he would try. ‘Do you want to see the nurse?’ is what I Calvin Klein or Chanel, not these oils and
shampoo, sweat, deodorant, hormones and And they will not drown him. They will should say. It would be far easier than keeping solvents pumped into stupid bottles.These are
blood: these combine with chlorine to form poke or kick him underwater, throw the ball an eye on him in the pool. just a medium, a way of drawing something
chloramine. This is that fabled swimming at his head. Although I have found blood in Myristica fragrans. An evergreen tree. out. An essence. Some quality of hers that
pool smell. There is nothing clean about it. the changing room— a line of small red drops Indigenous to the Banda Islands of Indonesia. cannot, should not change.
When the water brings tears to your eyes, the as from a bleeding nose —it could have been It is the only tropical fruit that produces two I open the cupboard. Take the shorts. Go
problem isn’t too much chlorine, but nowhere anyone’s. different spices. Mace, the covering of the back out to him. He is standing where I left
near enough. I start towards my office. Tariq blurts my seed, and nutmeg, the seed itself. It is said to him, arms folded, hunched over, as if he were
‘Yes,’ says Tariq and stares at my shoulder. ‘I name. be a tree that ‘bruises easily’. cold. Although his lips are moving I can hear
told my mum to put them in.’ ‘What is it?’ I say, and stop, words being I am allergic to nutmeg. Not so much I no sounds. His eyes are closed. He seems to
If this were out in the open, it wouldn’t be redundant. Several seconds pass. Then he says go into shock, but enough to make me sick. be praying.
so bad. The light would help to break things he’s ill. There has been no nutmeg in our house for This is what I would say to him if I
down. The air would move the smell. ‘What’s wrong?’ I say, because I have to: the last ten years. thought that it would help; if I still believed in
Instead it is hidden, shut away, in many a child is allowed to cry ‘wolf ’. Better that The question then is how this nutmeg got whatever I felt as I sat on that hospital chair:
ways, denied. Do not ask for the wrong things. Make
I check my watch. The lesson— which sure you ask for enough.
will be water polo —is due to start in five I asked for her to survive, for the cancer
minutes. In the pool, the faces are waiting. to be gone.
They can see the goals, the ball.The caps with I did not ask for her to be the way she was.
bulges over the ears that do not really protect. So that at night, when she is sleeping, when
If you are struck by an ill- (or well-) aimed I bring my face to hers, I do not smell my
ball, you feel like a dropped box of glass. fear, or nutmeg. Just the temple of someone
‘Come on, Tariq!’ shouts Macraw, a boy so the publishing house for self-publishers I love.
grown, so powerful, he seems in the wrong And however bad school is for Tariq,
place. He is on every team that deserves however much he bleeds, or is bruised, he will
him— cricket, rugby, cross-country, football. A small & friendly Aberdeenshire-based publishing get over it. Perhaps when he’s at university, or
He is liked by most of the staff and pupils. facilitator offering a full range of services through editorial, later, when he has a job, there’ll be a morning
He is the kind of boy that reminds me I don’t when he sees school uniforms, hears the bay
have a son. design, sales and marketing. Phone or email to discuss your of boyish laughs, and does not flinch, is not
Tariq bites his lip and moves his eyes to my afraid; just slowly inhales. After disbelief, and
face. He can have no reason for thinking that project and find out how we can help. a flicker of memory, he will realise the fear
I will relent. He probably does not even see is gone.
me as a person. I am not a husband, a teacher, [email protected] | www.lumphananpress.co.uk So I hold out the swimming trunks. Say,
a man with his own fears.To him I am merely ‘Now put these on.’
Caesar with his thumb outstretched. twitter: @lumphananpress | 01339880873 For a moment the pool goes quiet. Then
‘Make him skinny dip,’ shouts Nisbett. his classmates cheer. n
His body is so white and scrawny it disgraces

() Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 Gf\kip
Eulogy to Barefoot Fathers Pantoum to the Swinging Sixties, Grace Notes
Donald S Murray Anstruther Kirsteen Scott
James Andrew
The old ones marvelled at our footwear, When I watched you drown the kittens
the shoes and boots We often visited the fair and hung around; in the old zinc pail, I was curious
worn out each day young men who hankered for horizons, about death
en route from primary school, our legs like sticks in dead-tight trousers;
our half-grown sideburns only half-concealing acne. curious about the blob of blood on the nose
envying the way our feet of the mouse in the trap we had set in the cupboard
were never rinsed in mud or peat We did a lot of brooding on horizons under the stairs
the way theirs were at that age, as speakers blared out ‘Yellow Submarine’,
recalling too how skin and yet more acne sneaked from sideburns still curious when we drew the curtains
as music lifted well above its lyrics for the hearse to pass and I keeked to see.
was often brown as tan-hide
the way they stepped within that found more joy in silly submarines Then stories came of the laying-out,
cow-pats eased out on the village road. beside the dodgem cars that bashed and crashed the shawling of the mirrors and how they coffined
Or how heel and toe was often ringed as music danced away from lyrics. him quick for the days were warm.
Girls giggled in short skirts, with pampered hair,
by the chill of spring-water, There were bigger, deeper deaths when boundaries
bruises like thick leather chain-stitched and dodgem cars bashed on were lost in haar and I had to trust the ground
by needle-points of weather. beside the harbour with its washed-out mud and half-turned boats beneath my feet
Yet later on, they mocked us and giggles girled beneath their bleached-out hair
beside the pier that pointed to the sea’s horizon trusting to hear again, like wind in the wires,
as they watched us go the grace notes in an old lament.
rocking past on platform soles, stilettos beyond the mud and stranded boats
heading out to dance-halls, and youth that bashed from car to car
following the path they walked down beside the harbour wall that hid horizons
past which we found these seats, watched films about the sixties. Rains January 2016
en route to growing old. Marie-Therese Taylor
We youths crashed on from car to here,
dreamed on of fun we longed for, These once were fields.
then found our way to this settee, this DVD Now small tides lap soft over land
about the fun we knew the rest had. sunk beneath an unmapped lake
Washed Up
Olive Ritch The fun for which we longed so much, Cattle float comically upended
gauche boys on legs like sticks in such tight trousers, a mare and foal - piebald balloons
Sent from the sea, a porcelain doll – was always had by someone else. a ewe, her lambs at once defended
headless, handless, and footless – We hung around, then hung around. and condemned
inside a fleece clogged useless
a reminder of the Lessing as a twisted umbrella in this rain
and its cargo, driven onto rocks
The Shins Roads are mocked
at Klavers Geo, Fair Isle Ingrid Leonard navigable only by boat.
in a storm in eighteen-sixty-eight. Rivers disregard their boundaries,
Wet tarmac and an outside toilet, breaching walls of homes that
After years on the seabed, the doll sticky plant pods in the school garden, no one wants to leave.
was washed up at a beachcomber’s a-raking over fresh earth. The only tree trunks
for miles are the tibiae of boys What, you ask, is left to save
feet on Papay, broken (but beautiful), and girls, though ours don’t count save paper memories
and the beachcomber picked the doll up, in the apportioning of justice, long and fine soiled in the creeping sludge,
though they are. These shanks carry the weight and soft furnishings
and put it in her pocket, knowing of a human being in the washing machine caught in the slick?
the doll’s hope of salvation. of the world, set to rinse and full of tumbles –
the grass is wet, the rain dull and old. In churches and halls they gather
We watch as they line up, smooth and pray
or scrape-kneed, to receive a kick from the boy Cleanse me from my sin
with bent head and trainer swinging, Oh wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.
who doesn’t want to think, as hills look on
through drizzle and a child with a bell in hand
tolls an afternoon of guitar and fiddle.

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- (*
N ow that she was out here, she felt
a change was coming. There was
a slight stirring of the air, a gentle
shift and resettling. Not a wind exactly, not
even a breath, but enough to ease the sun’s
JhlXccj
Short Story by Chris Lamb
bedding already gone, the thin wooden frame
left looking oddly insubstantial. She could see
where he had lain, where the weight of him
had left its mark over the years, his shape.
She lay down in the hollow and smoothed
heat from your skin, enough so you’d notice. her clothes out and folded her arms over her
She looked over to where the Allinson’s chest. From there she could see the salt streaks
sheets were hung, white as sails and as still as
the moon. Besides hers she knew they would
✯ on the window and the way the sun played
through them. Looking up she saw the chaos
be an admonishment. But today she had of cracks in the ceiling and the swirl of dust
towels, worn and faded and no two the same. in the shafts of light.
She looked up to the sky, to the west from a pocket of her backpack. The door opened on the stairs. In the kitchen she saw her She watched and she waited for something
where the radio said the clouds would come and her mother stood there, saying nothing, mother on her knees, loading towels in to the of him to emerge from it. Downstairs she
‘late afternoon/early evening’. Remembering it looking her up and down. Then her mother’s washing machine, one of them folded and on knew he would be being remembered and
now she could hear that slash in his voice, hand reached out and briefly clasped her the floor to act as a cushion. She didn’t turn glasses raised to his name. Here only the
the man on the radio, the certainty of it that forearm. to speak but nodded her head to one side to silence spoke of him The weight of it pressed
had no time for an or or a maybe. It was two ‘You didn’t need to….,’ she said as Sarah indicate the pan on the hob. down on her, kept her still. After a while she
now, the Allinson’s sheets had been out since passed her on her way into the house. ‘And bread,’ she added, closing the door of closed her eyes and was soon asleep.
eleven. And three gardens down a row of ‘Well, but who else?’ Sarah said. the washing machine.
shirts hung motionless. There was no sign of The house was just as it always was, with ‘Thanks.’ Sarah went into the kitchen and When she wakes it is to a half lit room,
the cloud to come, just a black dot and its its walls forever painted and repainted the took a bowl from the cupboard. She stood by to brightness and shade together. She hears
disembodied vapour trail, its progress barely same colour, its smell so familiar and at once the hob, turning the bowl in her hands as if the first spots of rain tap against the window,
discernible and as silent as the stars. comforting and disheartening. It held a damp unsure what to do next. unhurried fat drops that fall with the last rays
There was no one in the neighbouring in its walls that no amount of heat or light ‘Could you hang those out when they’re of sun before the gloom that will come with
gardens. No faces at overlooking windows. seemed able to shift. done? Next door are popping round this the squall.
She looked to the back door, then grabbed ‘You’ll need to use the sofa bed,’ her afternoon,’ said her mother. The towels are flapping when she reaches
her clothes line and slipped her shoes from mother said. ‘He’s in your room. They moved Sarah nodded, still turning the bowl. them, tugging at the line like birds in a snare.
her feet. Quickly she wound one end of the him…it’s colder.’ ‘Where did you find him?’ she asked. Next door she sees the Allinson’s sheets still
line around the nearest pole and pulled it tight. ‘He’s in…….’ she began to say, but instead ‘In his room. I made him breakfast but he out, billowing now, their corners cracking
She turned and walked along by the fence, turned and moved towards the door that was didn’t come down,’ her mother said. like whips in the wind. Out to sea she sees
holding the line taut, and his voice came so familiar, put her hand on the brass handle, ‘He’s gone now,’ she added, a few moments the rain coming, shimmering curtains that are
suddenly in her head now as she plucked at the shape of it, like an egg, the cool solid heft later. touched with red by the setting sun. The sea
it, testing. There is a right way and wrong way drives to shore, furious, relentless, its surface
for everything Sarah. She veered to her right, heaving and strafed with rain.
diagonally across the lawn and wrapped the It hits her before she can take the first
line tightly around the second pole. Along the towel down; in just a few seconds the water
fence, to the next pole, then diagonally again
and finally back to the starting point.
She stood on the doorstep, feeling the is streaming down her face and into her eyes,
her mouth, the back of her neck. So fast she
She worked quickly now, four pegs from
the bag, two in her hand and two in her chill of the north-westerly and waited, has to swallow to keep from feeling like she is
drowning. Her clothes are stuck to her with
mouth, and two towels from the basket. A
glance to the back door – it was still shut - though she had keys somewhere in a a wet so cold it is difficult to move, to lift her
arms high enough to take the pegs off.
then towel, peg, peg, towel, peg, peg. Again
the look, again the pegs and the towels, until pocket of her backpack.The door opened ‘Hurry up’ he had shouted from the back
door, his frame in silhouette, his anger all the
they are all there, on the line, the first ones worse because she couldn’t see it but knew it
already dripping. and her mother stood there, saying was there. A dark and sudden squall had come
Only then does she remember that she then too and Sarah had frantically grasped at
has only one clothes pole, that its slotted nothing, looking her up and down. the pegs holding the shirts to the line, her
end grasps the lines where they meet at the fingers frozen, the strength in them gone. She
diagonal, that this way she can lift two lines Then her mother’s hand reached out and had pulled at the pegs with her teeth.
of towels higher into the air with just the ‘For Christ’s sake get a move on, they’ll be
one pole. briefly clasped her forearm. soaked’ he’d said. He didn’t swear, was careful
never to swear. Not in front of a woman, she’d
It had almost been as if he had waited. The once heard him say. Or a child.
summer had been long and hot but now the Sarah worked faster then, the fear driving
first of the winter was blowing in from the her, she had found her method. She pulled
northwest and the horsetail waves chasing the the pegs in her teeth, clasped the shirt with
gulls from the sand suddenly seemed a long the palms of her hands and pulled it into the
way from inviting. of it, so known to her hand it was like the Next door had come while she was hanging basket. By the time she had done the third
‘I’ll come,’ she’d told her mother on the tread of a parent’s footstep on the loose board the towels. She could hear the hushed tone one they were all sodden.
phone two days before. She’d been at her of the hall floor. She could no more dislodge of condolences being offered through the She turns her face away from the sea now
desk in the halls of residence trying to start the memory than dislodge the hand itself. door of the living room as she put her foot just for the relief of it, just so that she can
an essay when there was a knock at the door The door opened soundlessly. Stillness on the first step of the stairs. She began to peel the clothes from her front and catch her
and someone shouting through it ‘phone for spilled like liquid from the room, like the climb, each foot placed carefully in the centre breath without fighting the wind for it. Just
you.’ sunlight that poured through the window of each step like a child trying to be quiet, so that she can see. She can hear only the
‘Grandpa’s dead’ her mother had said, after and glistened from the walls, from the desk her hand trailing on the bannister, her fingers roaring. She squeezes the water from her eyes
she’d said ‘hello?’ and just as she was about to and the chair, from the china doll and the gliding along the grooves of it. At the top she and opens them to see her mother slapping
say it again. jewellery box, from the motes that hung like moved to the door straight in front of her and her hands hard against the window then
‘Oh,’ was all she could think to say, then stars and from the white dead skin of her placed her hand flat on the centre of it, the beckoning her, beckoning her in.
‘what happened?’ when it was clear her Grandfather. other hesitating on the handle. Her mother says nothing to her, as she
mother wasn’t going to fill the silence. The warmth inside surprised her, a feeling did then. She had seen Sarah kneeling by the
‘Just old, I guess.’You could hear the shrug In the hall she waited, listening for familiar underlined by the sparseness of the furnishing, shirts, the water pooling by them, the fury
in her voice. sounds, the ticking of the clock, the window the bare walls, the cool blue of the sky in the and shame of his back turned to them, but
that shuddered. And for sounds she knew window. She walked over to it and saw for the had said nothing. Now, as she takes the two
Two days had passed before there was a train would not come. first time the view he’d had, of the washing towels Sarah has brought, Sarah shivers in the
to take her back. She stood on the doorstep, ‘There’s soup if you want it,’ her mother hanging unmoving, the long sweep of the bay memory and reality of rain and she recognises
feeling the chill of the north-westerly and called. and the sea and the sky almost the same. fear in both of them. n
waited, though she had keys somewhere in Sarah had a hand on the bannister, a foot On the bed there was only the mattress, the

(+ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 Gf\kip
the time it takes to boil an egg i.m. Sandy Hutchison Dumyat
Ali Whitelock Pàdraig MacAoidh Richie McCaffery

the last taste Tha e seachad air meadhan-oidhche an Olomouc On the way up Dumyat
in your mouth would agus tha sinn nar càpraid eadar Ponorka I saw a huddled group
have been that of terror agus Hotel Gol, ’s ged nach robh guth-seinn on the peak scatter ashes.
as strangers in white coats and non-slip shoes agam riamh, tha thu toirt orm ‘Raglan Road’
punched you hard in the fucking a ghabhail leis an dà nòt’ a th’ annam. They made a toast
chest while i wandered the house of fraser and began their descent
smearing creamy tracks of hot plum and shocking Ach far am bu chòir dha bhith just as I reached them.
coral on the thin underside of my forearm ‘On Grafton St in November’ tha thusa
at the counter with the french sounding gabhail thairis le ‘On a quiet street…’ In the stubbly heather
name and when my phone rang i heard the words agus tha sinn a’ seinn còmhla, na rannan I found the cheap urn,
alright––as though florence nightingale herself air sgaradh ann an sèist robach – tripped left as if they could just
had said them and i raced like some kind lightly along the ledge … away from me
of lipstick coated crazy fuckwit from the house so hurriedly – gus cha mhòr g’ eil sinn seinn abandon death on the top
of fraser to the car i cannot find in the car park leis a’ ghàire. of a high hill and it
i am sure i have parked in and i queue would simply stay there.
the excruciating twelve seconds Ach, Sandy, tha thu air mo chur às a rian.
for the man in front to pay i smash my credit Tog a-rithist thu fhèin e on tùs.
card in the slot insert my ticket at the boom
am urged by electronic ticker tape to please drive Am feur a-staigh
carefully and have a nice day please––fucking––spare Maggie Rabatski
me the clichés as i race down the antiseptic hall Banais Ghàidhealach
past the hand sanitiser cover your mouth when coughing Pàdraig MacAoidh a-nochd
and have you had your flu shot this year i hurtle anail mhileach na grèin’
towards the nurses’ station with its limp carnations agus an eaglais ro bheag a’ suathadh
and male nurse kevin plastic aproned stewing tea rinn am pìobaire limbo a-staigh ro bhean-na-bainnse broinn chloiche ’n t-sabhail
and arranging supermarket custard creams an dos mòr mar amhach chrom na h-eala
for the three o’clock highlight okay is a’ ghealach
so you called him a poof that time but still tron t-seirbheis a’ dùr-amharc
he took your vitals checked your stools updated tha bean-na-bainnse a’ toirt seachad iomradh iongantas an achaidh luim
your charts and points now on my arrival dhan a bràthair, a mhinistear
to the side room where you have lain since
they got you breathing again so we could be with you tha na fir ruadh a’ co-thional sa bhàr fhiodh
when you died for the second time today gus mùchadh geal seòmar Gul a’ ghuilbnich
once you were gone male nurse kevin na bainnse a sheachnadh Maggie Rabatski
shat out insincerities from the section
of the manual ‘suggested phrases on the passing of loved ones’ a’ chiad dannsa seachad, Nuair thug mi iomradh
each one thin and worn as the elbows tha am pìobaire a’ traoghadh sios dhan tràigh air glaodh cianail a’ ghuilbnich
of an oxfam sweater and i don’t doubt it must be hard le searrag-phòcaid làn fuinn thuirt fear rium Tha thu ceàrr,
to know what to say kevin but no it wasn’t cluinnidh mise ceòl aighearach ciùin.
as if he held off dying till i got there anns gach foto, tha athair fear-na-bainnse
as if my father could perfectly estimate na sheasamh beagan car ro fhad’ air falbh on mhac, Leig mi seachad e ’s fhiosam
the time it would take for me to get from mock-baronial gur fear e a bhuineadh
the house of fraser to find the car in the car park do chluaintean uaine na Galltachd,
i am sure i have parked in as if my father was somehow tha Bmh. NicFheargais, a bha na ceannard-sgoile, ga suidheachadh fèin mòinteach fhada chòmhnard rin cùl.
able to factor in that i would join the motorway ri taobh na h-uinneig, ri taobh a’ bhouncy castle Eun-san tè na mìosan grianmhor,
in the wrong direction and go speeding north ri taobh nam fear òga nam fèilidhean eun an t-suirghe, eun an togail àil.
when i should have gone speeding south
as if he could have timed so precisely gun sgot mu cheumannan an dannsa Ach air bàrr mo theanga fiathachadh —
the traffic jam on the kingston bridge let alone tha an seòmar a’ cur car ’s car ’s car – Thig cuide riumsa dhan iar-thuath
the parking nightmare that is wishaw hospital cha tèid ach aon chnàmh a bhriseadh gu cladaichean aonarach m’ òige’.
at three o’clock on a tuesday when all the out-patients Èist ris a’ ghuilbneach agamsa,
are in you’ll trust me won’t you kevin air an dithis fhear air achlaisean a chèile innis dhomh nach sgian i tron chridhe,
when i tell you i am not interested in your clichés tha dà shùil dhubha - nach bi cianalas gad thadhal gu sìor.
nor your supermarket custard creams fanned ’s an dithis dhiubh nan cadal san dìg
out to look fancy on the plate my father
died kevin forty seven minutes after i arrived tuitidh a’ bhouncy castle dhan trainnse
and for every beat in the metronome of his slowing
song i counted his breaths in and fucking na aonar aig an taigh
out watched his adam’s apple rise and fall bidh am minister uisge-beachdachadh
held his hand swallowed salt silently mu leabaidh na bainnse
screamed as entire cows and roofs and hairy
dogs called toto blustered through the eye
of my internal shit-storm if kevin, my father
truly was waiting till i got there then surely
he would have died say sixty or ninety
seconds after my arrival or in the time
it takes to boil an egg say four
minutes tops––two if you want
to dip soldiers in it?

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- (,
CXi^`\YXXe1
XgcXZ\Xe[Xd`e[
Gf\djYp8e^ljDXik`e

Solladh Shieling Children

It’s a ghost-word this solladh From bright unhurried waters
and once or twice I’ve heard it echo looping bays of old pasture
off an evening cliff or in a cave undisturbed in dreams of butter
or just in my own lonesome head the many voices of the mimic stream
with its accumulated remembrances summon back the shieling children
like rolls of storm wrack set for decay from the moors and hills they wander
in death’s dissolving after-dream
It came from old Calum a shepherd who fished saying nothing is impossible
that coast with rod and a tied-on line in the mythic times you budded in
and solladh to him was limpets be as the celandines that come
chopped up and chewed then spat to catch the warming of the sun
into a limp sea at dusk from a rock and strew my banks in golden constellations
to gather in lythe and stenlock

So here it is down on paper now

solladh returned from the ocean air One-Horned Ewe, 18 July 2013
of this brain that’s always casting for
a catch to exhibit in literature There was the afternoon beneath the cliff
but the word will go down in its own way I was sitting pretending to relax
through tangles and boulders to a dark bottom but waiting for a big event to arrive
from the immensity of all around me

say an eagle gliding low

Old Woman Picking Plants to greet me on my arid perch:
‘Hello and goodbye you daft shite’
She was picking plants
when I suddenly surprised her or the biggest whale I’d ever seen
on the side of the mountain travelling a sparkling road of tide
cut by cliffs and air out with a spout and back below: ‘Cheerio’

quaintly attired, a veritable witch but all I saw was a one-horned ewe
I thought with a shameful tremor from a distant outcrop staring through me:
but wrong I was and the proof ‘Are these bones yours?’
was stamped in her demeanour

She held for my inspection

a tiny flower of white and blue Evasion: 6 August 2013
and named it in the language
she alone there knew Months afterwards he stopped me in town
and apologised for ignoring me Flora MacMath
I smiled and nodded sagely a confession which totally threw me
and passed between her and the sea until he mentioned an evening at Largiebaan What’s left of her is doubtless
cursing the times I straddled and an incident I struggled to understand still underfoot and out of sight
that left me nothing to say at the time and barely understood in Kilcolmkill where her grieving parents
when he chose to explain it John and Helen buried her
in 1818 when at age 32
I was leaving, and somewhere between she was borne on the backs of homespun men
cliff top and forest I noticed a man the seven rough miles from ‘Leargybaan’
carrying a rucksack and dressed in green the spelling carved in her stone
coming towards me along the track which spelled her out as ‘Flora McMath’
so that it seemed we’d meet and talk
and I’d find out who he was and why which ought to suffice for an idle browser
the cliffs had drawn him so late in the day or even, since I know the type too well,
but he suddenly turned and angled away a convert to the cult of genealogy
withholding even a glance or a greeting grateful for even a name and date
and crushing my comradely expectation

One year on and he was dead from cancer

which turned the meeting that never happened
from rude avoidance to a missed opportunity
of fixing the living man in the landscape
by an invisible monument built of his words

(- Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 G_fkfYpAXd\jDXZ;feXc[

but not for me who sees the woman Bog-Eye I Won’t Get There
in probable beauty a Gaelic captive
of cliff and sea and sky and mountain Bog-eye with its idle lid A time is coming when I won’t get there
and poor little fields of corn and barley of bubbled green slime when the west with its open skies and ocean
which drank her earthy sweat in harvest conserves in its peaty sediment will close at the back of infirmity
and then in a winter’s sleep forgot her the history of diverse skies leaving me only dregs of memory
the passage of a million birds but I hold these gloomy thoughts in check
Was there ‘romance’ in any of this – and the dart and dance of insect multitudes as an animal exposed in time of threat
a sunset’s blush, a lover’s kiss – but in its archive none of my kind might stand stock-still mistaking
or mere insufferable poverty to which it is vengefully blind arrested motion for invisibility
material and emotional both has yet been found
locked in a deadly embrace? and I’ve heard moor grass complain Thus I refuse a track that narrows
in a weary whisper all its own into a landscape of imagination
There is no answer but the one when wind assails the pool’s wet margins: soon to distort and darken
I’ll keep to myself by intuition ‘You with your dangerous brain with menacing figures and features
in a secret bog-hole of imagination and creed of taking half-seen and wholly unrecognisable
the very one she sank a keg of butter in desecrate my ground’ impeding my way which, anyway,
to keep it cool and then forgot the place will conduct me towards a nowhere
or died before she could return for it something the same as death

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- (.
 Gf\kip
The Brothers Gunn and lifted the last of the creels My Mother Ate Crab Claws
Meg Macleod drifting on the tide Yowann Byghan
my trust was their trust
Their fishermen’s hands turned My mother ate crab claws
towards the winters crafting of creels. the cuil no longer a word unknown like there was no tomorrow,
inspired fear smashing the rose and ivory ridges
I followed with their tiny, stiff, black hairs
unofficial apprentice with the boat piled with creels like angular boxers’ knuckles
over the short cut we rowed against the swell with a steel-handled knife.
to the faithful willow the narrow harbour entrance
a rare find in this sparse land no bigger than a needle She bought crabs straight from the boat,
plucked from the tarry baskets,
it was the younger man of seventy the elder waited paid for in quick, shiny coins
who cut the willow withies for the thrust of the wave to the smiling, shifty fisherman
from the trees’ summer harvest to carry us with the red woollen hat and red hands,
looking over his shoulder for the skipper.
the elder we got our soaking
walked only the boat was pulled She boiled them red as Billy’s hat,
the path to the boat to winter in the hayfield not hearing any screams, but sharp
relying on instinct to guide his feet alongside the cows with the one-two blade to flip
a scallop from its shell, or lop
it was a strong partnership I learnt the craft of netting the head and scrape the guts
querulous a meditative from a brace of mackerel.
complacent orchestration of twine and fingers
acquiescent without sound The crabs steamed as they cooled,
only the smirl of pipe smoke and peat filling the kitchen with their stink
their first language, and the slurp of tea or whisky of dark, sea-floor scuttling, resenting
one of gesture, their imminent dismemberment,
mute and expressive the elder died that winter brick-red, sullen, savage as pirates
between themselves their language already silent in a stifling hold under battened hatches.
diminished further
their second was Gaelic She thumbed open the body shell,
their third the younger like opening a russet envelope,
a slow translation into English became the elder flicking out the inedible brown mush,
that was how they spoke to me he only walked the path to the boat rinsing the innards quickly under the tap,
the willow grew pulling the legs and body apart, laying them
a summer tantrum and was not harvested. like sterile trophies on the clean, white dish.
brought the first hint of winter
one last trip to bring in the creels When she cutlassed the chalky shell,
to beach the boat the whole kitchen filled with sweetness,
and she schoonered to her harbour mouth
I followed the mild, salt, wet, white, exquisite meat,
to the clinker built boat in a ritual of dedication as ancient
that was their fourth language as the heaving seas themselves,

in silence in such heavenly abandonment

I found my place at the oars that the little flecks sweet and small
the elder just there for a last look clung to her chin and fingers like sailors
before the winter closed the door. to wreckage, like grains of white sand
to the pull and suck of the dark, green weed
we headed out for the cuil grating on a wild and desolate shore.

the younger read the edges of the foam

for signs of danger
for the green light to go
we set the small prow forward
into the dark paragragh of the cuil

my eyes averted from the cliffs

my heart rising
with the huge swell
we plunged downhill into calmer waters

(/ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 Gf\kip
Wedding gift Crossing the Strand Mary Queen of Scots Doesn’t
Kenny Taylor Catherine Eunson Get Her Head Chopped Off
Maggie Mackay
Below a hunter’s moon After we die
By the high grey rocks, and because we have been there She’s our new librarian, this Ms Stuart.
Beneath streaked snow shards and we will stand looking out A natural redhead, she sweeps towards us
The round-backed ridge, through the waves in her vintage gown, like a barge on the River Seine.
I will follow the hill fox trail She claims she is a true Scot. Doesn’t sound at all like us.
For you. knowing it approaches Who let her in? She’s lost her way to the French class.
first a speck
Where the burn spills silver and then the hull pulling nearer She whispers prayers each study period
The rowan crooks, dark and bans our dog-leaved young adult fiction.
Over drooling falls, let us walk on the strand then The spines split like walnuts as they hit the floor.
Where his prints pock mud where life still disrobes She spits a sacré bleu. We offer her Google.
I will trace his path, near to the edge
And pause. now We snigger at a Virgin and Child poster.
where its cloths are left She plays a lute, a lute, who’s heard of that?
And when one shot has Her embroidery sessions drive Miss Murdoch
Brought him low, then let’s forget to breaking needles on the Singer Scholastic.
Down by boulder and bog go back inland
I will bring him, We sit at her knee, like ladies in waiting.
Then, when his pelt is peeled and oh She tells fairy-tales, family stories of book collections,
Picked and cleaned, the shade of a Europe once upon a time.
Then you will feel his softness the scented leaves We learn about harps and Latin,
Across you. architecture a Dauphin, and plots.
autumn
And when the vixen barks, the warmth She’d make a wicked history teacher.
Wild beneath the weeping screes,
I will feel you bite my skin surface water flowing through the streets
In half light, drainage
See the dog fox grin renewal Almost to the Sea
In the fire’s last glow. familiar faces Joan Lennon
everything
(In 1913, when the Maclennans became lit up. The currents are complicated here.
first tenants of a bothy at Coire The river’s single-minded journey
Fionnaraich, Achnashellach, they were is hijacked by the tides.
pictured with Mrs Maclennan wearing
the fur of a fox killed by her husband Twenty Twenty Shove you back the way you came -
shortly before their marriage) Jane Swan Fuller Swoop you up and fling you forward -
Fight you to a standstill that is all undertow
One day I noticed I had a peregrine’s eye. and white horses -
I had to hide it from my other eye with a darkened lens.
In a Dwaam Just now, the long brown sand bank
Edith Harper My peregrine’s eye could weigh up my neighbour’s in the middle
heart as he walked his dog on the far shore. is lined with sleeping seals.
Gin Ah’d little tae dae, Ah stare oot the windae,
past the yella curtain an a bowl o broon eggs It took in a tiny swift, sprinting across the Galloway sky,
laid on the stane windae-ledge. a silent sister sitting above it, summoning up the stoop.
Past twa-three sarks hingin fae pegs
on a washin-line streetched atween the hedge, My other eye realised and said,
fu o squabblin spurgies, an the aul rodan tree. ‘who do you think you are, Horus the distant one?’
Past the park fu o ripenin barley
an on doon the strath till Ah come tae the sea My peregrine’s eye knew it was as jealous
whaur the gulls ca on me tae come oot tae play. as the fickle moon when it looks on the sun’s brightness.
Ah see masel dancin on diamonds that drap
fae the sun, like steppin-stanes, on the waves. My other eye began to bleed. To get attention.
The blood was an oozy blanket to keep things soft and fuzzy.

Spiteful as ever, it made me move my peregrine’s eye into

a special box marked, ‘use with extreme caution.’

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- (0
9i\Xk_`e^n`k_:Xd\iXj
=`cdgf\kip`eJZfkcXe[
Essay by Roseanne Watt

W hen it comes to the integration

of film and poetry, you will
soon find yourself entering a
world muddy with neologisms: poetry film
and film poetry, filmpoems and poemfilms,
cin(E)-poetry, kinetic poetry, digital poetry,
videopoems… the list goes on. It is certainly
revealing that such a variety of terminology
should exist for this particular hybrid art, for
the marriage of film and poetry seems an
obvious and relatively simple one. Indeed,
Orcadian filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait
spoke of the film format as ‘essentially a
poetic medium, and although it can be put to
all sorts of other – creditable and discreditable
– uses, these are secondary’. Perhaps it is
precisely because of this that the form resists
an all-encompassing term, signposting instead
the complexities and ambiguities surrounding
the definition of what we consider the ‘poetic’
to be.
The need for a succinct term for this form
is something of a necessary evil. When I must
use one, my preferred coinage is ‘filmpoem’:
the lack of hyphens or spaces between the two
words captures for me the essential aspiration
for fusion, a wish to create something in
which neither visuals or words (in whatever
form they take) are ever subordinate to the
other, but are instead at once independent and
interdependent of each other. By this means,
a filmpoem should unlock a vital dialogue
through exploiting the synergies, rhythms
and tensions inherent within and between
the languages of literature and cinema. As
you will soon discover, this remains a fairly
inadequate definition.
Filmpoetry has a significant presence
in Scotland’s film tradition, perhaps most
crucially in the work of the aforementioned
Maragaret Tait. Kirkwall-born, Tait spent
most of her lifetime living between her
home islands and Edinburgh, though from
1950 to 1952 she was enrolled at the Centro
Sperimentale di Photographia in Rome. She
made over 30 experimental short films and
the feature length Blue Black Permanent, yet
despite the scope and evident quality of Tait’s
work she has remained, until quite recently,
something of an underrated figure. Whilst it’s
important to acknowledge that women have
long been omitted from film histories, Tait’s
relative obscurity is also partly down to the
(quite admirable) manner in which she made
and distributed her films. These were usually
self-funded, entirely-independent ventures, G_fkf^iXg_f]DXi^Xi\kKX`kZflik\jpf]Fibe\pC`YiXipXe[8iZ_`m\
going against the grain of perceived ‘correct
filmmaking methods’ of the time. She shirked
the grittier edges of the then neo-realist both hand painted or scratched directly onto flowers reference back to a shot of a red scarf, feel constricted by any limiting parameters,
movement (though she embraced its use film, to 16mm film poems, observational or how a languid take of a smoking chimney but instead give the viewer a certain amount
of authentic locations), favouring instead pieces and portraitures. Though they don’t pot is soon juxtaposed by a brief shot of a bare, of breathing room within them, reflecting
a closer, observational style focussed on so- always facilitate traditional poetry, it is poetic lit lightbulb. It is the same sort of ‘crystallising something integral of the white space in
called ‘smaller subjects’. language in which her films always speak. She of a moment’ that a written poem achieves, which a written poem rests.
Tait’s refusal to compromise on her vision spoke of frames becoming ‘the equivalent of but with an added intensity about it, with In her time, Tait struggled to find a
allowed her to create a body of work that is notes, or words, (or letters might be nearer it) something else moving beneath the surface of platform from which to exhibit her films to
intimate, playful and deeply engaged with or blobs of paint’, and their editing ‘a matter the film-grain. Tait described her technique the kind of audiences she perceived would
poetic technique. Her films use a variety of of composition’.We learn then, to take notice as ‘breathing with the camera’, and this is like them, and even went so far as to throw
different styles, from animations and drawings of certain resonances in her work: how red certainly an apt description. Her films never her own film festival from her Ancona

)' Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 @dX^\]ifdEfik8kcXek`b;i`]kZflik\jpf]JljXeB\dg

Film studio on Rose Street. Today, there are range of recording and editing formats, illuminating one half of Jamieson’s face whilst with. That’s not to say, however, this rich
numerous festivals, organisations, magazines both digital and celluloid, which allows casting the other into complete darkness. source will remain untapped for much longer
and awards dedicated solely to filmpoetry, him to bring even further dimensions to his Over his shoulder, the door of the church – filmpoem workshops are cropping up
due in part to the digital era’s democratisation interpretation of a piece. Take his filmpoem has been flung wide open, and you can see across Scotland, and Rachel McCrum (of the
of filmmaking technologies. A few examples The Shipwright’s Love Song, a collaboration the daylight of the island outwith the dark recently disbanded spoken-word duo ‘Rally
are the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in with Jo Bell, as a prime example of this: it interiors of the church. & Broad’) has just started a new project called
Berlin, the online Moving Poems and Poetry was shot on Kodak Ektachrome Super 8, the Kemp’s film is very much a meditation ‘Cinepoems’, an international collaboration
Film blogs and magazines, the Out-Spoken last colour reversal film Kodak made in the on the connections between landscape and between ‘Scotland, Quebec, and everywhere’.
London prize for Poetry in Film, the Weimar Super 8 format. It doesn’t really matter if you the self, a motif that often crops up within In the year before her death, Margarait Tait
Poetry Film Prize, the LUX Artists’ Moving know what that means on a technical level, the Scottish filmpoetry oeuvre. The delicacy said that ‘a Scottish Cinema can only come
Image arts agency, as well as Scotland’s own but what does matter is that the subsequent in with which this is dealt can sometimes from what is welling up in people to make’. In
inaugural Filmpoem Festival, helmed by filmpoem is imbued with the story of its obfuscate the fact that to engage in Scottish the wake of two hugely emotive referendums,
Scottish filmmaker/photographer Alastair stock; the resonances of loss become part of landscape can be an inherently political with questions of identity and nationality now
Cook. This festival was borne from Cook’s the final work. act in-and-of-itself – Tait, for example, in at the fore of the national psyche, it is going
‘Filmpoem’ scheme; an artists’ moving image In academic circles, it is widely accepted focusing on the so-called ‘small subjects’ to be extremely interesting to see just what
project founded in 2010, which was set up that there is a distinct difference between of her island-setting, opens up a critical it is that is ‘welling up’ beneath this surface,
to deliver education and community projects, filmpoems (or your term of choice) and dialogue on what we imagine centres and and what filmpoetry’s position will be within
as well as produce and promote the work of ‘poetry films’ – the latter being films which peripheries to mean, how they are defined. it. n
poets, filmmakers and composers. document or feature poetry in some form, A recent filmpoem collaboration between
Cook’s approach is one of close but do not integrate it artistically with the Kathleen Jamie and Kyra Clegg, Lochmill in
collaboration with established poets, footage as such. This means that films which Two Weathers, beautifully and subtly captures
organisations and musicians. In an interview mainly document poets performing their the socio-political implications of land-
at the ZEBRA film festival, Cook defined work are not classed as filmpoems, as the act of ownership, and the impossible notion of
this sort of collaboration as the ‘quiet and interpretation is missing from the film. Susan claiming nature as one’s own. The film was I\jfliZ\j1
modern converse of ekphrasis (the driving Kemp’s Nort Atlantik Drift: A Portrait of Robert created to mark the outcome of a vote made Sarah Neely, Stalking the Image: Margaret Tait and
out of words by a wordsmith from an existing Alan Jamieson expertly blurs this once well- by local Fife residents, who voted in favour Intimate Filmmaking Practices, Screen 49:2 Summer
visual artwork)’. I love this, for it reveals the defined boundary. Kemp’s film is a seventy- of the Lochmill loch being brought into 2008
second face of the filmpoetry playing card: minute documentary on the Shetlandic poet’s community ownership – a victory that defies Richie McCaffery & Stefanie Van de Peer,
as Tait already established, there is poetry return to the isles, following the death of his Scotland’s deeply unequal land-ownership ‘Acknowledged Legislators: ‘Lived Experience’
inherent within the film format; Cook, here, father.The film is structured around interviews statistics. The film itself plays as a split-screen: in Scottish Poetry Films’, International Journal of
highlights how there are also films within with Jamieson, and studded with sequences one side is a still, wide shot of the loch, the Scottish Theatre and Screen,Volume 7 Number 2,
poetry. Filmpoetry, then, is not so much an in which he reads from his collection Nort other features a sequence of overlaid close- 2014
art of translation from one form to another, Atlantik Drift at various, relevant locations ups of the loch’s wildlife and surfaces. Jamie Tom Konyves, Videopoetry: A Manifesto, Moving
but rather it is an act of interpretation, an around Shetland. It is a moving and beautifully speaks her poem over the film’s soundtrack, Poems Magazine (movingpoems.com)
unlocking or drawing forth of meaning which shot piece of work, but what the film does and as the split-screen fades into unified
was already present in both. This is a vital – and why I believe it merits inclusion here image of the loch reflecting the above clouds, Margaret Tait’s films can be viewed via the Scottish
distinction to make, for filmpoems which use – is that it completely immerses Jamieson Jamie concludes: ‘Whom do you belong to Moving Image Archive website
their source material as mere ‘footage scripts’ and his poetry within the landscape and loch? The sky, and the sky to me.’ Alistair Cook’s films can be viewed at
often add little to the poem but background crofting communities that are integral to fully Filmpoetry in Scotland still remains filmpoem.com
noise. It seems an obvious statement – after understanding and appreciating the quality of something of an obscure art, though it is Susan Kemp’s documentary can be viewed at
all, a shot-by-shot summary of a film would, his work, whilst also belying tensions between certainly growing in popularity, particularly nortatlantikdrift.com
in most cases, not be considered a poem. Still, Jamieson’s familiarity and strangeness within as a collaborative practice between poet and Kathleen Jamie’s and Kyra Clegg’s Lochmill in
a surprising number of filmmakers choose to this landscape (for Jamieson no longer lives filmmaker. This obscurity seems relatively Two Weathers can viewed on the Bella Caledonia
interpret poems in this manner. in Shetland). This is achieved in a beautiful surprising, considering the fraught climate website
Cook is certainly not one of those and nuanced way during the sequence where of heightened identity politics and the Information about Roseanne Watt’s filmpoems
filmmakers; his work displays a deep concern Jamieson reads his poem ‘Metadist Metafir’, explosion in popularity of the spoken-word can be found at www.documentingbritain.com/
for, in his own words, ‘driving forward’ its whilst sat in the church of the poem’s setting. scene across Scotland’s cities, both of which roseannewatt/
source poem. He is also proficient in a vast Sunlight spills from an unseen window, seem ripe subjects for filmpoetry to engage

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- )(
 E`e\Nfic[j
By George Gunn
1 “Soon” he says “on a chosen day the night is everywhere
the people will rise up the three grey shades & the hyena
The silence left behind by the geese & fly like the fulmars out take the low road down to the harbour
is drunk by the Pentland Firth over the clifftops & out & watch a crane load steel asphodels
it fills the air with a feathered emptiness out across the open sea onto a silent ship
to the fishing grounds where dreams shoal
a man looks up from the mouth of a strath in the clear deep landless ocean “Remember”, said the lead shade
“We get reverse weather in Caithness” he says & the people will feed yes “that Hell & epiphany are the same”
as lambs jump their elastic jig fearless & free on sustaining ideas
of their own potential the shades release the hyena who eats the harbour lights
along the coast Scrabster suffers from a schizophrenia of safe from the predatory lies & so empowered turns the grey shades
energy of the night-crammed land grabbers into three fellow hounds
nuclear waste shipped out in the dead of night who speak of a good life as the ship sails in the darkness to Acheron
the unmarked ship sailing South East to Cumbria in the prison of theft
in the land of illusion & slaughter” a poet who stumbled from a harbour pub
wind turbines shipped in on the morning tide it has been reported
steel cocoons stacked on the concrete pier Rod Donn looks West and sings was torn to pieces by a pack of wild dogs
Winter gales painted onto their curved blades “The fulmars won’t let you sleep
you liars in Atomic City the greylags fly on
in the Sunlit houses along the shore for your town is full of phantoms
phones ring out their voiceless messages who sell themselves to the cause of war 5
angry ghosts spit on the orange receivers & shoot black arrows at the stars
to alter everything that has to do with truth” The shochads have been back a full four weeks now
hypnotised by the pink feet of the greylags as they pass they have brought us the light from North Africa
overhead Rob Donn pokes his bardic stick harder & in the Voar everything is a matter of light
the people watch their future heading North further into the empty space before him it grows like hay in the thirsty fields
beneath their boots the landscape consolidates from the to trace the shape of the future
lack of geese & finds the outline of An Garbh-eilean the shochads open the heart of Spring with their piping
lieing wounded & shattered their wings mark an X
in the blood of the sea on the blue paper of the Dunnet sky
2 he sighs knowing that we the rhythm of their flight
will kill each other for our shadows stays in the demos of the day
The brief savage Spring ice storm shadows that are milled
batters the daffodils yellow bells to the fine powder of history music lives in the hearts core of the shochads
& unlike the voices on TV as the NATO jets turn to moths through perpetual movement they become immovable
will not give up & the submarines to skerries they are the constant moment of light
on this rugged ancient country a drama of feathers above the rough theatre
& moves out horizontally across the bay “The fulmars won’t let you sleep of the newly ploughed brown orchestras of the barley parks
lambs shiver in the eighteenth century fields you phantoms in Atomic City
& rows of turnips roll like severed heads until An Garbh-eilean is remade the Sun so loves the shochads
in scattered untidy rows standing proud once more in the sea” she leaves the sea naked
to compensate the ewes for the lack of grass Rob Donn is reminded of his own country to petal-nest their sky dome
the sea is the colour of thin green milk in the cattle filled years a fragrant flight of sea pinks & tulips
as thirsty as grass & as insatiable as the sea before war left its steel containers all the descent & upsurge of a tide in the air
the humans move through Atomic City on this Northern shore
like shoals of fish on the flow tide before both the wild geese the birds speak with their wings
or stand in dark melancholy & the people flew as along a road beside a cliff
like scarecrows on a moonless night an old man walks composing speeches from their songs
they tie their lives like flags to a pole Rob Donn walks the stone path people will gather like seals to listen on the rocks
& begin to fray in the relentless wind until he comes to the stone clock of history
which is accurate once
& for all time 6
3
The coming & going of Sunlight & snow
Poking a stick at nothingness 4 turns Caithness into a blur
the ghost of Rob Donn Mackay watches yellow & black butterflies
the bombing of An Garbh-eilean Skein after skein of greylags heading North the size of Stroma
sees the NATO fighter jets & warships fly over a hill of skulls flit across Dunnet Head
reduce a piece of Cape Wrath to rubble three foreign grey shades the firth is the colour of indigo
he is without cattle or community with a hyena on a chain the streets of Atomic City
& the piobrochd of his voice look skywards but do not see the beauty smell of the sea
is frozen in the Spring snow on Beinn Laghail only bones & feathers & noise ozone sails across the flagstones
hailstones fall through the mist of his hair like fog
& out of the dust of An Garbh-eilean the last rain of the world the dreams of haddock
Rob Donn forms a poem falls on Cnoc nan Fith cod herring mackerel
& gives it the necessary hard stone music the new Spring Moon endures the night all turn to music
of the violent age he finds himself in the shadows move across the hill & sticks to the boots of the shift-workers
so that it can be heard as far as Atomic City the geese continue on as they board their early busses
where the war workers live in boxes of time the memory of Icelandic grass on their tongue & to the stubble

)) Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
of the growling creel-men embrace this small storm & the longer storm these salty vedas refine my tongue
in the doorway of the corner pub that no birdsong can perfume clean so I can speak of the stars
spewing the thick breath of argument that no paper-boned birch tree can embrace & read the night like a book of dreams
out over the firth the salty battered grass is waiting for your footsteps so that nothing can be denied
the butterflies love them to those who sail to the obvious freedoms
go now wanderer humanity has constructed for itself
history has brought itself this far to meet the coming passion a creation nebula both ancient & new
& stayed faithful to what it is it is the coloured dust of knowledge
so will the birds fall from the sky the endlessly forming letters in the vocabulary of desire
& light shine from human fingers? 8
the rain falls from the furthest star
So we die & we live again Our meaning has been eaten away by argument into the restless sea of syllables
the voice at the back of the wind & Scotland for once has no contention the Sun burns into my eye
sings “no fear, no envy, no meanness we have been resolved & like an exposed rock the lambs grow warm & eloquent
& nothing in vain” at high tide are reborn as an island knowing exactly who made them
& yet we have been wounded the lambs are clothed in golden words
This is the sea the land the people we wear a Summer shirt as red as blood they dance & skip through the sentences of Sunlight
this is the new language our dreams limp to a forgetful place the rain falls in Andromeda
formed from zeppelins of blue lowering clouds a province where short shadows fall where millions of Suns conspire to shine
born out of Sunlight fading & the snow vanishing on nuclear waste disposal silos
as the night descends with Venus bright & nitrogen swathed lager time passes in decades of delirium
& the Moon a thin cut curve cools the hot throats shouting & in frightened glances at passing cavalcades
in the vast dark forge of the North about empty straths full of wind turbines as the heads go down & rise up again
where dog-foxes are nailed by their tails to strainer posts it took a long time but it is burning
it is then I see you with your seaweed hair as young girls vomit in the back of four by fours they see & feel it in the South
& your smile like a tide flowing in the long Simmer Dim in the headlines on the TV flashing
crossing the causeway from the island in the orders from the light snatchers
the lighthouse behind you the boor tree in the garden has turned which feed down into the marketeers of silence
the seals swimming between the skerries into a flowering organ of mad flutes & the red rusty nail is still driven into the abandoned gable
everything is revealed when you speak a tanker heading East off Hoy
the white birds are flying over the blue navy sea is bilge-full of angry American crayfish in the North we have become radically identical
& I call to you from the lonely deep who will put light & meaning to the air that surrounds us & breathes us in
as we go now into the green baskets of Spring? as the smoke pours over Beinn Graim
pressing into the wind in the Springtime fires of touch & memory
Tell me a hundred times tell me in the uncertain morning hours of reason
it is the fulmars who drink the wind that changes the step of the running deer
7 the hissing blue sea on the black & yellow rocks the smoke rolling over The Ord & The Scarabens
is the hungry name I call myself paints the sand black in the blocked harbour mouths
The hailstones pummel the eager grass when I am lost in shadows that empties the space it instructs us to fill
they harral the skeletons of the birch trees
yellow eyed primroses at the edges cluster tell me that the argument has drowned how can anyone hate the wind
they have stripped Winter of her thin colour that the tide will never go out even if it blows the flames closer
their scattered passion defies the hail & that this cold I feel to the shame of our leaving
in the cold air above the low cloud is the world standing alone in her petticoats with our names scratched on the outside of the window
the mavis finds her measure her wound healing a signature of oatmeal in the margins
she has the taste of the storm in her song of the printed orthodoxy of flesh
& visions of stones & begattings
a heron launches from a flagstone ledge 9 beyond the far sandstone mountains
flies out across the naked water in the depths of the salt-parting sea
this ancient bird beats back in time The abecedary of the stars
each wings down-stroke is a message to memory is carved in light & time a gale blows in suddenly from Faroe
the heron’s head is bent back like a question mark above Dunnet Head everything is flushed into an invisible corner
hanging over the empty firth with the impossible alphabet the moist coupling of Scottish & Southern Energy
counting out the deeply felt consequences of human folly shining down on the specific with the Countess of Sutherland
nothing can be said to add to the wisdom of the heron anonymity of a self I no longer know so it is that Death slouches out of the Dunbar Hospital
I celebrate & cross the sea clutching a mobile phone
listen, you who wander the high sandstone cliffs of the heart’s desire such is the loyal dictionary of the mind
& the swept essentials of Atlantic beaches forming words out of Deaths illusion full of hill fires owls & cod roe
it is not for you to surrender hope the last tenderness of the peatlands
now that the hailstones have awoken this moment the night tells me I no longer know
aroused the primrose promise of your lips what I thought I once knew Time the actor concludes his performance on Dunnet Beach
unlike the heron you cannot go back & that the stars will reveal everything now he buries his contract in the sand
you are the conundrum of your own time they tell me Dunnet Head review by review & letter by letter
listen as the mavis instructs you is a fallen standing stone the North wind feeds liberty to the surf
a runic inscription in the sea this is my liquid learning stone
reading itself between the shallow from the cold time to the white war
& sudden North Sea to this public reckoning of history & words
& the deep & slow Atlantic for in the year of the poet every season is Spring
as the Northern sky tears itself apart over Thurso

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- )*
‘W hat was your life like with
Daniil?’
‘Our life? Well, we had our
quarrels like anybody else,’ said Helena.
There was a ‘Hmm,’ from the telephone
N`[fnB_XidjËj>l\jk_flj\
Short Story by Gabrielle Barnby
‘What else do you have of his?’ she said.
‘I have the Mini-Stories, the bird
poems…’
‘Anything else? His coat? His hat? I never
saw them again. I’d like to see them if you
earpiece. could send them to me.’
Through the faint crackle of the long-
distance line Helena imagined the man on
✯ ‘I don’t have anything like that.’
Helena sat silent, running her index finger
the other end. He probably had a pen in his along the frill of her apron.
hand, or maybe he was sitting at some sort of ‘When he disappeared,’ said the voice, ‘ was
computer ready to type what she was going vomiting into buckets. Were you involved in ‘He didn’t really write much.’ it just like that, completely unexpected?’
to say. He would be wearing an open-necked that?’ ‘But the little we do have indicates ‘If he expected it do you think he would
shirt and creased trousers. There would be Helena started slightly. She’d been an important development in Russian have gone out that morning? You really are
a window glowing grey-white by his desk. beginning to doze. She’d risen early to get literary…’ a stupid man at times. No, he just went out.
It wasn’t too late in the year for snow in breakfasts ready and there was still all the Helena let him talk. At least she had a He didn’t come back. That was that. It was a
Leningrad. preparation to do for the evening meals. She garden now; she could grow onions and fashion at the time.’
His patient silence bore down the line, looked over to the alcove at a right angle to potatoes. Drought was the main problem in ‘I understand the political repression of
like a car heading toward a pedestrian on a the stove. Here were her few photographs, the shadow of the mountains – she assiduously dissident…’
street crossing – she had seen that once. How her plastic trinkets that returned imperfect copied her neighbours who were artists in the The man was beginning to try her patience.
absurd it had been! An old woman, barely bent reflections, her memories. Yes, she channelling and preservation of water. Was that how Russian was spoken now?
able to see above her steering wheel, forcing remembered the theatre. She had onions hanging on the wall, rosy Where had all the distinction and elegance
her car like an arrow towards a middle-aged ‘I told them to buy something from Fedya brown, glowing like peasants faces strung up gone?
man slouching across the black and white Davydovich on the market guaranteed to in a line, their heads shaved. She would slice She thought about the morning Daniil
stripes. You would have thought that it was make them sick. But no, they ate chicken them thickly, fry them in chicken fat then disappeared. There had been cherry blossom,
some extraordinary act of revenge or the broth and potatoes then stuck fingers down mix in rice and chopped greens, and finally black tea and dumplings stuffed with
culmination of a family feud. But no, Helena their throats. Except that young one who she would add pork sausage. strawberries. They had been laughing at the
found out there was no connection between later became notorious – he ate nothing but ‘…there are scenes from a play, but the look on her mother’s face when she saw the
the two. It was simply absurd, a random act. smashed crockery from their evening spent
Daniil had clapped his hands and laughed trying to nail it to the wall. Daniil had pulled
when she’d related the story to him. He’d out chairs like a waiter for people to sit on,
taken the steak she’d been saving for dinner
with their friend Alexander out of the larder
She liked having people to stay; they laughing like a drain.
She was glad that he’d not taken Kasha
and thrown it slap against the wall. Then he’d
sat at his desk, every few minutes turning to could be so interesting. She imagined because then she would have had nobody. But
then if he’d taken the dog perhaps he would
look over his shoulder at the mark of the raw not have disappeared, or perhaps he would
beef on the wall, grinning broadly. them in the big European cities with busy have disappeared and the dog found its way
‘He could have a temper,’ she said breaking home. Perhaps all these events did happen,
the silence. ‘Not violent, but sudden.’
‘I see,’ replied the researcher.
streets, full of energetic modern living. and at each moment with each passing second
an alternative reality diverged from what she
‘There were times we lived very happily,’
she said. She doubted anybody lived like she and was experiencing now; an infinity of different
lives sent spiralling in different directions.
There had been joyous periods where
Daniil’s delight in the most insignificant Daniil used to, sharing toilets with a Daniil was always trying to subvert reality;
to stop; to kink; to insert something so utterly
things would send him into poetic raptures. It unexpected that Time and Space would have
could be the knots in the floorboards and the
particular way they yawned like little mouths
single tap outside. to sit up straight in their chairs and say to each
other, ‘It’s not meant to happen like that.’
or peered like a hundred eyes up her skirts. ‘I don’t have a protocol for this.’
He’d say, ‘I wish I were a plank of wood, then ‘What will happen next?’
I’d really see what the world was like.’ ‘Anything could happen.’
Her husband’s obsession with the body beetroots.’ manuscript is incomplete.’ ‘But this is a disaster.’
and bodily products did not in general disturb ‘Can you remember the audience’s ‘He never finished anything,’ she said. ‘Do ‘What about our spirals?’
Helena. She was in this respect a realist and reaction?’ you like soup?’ ‘Who is it that dares break the pattern?’
prepared for the work of motherhood by ‘What do you think? How do you feel ‘Er… well.Yes, I like soup.’ ‘Daniil Kharms, again!’
unfussily tidying and sanitizing objects watching someone splatter out their lunch?’ ‘Daniil liked soup.’ Helena narrowed her eyes. The onions
regardless of their condition, but she never ‘I…’ ‘There’s a family in the play. Do you became dull glowing spots.
became pregnant. She should have done; but Helena had sloshed the pails into the remember it?’ It was a crime to break the pattern. But
she didn’t. backstage toilet. The flush barely functioned, ‘Of course, but why bring it up?’ she had the dog and she was glad of it, even
There was a cough from the other end so floating pieces of half-digested food ‘I’m gathering manuscripts with a view if young female backpackers were nervous of
of the telephone line. Helena imagined bobbed on the surface of the water at the to…’ the way it twirled when the breeze caught
herself on the road crossing with a car fast bottom of the toilet bowl. The beetroot-eater Above Helena’s head the dribble of water in his fur.
approaching. had rushed in while she was on her hands and began – the last of the backpackers. It was his ‘…if you have any of his personal effects or
‘How did you cope with his writer’s knees cleaning, shoving her aside, desperate to bad luck being so lazy; the girls had used all can remember anyone who might have had a
block?’ said the voice. relieve himself. Daniil had seen through the the hot water. She’d once been like they were; typed manuscript I’d be very grateful.’
‘There was one thing I didn’t like,’ she open door and began to laugh. He doubled nice clean skin, white teeth. But Helena Helena yawned. She lifted a foot from
said. ‘Vomit. Vomit for me is worse than over, slapping his hands on his thighs. When could tell they were afraid of the dog, or if the floor and held her leg out straight. The
anything. Daniil said it was my weakness that he could speak he’d said, ‘This is where an not afraid there was something about the dog ankle was thick. Her slipper had tufts of
I could not leave behind my bourgeois roots. audience should sit. Oh, my beloved, Helena.’ that made them very nervous. thread poking out around her big toe. The
Bourgeois! He said he could leave me and It wasn’t a scene she had ever cared to think Helena smiled to herself. She had such a Spanish words for slipper and cotton ran
pick up a trollop from the gutter with better about. But lately her exile had begun to feel soft spot for Kasha. through her head. She spoke Spanish badly,
principles.’ so long. She could no longer prevent herself He had come over on the boat to South but well enough for South America. She also
‘I see,’ said the earpiece. from thinking about Daniil’s disappearance America. It was a miracle he’d survived spoke English and Italian; and of course she’d
Helena straightened the corner of her the way she used to. because the animal was possessed with an learned French as a girl.
apron and leaned back against the wall. ‘I’m losing my discipline,’ she said to insane impulse to jump into water whenever ‘I can call back another time,’ said the
Her low wooden stool rocked against the herself. he saw it – it could be a bathtub, a swimming interviewer,
terracotta floor as she shifted her weight. ‘What? What was that?’ came the voice. pool, a bucket. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have to start preparing
‘I have some notes,’ said the voice. ‘There ‘Are you looking for him?’ she asked. The dog had known her husband. No food.’
was a performance where the audience ‘I’m collecting his manuscripts. The one else she had contact with now had ever ‘If there is anything else you remember
witnessed individuals coming on stage and publisher wants…’ known Daniil. about visitors to the flat or manuscripts it

)+ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
would be very helpful. Perhaps you could
make a note if something comes to mind?’
The sound of water stopped above. There
were heavy footsteps across the ceiling. She
;~`e“iXc\DXf`c`fj:X`dY\lc
liked having people to stay; they could be
so interesting. She imagined them in the
big European cities with busy streets, full
of energetic modern living. She doubted An Speireag
anybody lived like she and Daniil used to,
sharing toilets with a single tap outside. Tha àite againn aig cùl an taighe, airson na Rìoghachd ri thighinn
Her guests had higher standards – she àite-biathaidh nan eun, far nach bi caoidh no bròn
supposed they believed she lived crudely. agus thig iad a h-uile latha a dh’ithe an t-sìl no murt no marbhadh
She couldn’t charge as much as other agus bheir e toileachas dhuinn no tarcais no dìmeas,
accommodation, although at least her place a bhith gam faicinn fo sgàile nan caorann
was clean and she did have hot water. a’ ceilearadh ’s a’ bìgeil ach bhiodh craobh aig an doras
If travellers ever inspected the shared a h-uile càil cho ionraic, sìtheil le eòin ioma-dhathte
bathroom facilities they would stay. The gus an tàinig an speireag. bho iomall an domhain
shower room on the third floor had grand a’ seinn anns na geugan.
views over the dry plains to the foothills of An t-àite cho beothail le,
the Andes where the rabbit pelt-toned dust gealbhonnan is calmain,
and rocks stretched tight over the mountains. loin-dubha is breacain-bheithe,
Above the bathroom was her roof terrace. curracan-bhaintighearna is glaisean-daraich, Bloighean is Mìrean
This was a place where the sun loved to linger, druidean is brù-dhearg
warming the walls, making the red geraniums gus an tàinig banrigh an uabhais Nàdar air fàs mì-nàdarrach,
glow bright in the thin blue air. na geòidh air sgèith gu tuath
When her legs were tired or her arms agus an uair sin dubh-shàmhchair sàmhach ann an calldach an crè.
ached from cleaning the bathroom tiles, agus falamhachd,
Helena would go to the terrace. There was gun aon eun ri fhaicinn Sinne an seo nar ceallan sàbhailte.
a recliner, the faded floral cover worn thin in ach itean sgapte air an talamh.
places – a bit like the toe on her shoe. Here Tha a h-uile càil na bhloighean,
she would lie. She would let the sun into her clachan nam ballachan nam mìrean
wrinkles, let it prize open her cardigan, let it sgapte air achaidhean an t-saoghail
warm the marrow of her bones. Ainglean ’s na trustairean a’ dlùthadh ris na bailtean.
She hoped this would be where her spiral Cò tha liùgadh air beanntan a’ chùraim
ended. Of course, in the end Time and Space A’ dol seachad air Loch Hàsco, le gunna na làimh?
would be satisfied. na laighe ann an creathall nan cnoc,
‘Did he manage to cheat them?’ she said. grian bhlàth an earraich a’ deàrrsadh Am bàs na nì a lùigeadh an ceannairceach
‘I’m sorry, cheat who?’ said the voice. is osag bheag air uachdar an locha, às dèidh a làmh a bhogadh ann am fuil nan neoichiontach:
‘Time and Space,’ she said. ‘They were dheàrrs na reultan cho dealrach, gunnaichean nam poileas gun fheum
always there at the table, leaning on his desk. ’s ann a shaoil mi gun robh treud ainglean air teàrnadh. gus bacadh a chur air casgairt.
He never got rid of them some days.’ An robh ciall riamh aig an t-saoghal,
‘I see…’ no a bheil an saoghal a’ dol glan às a chiall
‘No, you don’t. They tormented him. gun fhios aig duine dè tha tachairt
Laughter was his only escape.’ An Seòrsa Eaglais a dh’Iarrainn ann an com na cruinne?
‘Right…if I could remind you...’
‘Yes, yes. But I tell you, I left with nothing Bhiodh cumadh cearcaill oirre, Na sràidean a’ sruthadh le fuil neo-lochdach –
except the dog.’ gun suidheachain eaglais. far a bheil olc tha àidseant,
In her mind’s eye Helena saw the car Bhiodh beinn air a cùlaibh ciùrradh a’ tighinn bho thoil an donais,
hitting the man on the crossing.This time she agus a’ mhuir mu a coinneamh. ùmaidhean buairte gun smid truais nan cridhe.
was the old lady driving. She stood over the
prostrate body. He lay there. It was just how Shuidheamaid mun bhòrd mhòr chruinn, Sinne an seo nar ceallan sàbhailte.
it had been. crann-ceusaidh agus uaigh fhosgailte na mheadhan,
‘Same time next week,’ said the voice. sean agus òg ag adhradh còmhla. Ciamar as urrainn dhuinn an àmhghar a thuigsinn
Helena hung up, got to her feet and walked Cha bhiodh sgeul air cùbaid, gus an tig e aon latha oirnn fhìn.
slowly across the kitchen. She ran her fingers Ach cò dh’fhàg sinne saor o uallach daonda?
over the brittle paper skins of the onions. She ach bhiodh cuideigin ann
didn’t take one. Instead she walked into the a’ treòrachadh an adhraidh Prionnsa na Sìth air dhìochuimhn’
reception area where the tables for guests agus daoine a’ labhairt ’s na meadhanan sòisealta nan craos,
were arranged. A handful of flies flew around mar a ghluaiseadh an Spiorad iad, le daoine baoth nam màl a’ sgrìobhadh
Kasha’s stiff snout.The dog’s fur had darkened fuath is mallachd air an ‘nàimhdean’,
from the colour of wheat to the same shade agus fios againn gun robh E beò is Taigh nam Bumailearan le gaoith.
Daniil’s beard had been. nar meadhan, an Crìosd a dh’èirich.
Seeing the dog always made her smile. It ’S bhiodh an-còmhnaidh Ò, a ghràidh ort, cha tig am bàs leis fhèin.
was suspended from the ceiling and posed in sèithear no dhà falamh 24/07/16
mid-stride. The local man had done his best,
but he wasn’t a professional taxidermist by agus aran is annlan dhan acrach
any means. He’d told her to let the animal agus na dorsan fosgailte
dry out in the desert, but she would not risk dhan fheadhainn a thigeadh bhon t-sràid,
the damage from scavengers. ’s bhiodh ùrnaigh ag èirigh mar thùis
Helena turned away and walked stiffly to
the stairs. She took hold of the rail and placed
her slipper on the first tread.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘It’s too funny, too
absurd.’
She laughed all the way up to the top,
tears streaming, sides aching. Exhausted from
laughing she went out on the roof terrace.
Finally, she lay down and took her rest. n

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- ),
T he homeless woman was in her usual
spot on the corner of Market Street,
tucked in between the entrance of a
nail salon and a café Nero. I’d walked past her
several times in the past few weeks on my
K_\D`iifi
Short Story by Lily Greenall
smiled primly and seemed utterly oblivious
to the enormous sum of money that was
being handed over. Out in the street once
more, now weighed down with bags, Sandra
held out the receipt and frowned, muttering
way into the city, breaking my stride some to herself as she added up the numbers.
days to drop a few coins into her outstretched
cup. Sandra and I stood at the traffic lights
✯ She folded it brusquely back into her purse
and snapped her bag shut saying, ‘I’ll just try
opposite and Sandra was telling me a long John again.’
story in a loud voice about John’s parents. I folded my arms and leaned against a
His mother wouldn’t eat meat – or maybe parking metre to wait. The sun had broken
fish – and this was throwing out plans for ‘Ah,’ the woman nodded, ‘My fiancée is in my breasts in both hands. When I landed, out between the clouds and I turned my
the wedding dinner. I clutched the strap of Romania. He is working and working, and looking puffed and dishevelled, the dress had face up and let it warm me. Sandra returned
my bag and watched the traffic lights above then when we have money, he will come not slipped down. It would be fine for dancing. looking deflated. John was at lunch. She slid
the intersection switch from amber to green. and we will get married. It will be my dream I stood for a moment staring at myself. It was her phone back into her bag and chewed her
A new wave of traffic roared across the lane, wedding.’ hot in the dressing room and my face was lip.
honking at a bus that had pulled out too far. I listened, frowning slightly, and peered pink and shiny. I scowled, imagining having ‘We can go home,’ I said, ‘If you want.’
‘All these cars,’ Sandra cried, jostling me at the woman as she spoke. She was not old to sit through the entire ceremony sweating Sandra shook her head, ‘Don’t be silly. Lots
forward a pace, ‘Its mind boggling. Why do but she did not have a young face. Her skin and chafing and creaking when I moved. to do.’
people need to drive everywhere anyway? was tanned and there was dirt in the creases I could hear Sandra now, rattling away
I mean, never mind pollution, it’s only the around her eyes. Her lips were dry and spotted on the other side of the curtain. Her words
planet we live on after all.’ with white flakes, eyes very large, and they were muffled by the layer of cloth but I could We stopped at a small bistro for lunch.
She let out a great forced laugh that rang glowed with a deep brown lustre as she spoke. hear the false chime of her laugh and the Sandra said she would put the bill on John’s
in my ear. A woman nearby on the pavement I hoped all of a sudden, very sincerely, that titter of the saleswoman, who had propped card so I ordered two courses; a rich lobster
gave us a cool glance. The lights changed. there was a man making his way over, on a Sandra up on a stool and was making the bisque followed by chicken linguine, then
Sandra nudged her hand under my elbow and bus or a boat or a plane. final adjustments to her dress. Poor woman, topped it off with a large slice of raspberry
propelled me across the road. ‘Are you ready?’ Sandra was bustling over, I thought, down on her knees with pins in lemon pie. Sandra sipped a fruit smoothie.
‘I’ll just call John,’ she said brightly, slipping her phone back into her bag. her mouth, wading through oceans of chiffon She was on a pre-wedding diet and had sworn
‘Double check which cupcakes he wants for ‘Congratulations!’ the woman cried. while having to listen to Sandra’s life story. off solid food. I looked up every now and
the reception.’ ‘I told her you were getting married,’ I I took a step towards the curtain and peeled then, thinking that I had caught her gazing
We slipped out of the flow of human said. it back a little. Sandra’s back and legs were longingly at my plate, but she always glanced
traffic and paused under the café awning on Sandra stopped short and I felt her hand lost in a cascade of white. It billowed over the off again just at that moment, talking in a loud
one side of the double doors. I was feeling cheerful voice all the way through the meal.
tired. The noise and crowds of the city and I ordered a large coffee with whipped cream
the constant effort of grinning every time after my dessert. Sandra pulled out her phone
Sandra spoke was beginning to grate on me.
I felt washed out and thin, as though the day
I glanced over my shoulder at the woman as we and set it on the table, scrolling through her
messages. I began to notice how tired she
was rubbing me down until I was nothing went. She smiled after us, nodding, then noticed a looked. Her eyes had rings around them, not
but another grey smudge on the pavement. just underneath but nudging into the corners,
I was relieved when Sandra turned her back man approaching, who was digging in his pockets for and her usually smooth complexion was
and paced to other side of the doors with her rough beneath a coat of foundation.
phone pressed to her ear. change. She turned and shuffled towards him; a dense ‘Any word from John?’ I asked.
I leaned against the wall and stared at the
patch of dull grey sky in the space between the
wobbling shape in her mantle of shawls. ‘No,’ she chirped, ‘Shall we go?’

buildings. A rustling noise to my left startled I never liked John, I thought, as we

me.The homeless woman was hoisting herself wandered between the shelves in Waterstones.
up from her pile of blankets and newspapers. grip the underside of my arm. She gave the back of the stool and spilled onto the floor Sandra had wandered off ahead and was
She peered around the doorway at me and woman a quick glance but didn’t smile. in a pearly gush. Sandra’s shoulders were bare staring at a shelf lined with albums covered in
I smiled at her. She grinned back nodding, ‘Come on,’ she said, tugging at me. and creamy under the lights, and she floated butterflies. I never liked the colours associated
and took a few steps towards me. Her steps I glanced over my shoulder at the woman in the centre of the mirrored, hexagonal room with weddings either, I thought, picking up
were stiff as if she’d been sitting for a long as we went. She smiled after us, nodding, then like a dancer nestled in the heart of a music a packet of pink and gold envelopes. They
time and she was draped in several shawls, the noticed a man approaching, who was digging box. Her black hair shone and I could see her were all too vague and pastel. I glanced down
colours of which were faded. I began to dig in his pockets for change. She turned and face in the opposite mirror as she watched the aisle at Sandra and tried to imagine her
in my bag for change. The woman continued shuffled towards him; a dense wobbling shape her dress coming together. The saleswoman on the big day, festooned in lace; a mound of
to beam and nod at me and stepped a little in her mantle of shawls. was scurrying around, ducking down to the tulle on top of her head. I tried to imagine
closer. I resisted the urge to back away then ‘You didn’t give her any money did you?’ floor to bundle in a loose sheath of lace then John standing opposite her, clammy in his
immediately felt guilty. I felt my purse in my Sandra asked, as we made our way up the straightening up quickly and pinning a seam suit and stuttering through his vows. Another
bag, wedged between my notebook and a high street. on the bustle. I wondered how it would feel picture floated into my mind and eclipsed this
half empty water bottle and I undid the clasp ‘Just a couple of quid,’ I said, surprised, to stand there, being plucked and trussed and brief vision. I remembered the last Christmas
without lifting it out, probing the cotton ‘She’s getting married too.’ readied. I knew how everyone said it felt, how party at John and Sandra’s house; the bite of
lining with finger and thumb until I could Sandra scoffed as we approached the door it was described in films and books. I looked cranberry vodka at the back of my throat and
draw out two pound coins. of a bridal boutique. The window housed a at Sandra’s face in the mirror. She had stopped John very drunk on lager and champagne.
I held out the money out to her. She row of long limbed mannequins decked out talking now. The saleswoman straightened up, The living room had been stifling. Sandra was
nodded and stretched out her hands. in tulle and floods of white lace. panting with an air of triumph, and looked celebrating the new wood fire by banking it
‘Thank you,’ she bobbed her head, looking ‘Yes, well,’ Sandra said, holding the swing in the mirror too, eyes gleaming. Sandra’s up with logs. I had chewed the ice from my
down at the money, then after a pause, ‘You door for me, ‘They’ve all got a sob story face though had suddenly taken on a blank drink as I sat on the sofa, wedged between
are shopping?’ haven’t they?’ expression, as though she had been hollowed John and another man, and felt, with all the
Her English was slightly broken. I shrugged, ‘Did you get John on the out or stripped of something, and now stood hairs rising on the back of my neck, the
‘Yes,’ I smiled, blushing, ‘Shopping.’ phone?’ there empty, staring like a doll. weight of John’s hand on my thigh.
‘I love shopping,’ she grinned, ‘My fiancée ‘No,’ Sandra answered, ‘I got his secretary. I dropped the envelopes back into their slot
– he is always saying,’ she cleared her throat, She said he was in a meeting.’ Sandra paid for the dresses with one of and closed the distance with Sandra, coming
made her voice deep, ‘Do not go shopping; John’s credit cards. Her own dress was staying up behind her just as she plucked an album
no more dresses.’ I was sweating in the dress that Sandra had behind for alterations. My own and the other down from the shelf.
She broke off, chuckling. picked out for me. The fabric was stiff and bridesmaids were being swaddled in crepe ‘This is the one,’ she grinned, as we made
I smiled, slightly confused. unyielding, an ugly muted gold. I dug my and bagged up. I leaned beside Sandra at the our way to the checkout, ‘I can just picture it
‘My friend is getting married,’ I said, thumbs into the seams that were pinching till, tapping my nails on the marble surface, now. I’m getting excited.’
nodding at Sandra, who was walking in circles beneath my armpits and tried to stretch them and listening to the never ending drone of her She beamed at the shop assistant as she set
with a hand clamped over one ear. out a little. I jumped up and down clutching chatter with the shop assistant. The woman

)- Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
her books down before her. The girl smiled

Gf\kip
and caught Sandra’s eye.
‘I was just saying to my friend,’ Sandra
began, ‘I think this is probably the perfect
photo album for my wedding. I’m getting
married in June.’
The girl nodded politely.
‘I was just saying, I’m getting really excited
now,’ Sandra continued, holding the assistant’s The Bully’s Aim Cento
gaze as she rang the album through the till. Karin Slater (After Sappho, Fragment 58)
‘It seems like it’s coming round so soon.We Josephine Brogan
were just getting my dress fitted and finished He pulls a face and
off, and ordering the cakes, and I just think, throws Oh, but once, once, we were
wow. It’s great though. My fiancée, John, he’s the stone like young deer,
really excited.’ as far as he can. wild deer
I squirmed as Sandra began to get into her in the wild wood,
stride. The shop assistant was doing her best He is trying to
to look interested. Sandra had launched into hit like the hare, pumped up
a description of John’s job and followed it up the ferry to the tips of his ears,
with a rundown of their honeymoon plans leaping
as she passed over the card. As the woman trying with all his might the furrows,
reached across to take it I saw the corners to reach its coal rear end.
of her mouth flinch, her eyes sparkling with or the lark,
suppressed giggles. I smiled and fought an But what if he did oblivious, hunting
urge to laugh. punch the sun,
‘Oh,’ the shop assistant looked genuinely a hole bursting with joy.
surprised, ‘It’s been declined, I’m sorry.’ and then again
Sandra blinked up from rummaging out Oh, young we were, young
through her shopping. She had been about the other side. beyond all - but on the horizon,
to produce a photo of the venue to show the the bugle-call,
girl. What face would he pull? clearsounding.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. Would he think he had won?
The girl nodded, holding the card out, ‘I Or turn his back and Were my knowing then, my knowing
can try it again if you want?’ shout now, what bliss in the drift of
‘No,’ Sandra shook her head. I DIDN’T MEAN IT the wildwood,
She turned to me and I saw how lost she what wild in the wooing.
looked, eyes wide and smile fallen. She shook for hurting something
herself, seeming to rally. bigger
‘I’ll just use another one,’ she said. than him.
I wandered away a few paces and flicked Requiescat for Angus Dunn
through some novels that were stacked in Rhoda Michael
mounds on the bestsellers table. I could
hear Sandra explaining to the woman that The Backroads Grief visits me, lurks
sometimes John forgot which cards had been Howard Wright behind the curtains of the window,
used to pay the bills. She kept telling him to finds me in the corners of the room,
set limits for her when she went out shopping Skyline nicked and stripped by every weather on the treads of the turning staircase.
but he always insisted, spend as much as you known to woman. And then some.
want. She held the woman’s gaze and stood A flinty river, wind-chipped, air-scalloped, No more playing then,
there talking long after the transaction had No more laughing,
was complete. The shop assistant hovered wriggles back through the origins of its name No more sliding down the banisters.
awkwardly, looking desperate to get away. to a splash of gables on bushy hillsides No more verses tripping off the tongue.
As I watched I had the strange sensation of a that get no nearer,
seeing double image, as though the version of a destination that means you and your friends I call but he doesn’t answer.
Sandra I saw there, before me, was reflected He turns but he doesn’t see.
through somebody else. I stared at her by the are lost again, and the grey star What remains is a memory of gladness,
till, her long skirt rippling in the breeze from will drain all colour Just a quiver in the air.
the front door, her eyes dark and wide as she from the backroads when dawn has bitten
spoke, weighed down on all sides by the bags into the telegraph poles and dipping bends,
that clung to her body in a great colourful
mound. the ankles of schoolgirls weaving through
‘I’ll just try John one more time,’ she said, your mirrors to the shores of the lough
as we pushed our way out through the doors hinged open like a catcher’s mitt.
and back into the street.
‘I’ll take some of the bags,’ I said, feeling
guilty.
‘Thank you,’ Sandra looked genuinely
grateful as she loaded the bags onto my arms.
I leaned against the wall of the shop
and watched Sandra pace as she spoke into
her phone. I saw her jaw set, waiting for a
response, saw her fist clench as she folded one
arm about her waist. Her eyes looked huge
and empty, as though she was not seeing the
street before her but looking across some
dark internal landscape, and this time I really,
genuinely hoped that John would answer. n

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- ).
I<M@<NJ
Telling Tales collection is dedicated to both the late Angus
by Jane Yeadon Dunn and late Sandy Hutchison. While I am
Black and White Publishing not too familiar with Dunn’s work, I certainly
Review by Cynthia Rogerson detected here the big-heartedness that is a key
characteristic of Hutchison’s poetry. Stephen,
This is a memoir of growing up on a Highland like Hutchison, plays with light and the
farm in the 1950s. It doesn’t claim to be a elements in startling ways. In ‘Clyde coast’
prequel to Yeadon’s three popular mid-wife we see the image of a man on the ‘twice-
books, but it is – so fans of those books will missed Rothesay ferry’ combing ‘the hair of a
be delighted at this chance to fill in some of woman’ and the speaker declares: ‘They stand
the missing blanks. in borrowed light. / They shine’. The poem
There is an art to good life writing, and ‘Albertac’ compares the flash of a camera
Yeadon has it. She is able to detach from to ‘the gut of herring’, coming up with the
her own life enough to present it without exquisite conclusion: ‘So light is like milt’.
sentimentality or self-consciousness, knowing I’m aware I’ve neglected to mention at any
instinctively which moments to frame and length the sailing and boating that occupies
which to omit. Her memories are not told; most of these poems, but that is far from a
instead, they are largely shown in lively dilettantish hobby for Stephen and more an
dialogue and short quick-paced chapters. essential way of life. It can clearly offer leisurely
The prose is unpretentious, yet the language escape but we see at all turns his respect for
is lyrical to the point of poetry. the sea and awareness of its dangers:
Telling Tales is an apt title, for this is a book
of confidences, narrated in a natural and This is a place
confidential tone. One feels as if Yeadon is where you know that
whispering in one’s ear. An honest account everything we know
of a life of hardship that is not recognised as can snap.
such, but simply got on with. Her father is from ‘Long Seas’
tragically absent, her sister is annoying, and
her mother is always ploughing ahead with Castles in the Mist: The Victorian
plans in a kind of frenzy of determination. transformation of the Highlands
There is drama in this book – but it is not by Robin Noble
melodrama, and at no point does it ask for Saraband.
pity, for Yeadon’s chief gift is light-heartedness. Review by Jim Miller
Humour abounds, and she applies this not
just to her own life, but to the life of the During the latter decades of the Victorian
rural highlands in the 1950s. Hence, this is era, readers of local papers in the Highlands
an important record of social and agricultural were often treated in the autumn months to
history. As a child, she loved the natural world, long lists of the toffs who had come north,
and it is apparent the adult Yeadon still does, like migratory birds, for the season. Dressed
for she describes it with exquisite ease. in tartan and tweed, equipped with guns and
Park this book near the first aid kit. It is a fishing tackle, supported by a small army of
tonic for jadedness. n servants, the influx moved into the big houses
to enjoy a vogue for what was dubbed sport, a
Maritime: New and Selected Poems euphemism for slaughtering wildlife.
Ian Stephen The cover of Robin Noble’s book,
Saraband with its image of a stag in front of a misty
Review by Richie McCaffery Glamis Castle, and its subtitle ‘The Victorian
transformation of the Highlands’ suggest that
I have quietly followed and admired Ian we may be in for a social history, an amusing
Stephen’s poetry for a number of years Some congregation – both sonic and littoral and it shows you very or angry venture into the world of John
now, but with the arrival of the beautifully either went adrift early on that Stephen is a poet who knows Buchan’s John MacNab. We are not.
produced Maritime: New and Selected Poems, or further afield. exactly what he is doing. At other points he Noble himself states, modestly, that his
I feel like I should raise me voice. For me, from ‘Baptist church (abandoned)’ talks of ‘katabatic’ and ‘anabatic’ winds which, text is not an academic treatise but ‘far more
Stephen’s work is inseverably connected to although they have a specific meteorological an introduction to a big topic with wide
the sea and this latest volume collects much Or take Stephen’s memory of a reading by meaning here, also bring to my mind the vast ramifications.’ The reader soon discovers that
of his work on pelagic themes, from his first a presumably drunken W. S. Graham (another Ancient Greek journeys from sea to inland more than that is on offer.With an easy grace,
collection in 1983 through to the present poet who worked for a time as a coastguard and vice versa. Stephen plays up the tension it displays on the part of its author a lifetime’s
day. The effect of having some of the choicer and knew his stuff about boats and sailing): or interstices between ‘dry land’ and the sea thought about the Highland environment.
poems from all of Stephen’s books brought very well throughout this book. At one point As a boy, Noble got to know the Glenleraig
together like this is to highlight the sheer He lost his plot there is talk of two lovers being ‘off the page’ area in Assynt where his family had a holiday
precision, scrupulousness and craftsmanship but swayed on. and in ‘Mooring’ the speaker is almost wary at cottage (‘none of us did any shooting’).Taking
of his work. These are sea-worthy, hard- I couldn’t grasp a theme being on terra firma: us on a walk through the territory, he reminds
wearing poems but they are not in any way but I got his drift. us that two hundred years ago it was home to
impermeable and watertight to the reader; in from ‘A night-fishing’ […] we’re not a community of some ninety folk before they
fact they seem to accept that people are fluid moored to anything I’ve seen were cleared to make room for one shepherd.
entities, prone to behaving like shoals of fish Already, in the snippets I’ve used above, sink or rise on a tested line. On the walk we pass a souterrain, sign of
or the tides, flowing and ebbing away: you see that Stephen likes to use language We’ll hold together tonight. long human habitation, and learn that now
accurately – there seems to be a right word for the sheep too are gone. Noble seems to saying
Corner-stones, scree everything in his vocabulary and that inspires This also shows that these poems are not that nothing is permanent except perhaps the
and sunk lintels, trust in the poems, the poet and the vision simply about the mechanics of boats and land itself.
close to the cliff. behind them. In the poem ‘Thrush by water’ sailing – they take in a spectrum of emotions, The book is a fascinating blend of history
the speaker listens to a thrush breaking shells underscored by the fact that his poetry is also and natural history, an account of a landscape
[…] on the edge of the water and hears no ‘discord’, often one of collaboration with visual and and how it came to be the way it is.There are
‘no jarring changes / come to sound’. ‘Sound’ musical artists. Stephen is as much a gifted love several walks - in Assynt, Strathspey,Torridon
here resonates because of its double meaning or lyric poet as he is an elegist. I noticed the and Coigach, and on Skye – where we enjoy

)/ Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
 I<M@<NJ
Noble’s thoughtful, informed companionship. forgotten.’ These, it must be noted, are not of latitude at sixty degrees north, through in the far northern reaches of Scotland is
There are also passages devoted to the Steven’s words. It would be unfair and too Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, Finland, particularly hazardous and in the fabulously
consequences of the period of the ‘big hoose’, easy a target to deconstruct here the blurb- Sweden, Norway and back home. unsubtly titled Queerbashing, Tim Morrison
passages written without a conventional writer’s appeal to bookshop browsers. But The writing is as well-knitted as you would offers up a brutally honest account of
political or environmentalist agenda and all there is something disquieting about so casual expect from a Shetlander, deftly stitched McGillivray’s optimistic expedition through
the more refreshing for that. a use of ‘proud’, ‘resilient’, ‘unforgiving’ and with strong, if somewhat paradoxical images. school, university, acquisition and subsequent
About Victorian tree planting, for example, ‘tradition’ which points to the central paradox Looking out from a Mainland shore, ‘the loss of faith, relocation to the Deep South,
he does not share the current view of the strict of such theses, a paradox familiar enough Atlantic lay like a desert’, the peninsula south the eponymous violent assault and his bruised
‘native breed only’ school of afforestation. much nearer home. of him extending ‘like a finger’ with air ‘as return home to the Orkney Islands.
He recognises, I am glad to say, that even In choosing to define a group as a solid as a clenched fist’, while ‘a skylark hung The novel is not an easy read (in a good
the much-maligned sycamore has its place, minority – and that is at least as much a frantically above, held aloft by the lightness way) as the writing is often dense and at times
although not perhaps the sitka spruce in its matter of perception as it is of mathematics – of his song.’ as impenetrable and tangled as a brambles
dense plantations. Even the rhododendron and subsequently deciding that this minority Yet this is much more than picture painting; thicket on a highland hike. But the prose is
and the salmonberry, introduced by the toffs group is threatened or at risk of willed from the start, there are deep ruminations on also beautiful, and frequently funny, as in this
and now an invasive pest in many places, have extinction and therefore must be protected, our relationships to places. ‘For just as we chatting up scene in a London bar. ‘Gee, you
their virtues. that is to say discriminated for (as opposed inhabit the landscape, the landscape inhabits are Scottish? I have Scottish ancestry!’ Todd
The sporting culture put an emphasis to against), it is a short step to declarations us, in thought, in myth and in memory; and or Marc – spelled with a ‘c’ - would enthuse
on certain species and the size of the ‘bag’. and categorisations of purity – cultural, somehow the openness of the land invites as the bait took and the process of reeling
Gamekeepers naturally felt obliged to stick sociological, religious, racial. Once defined, us to become attached, or else attaches itself in began. ‘Yes,’ McGillivray replied, ‘From
with their bosses’ bidding and anything that your persecuted minority can easily take to us.’ As the author travels he starts drawing the Islands in the North. I was born in the
competed with or threatened the favoured on a sanctity which itself becomes self- distinctions, breaking apart assumptions, Western Isles and grew up on the Mainland
few – grouse, salmon, trout, deer, and so on defining, prejudiced, fossilised, isolationist and putting himself and his relationship with the of Orkney. I have dual nationality.’
– was labelled vermin and marked down for ultimately threatening. land into perspective. Aiming for a triple, he leaves London and
eradication. These attitudes prevail in some It is not a paradox Steven addresses head- In Greenland he ruminates on the different heads North to Yorkshire where the principal
quarters. on in this series of eleven short essays which adaptations of hunters and farmers and our events take place, both good and horrific.The
The size of the ‘bag’ across the Highland sketch the role of the state (Danish, Swedish sometimes hypocritical views of them. In clue is in the title. The politics of poverty and
estates – the numbers of animals killed and former-Soviet as well as Norwegian): Canada he sees that far from a simple circle fear are forensically examined and are found
each season – was frequently of astonishing church fault lines and divisions which will be around the planet, the sixtieth parallel reveals deeply wanting.
proportions. This is a tribute of sorts to the familiar enough to many Scottish readers, aand much variety. He finds an uplifting and I ought to declare an interest here. I grew
productivity of the Highlands, despite the legislation to Norwegianise (Fornorsking) the strong sense of community in Fort Smith, up gay in the Scottish Highlands, fled, and
harsh climate and poor soils, and points to a Sami against their use of Sami language and and concludes that ‘the parallel is entirely later returned in a calmer frame of mind.
much higher biodiversity in past centuries. dialects and joiks (characteristic sung poems undefining. It allows for a plurality of norths to The descriptions of a first tentative visit to
Noble appeals for more research into of sounds rather than words) exist.’‘Placefulness’, a deep engagement with a Aberdeen University’s gaysoc, and of Daisy’s
‘historical ecology’ and cites the work in this Steven gives us something (but tantalisingly location and its inhabitants, is contrasted with (Aberdeen’s only gay ‘nightclub’ in the
field of Professor T.C. Smout. little) of the shamanism which can whip up the Alaskan wilderness tourists who set off in early 1980s) are so accurate I found myself
The writer has something to say about storms out of the sky; a short essay on Herman groups, ‘seeking their own absence’. When he humming ‘It’s Raining Men’ and craving
many controversial topics – muirburn, Lundborg’s Swedish Institute for Eugenics pads off down to a lake, fishing, terrified of a pint of tepid black and tan. The vast and
acid rain, timber production, re-wilding, (he speculates on whether there might have the big carnivores, he realises that in that vast liberating significance of Boomtown Books
overgrazing by deer – but with them all he been a Scottish Lundborg in the nineteenth forest he is ‘as stupid as bear in a bookshop.’ on King Street is similarly acknowledged.
displays an open-minded approach rather century), and a lengthy report on the protest For page after page, I am smitten with this This sadly long-gone sanctuary provided for
than a narrow ideological mindset. n campaign against the Alta dam project of the voyager and his wry turns of phrase. many of us the first terrifying glimpse of the
1970s and 80s which first took Steven to Unfortunately in Russia, he rather loses words ‘Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’ in a shop window
Beneath the Ice Hammerfest and beyond his way. His chapter on Kamchatka, in the that were not hidden in a brown paper bag or
By Kenneth Steven There is a strident eco-essay on Greenland Russian Far East, is a record of a much earlier spat as an insult.
Saraband which sits uneasily in this book and where visit, misplaced in time by several years. This That peculiarly Scottish brand of
Review by Stephen Keeler Steven’s otherwise agreeable temperament is followed by a chapter on St Petersberg in hypocritical Christianity that can be imposed
gives way to – that word again – passion, but which his insightful contemplations on place by its purveyors on island inhabitants is
Hammerfest is a thirty-hour bus journey a one-dimensional passion which doesn’t seem to have evaporated and are replaced by skewered and roasted, and made all the more
north from Oslo. Fans of Bill Bryson will appear to allow much scope for disagreement, guidebook history. Yet I can’t begrudge the credible by being critiqued by an insider,
remember it as ‘agreeable enough in a or even debate. There is, too, a strong sense man his confusion. Who, after all, can make as both the main character McGillivray
thank-you-God-for-not-making-me-live- of ‘the whole silliness of borders’ and the sense of such a dysfunctional nation? and author Morrison studied Divinity in
here sort of way’, and if you thought Bryson suggestion of a pertinent debate we might On the journey home through Scandinavia, Aberdeen. They also both went on to work in
always overdoes it for effect, Kenneth Steven have had on questions of ownership of land passages of personal memoir become social care and this raises intriguing questions
describes it today simply as ‘nothing more and the right to demarcate nations. increasingly dislocated from the place the about the Rizla-thin divide between fiction,
than the stink of dead fish.’ It is a place ‘a As a brief introduction to the Sami, author is travelling through, yet there are also fact and autobiography, and indeed ‘What is
few degrees north of sanity’, a place where Beneath the Ice is a good enough beginning. many beautifully written scenes – a wonderful a Novel’.
everyone is dying of whisky and tobacco, and It presents some recent history and sets out evocation of slushy Bergen, for example – Others may wish to engage with this minor
where darker abuses lie just beneath the ice. principal issues without exploring any in and then there is the ending, which I shall dilemma but Morrison can define his work
So much for the Norwegian model. depth. Ultimately, however, it becomes a not spoil. as he chooses. Whatever it is, it is a glorious
But Steven is a man with a passion, perhaps unintentional apology for separatism Perhaps we should all undertake such a outpouring of prose as precise as the last slant
an ‘over-enthusiasm’, for all things Sami. If at a time when the centre looks increasingly journey, following whatever line or parallel of winter solstice sun at Maeshowe and as
passion alone keeps you page-turning, you’re like it might not hold. n offers hope or discovery. Meanwhile, or furious as the crashing waves against the sea
in for a rewarding, charming, humane and instead, Mallachy Tallack’s spin around the cliffs of Hoy. Violence is shockingly described
occasionally poetic read, if not quite a cogently 60 Degrees North – Around the World top of the world is well worth a vicarious and friendships are beautifully evoked.
argued thesis of prejudice and persecution. in Search of Home follow. n The final twenty or so pages take us to the
But even some of Steven’s Sami friends are By Malachy Tallack Ring of Brodgar at Stenness and here I fear
wary of such passion. Polygon Books Queerbashing the prose soared into a whole new and not
The Sami are described on the book’s Review by Mandy Haggith by Tim Morrison necessarily better stratosphere. My double
cover as ‘the indigenous people of the ThunderPoint Publishing Ltd pattie supper slid from my lap as if laced with a
Scandinavian Arctic. A proud, resilient people From the opening phrase of this book, ‘I can Review by Alison Napier hallucinogenic drug found only in the ditches
in an unforgiving yet majestic northern remember the day: silver-skied and heavy of the Northern Isles, inducing dreamscapes
wildscape (sic), the Sami have carved out with rain...’, we are clearly in the hands of Growing up and coming out as gay is at best and purple hazes worthy of a Jimi Hendrix
an existence rich in tradition, where the old a confident writer. Mallachy Tallack is from complex, even now in these allegedly halcyon lyric or a Ginsberg Howl. Perhaps a flourish
ways of reindeer herding, shamanic belief and Shetland, and the book relates his boreal days of equal marriage and homophobic too far, but nothing that ultimately detracts
the veneration of bears have not yet been circumnavigation, westwards along the line Christian B&B prosecutions. Being gay from this very fine ‘novel’ n

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- )0
I<M@<NJ
Poetry Reviews Expressionism prevails in Graham small book explores a range of different forms us who view the Scottish fishing boat as a
Second Wind, new poems Douglas Dunn, Fulton's stunning sequence of prose-poems, though its tone is consistent. significant aspect of our historical culture
Vicki Feather, Diana Hendry, Saltire Society interspersed with strong b/w photos which Alan MacGillivray's Redonomes is, by and manufacturing history as the author of
Scotland/Scottish Poetry Library are a travelogue in themselves. Its Central Belt contrast, a restless exploration of both form a seminal work on the Ring Net Fishery. To
Paragraphs at the End of the World, Graham beat and the pace seems impossible to sustain and tone. It's hard to get a handle on what's others he is the postman-poet who has chosen
Fulton, Penniless Press but bloody hell, it never flags and the locations going on but you're dazzled by the zest. The to remain within his community of the long
Airstream, poems, Audrey Henderson, and visions are so varied that you feel none poems are often in a satirical tradition, using peninsula of Mull of Kintytre. I have followed
Homebound Publications could be left out. It's a big question, whether verse forms you'd associate with that intention his work from its first appearance in mainly
Against the Light, Stewart Conn, Mariscat Press there must be some origination, some new but then there's a jump to a completely Scottish periodicals to its early gathering in
At the Well of Love, poems Tom Pow, Mariscat ground broken, in any art or whether the raku different tradition or allusion. There could The Larch Plantation published in the simple
Press pot will always ask to be held in your hand if it hardly be a greater contrast in the language well-set editions produced by the printer and
This Changes Things, Claire Askew, Bloodaxe is made with a sensitive touch. I'd say the only and the look of the book with Brian Lawrie's publisher Callum Macdonald (Midlothian).
Books book in this bag which invites comparison methodical tracing of the Dee, from source to ‘Always Boats and Men’ has stayed with me
An Ember from the Fire, Jane Bonnyman, with Fulton's work comes to us from a Scot sea, in a compact volume well illustrated with since encountering it in his Song of the Quern
poetry Salzburg who has lived much of her life in another Mick McKie's photographs. (Scottish Cultural Press). Thus I notice it is
Redomones and Eye to the Future, Alan literary culture. Audrey Henderson grew up You might expect that the young blood placed first in this selected poems and so
MacGillivray, Kennedy & Boyd on the edge of Edinburgh but lives in Boston. with the new voices would would test the suggests that the book is not a conventional
Mountains and Rivers, Brian Lawrie, Airstream takes its title from the streamlined forms and venture further but, from two strong chronological 'best of' but a newly wrought
Malfranteaux aluminium shape of trail-able homes. (The examples, it does not seem as simple as that. book in its own right - one poem made out
Who by Water, Kate Ashton, Shearsman Books same icon was used to great effect by in an Claire Askew comes to Bloodaxe Books, from of many. It seems to me that this poet has
Staunin Ma Lane, Chinese verse in Scots and installation by Mike Nelson in Toronto's The a spirited line of arresting performance poetry. simply made the choice to remain within a
English, translated by Brian Holton, Shearsman Power Plant in 2014). Audrey Henderson's It's not just the long rhythms but the startling community and landscape and family that is
A Night of Islands, Selected Poems, Angus Martin own road-movie can also move through time image like a butcher's knife cutting cake. home because that is essential to his work as
Reviews by Ian Stephen and over water as when she imagines herself Refrains with variations are used to strong well as to his life.
as one of the flock of a St Kilda preacher. effect but it's not just trickery with language. It's not difficult to identify the skills in
A pack of contrasting collections, all sent Her use of imagery is a key element of the Amongst the surprising choices of word you narration and prosody, in standard English
to Northwords Now, reveals a wide range of work, whether it takes a slim, long form in get very simple portraits - the grandfather who and in a representation of spoken Argyll Scots.
styles in contemporary poetry, all linked verse or becomes a series of prose-poems. helped make spitfires airworthy. Then there is It's more difficult to explain how this often
somehow to Scotland.The contents dance on Lichens are closely observed. I thought of a lyric on destroying fire - the poorest thing bare and simple verse has such intense power.
a pendulum from expressive free verse, none Paul Strand's close up photographs of South in the world in traditional riddles, because I'm not alone in asking this and would like
more energetic than that of Graham Fulton, Uist landscape elements alternating with his only ash is left. Jane Bonnyman also publishes to refer the reader to an excellent previous
to the well-made formality adopted by some portraits and was not surprised to come across her first collection in the restrained and more analysis of this book by Richie McCaffery:
younger poets as well as veterans of the trade, an explicit reference to Cartier Bresson. The academic style of Poetry Salzburg. This is londongrip.co.uk/2016/03/london-grip-
but perhaps most prominent as a device in book is a result of the Connecticut publisher's appropriate to the subject matter as well as poetry-review-martin/
new work from Douglas Dunn. Glossy or competition scheme and is a very handsome the style, which is held-back storytelling. She After the interest and pleasure of entering
matt, serifs or no in the typography, it's all a production. is fascinated by the relationship between RLS these conversations with people, dead and
matter of taste in the end and it has to be the Two recent productions by Edinburgh and Fanny Van de Grift.The Pacific enters her alive, and with the natural world, I also have to
same in one reviewer's selection of what can based Mariscat, show the care in production evocation as strongly as the once-Bohemian ask how this quiet-voiced poet can hold you
be usefully discussed in limited space. Let's by a designer in love with typography (the Hotel Chevillon by the bridge at Grez sur through a whole book. Many have skills in
start by celebrating the commitment of the poet and editor Gerry Cambridge) and are Loing. prosody though I'd say Angus Martin's choice
poets who continue to make a thing from collections by established Scottish poets. I'd like to complete this subjective to live and work in his home community has
their individual stock of language and the Stewart Conn is known as a successful reaction to books received with one more allowed him to trust his own sensibility which
publishers who demonstrate their belief in its playwright and radio-producer as well as a contrast. Shearsman's 2016 list includes two is surely why the work has such resonance. He
worth. I regret not being able to share more poet and Tom Pow's recent range of work has retrospective collections by Scottish poets knowingly takes the huge risk of monotone
fully from the bundle of books which have included travel-based nonfiction and teenage who have been immersed in translation for elegy. It's more like animated conversation
come with me on my recent travels. fiction. Both slim and simple collections much of their lives. Arguably this field can with ghosts who talk as well as walk. But
Responses to ageing form a thread through somehow give you the impression of holding give the greatest understanding of the vast there's more to it than that. The final section
most of these diverse books but the theme is a substantial book in your hand. Just when you range of possibilities for those of us who ‘From a Kintyre Nature Diary’ demonstrates
explicit in SecondWind – new poems from three think it's inevitable that experienced poets make with language. Kate Ashton's original something like Graham Fulton's ability to
poets commissioned by the Saltire Society in will be content to contain their thoughts and poems read like representations of another observe the most mundane-seeming things
association with the Scottish Poetry Library. visions within crafted structures, bare emotion voice. Her personal reactions to landscape, with visionary intensity but there's also a hop,
Just when you think the exercise of proven hits you directly. Perhaps, in both books it's seascape and people are converted into a skip and jump of thought that seems more
craft will be lulling there is Douglas Dunn's the courage to write simply, to hold back the general observation. The risk is that they thus like the shift from observation to comment
direct, near-brutal, depiction of objects which craft at times, which produces the strongest become remote but as always the language in Brian Holton's living translations.Who else
were hidden within the glove compartment effect. Stewart Conn puts down the fractures itself is the substance of the game and this would imagine a scart's (shag or cormorant)
of a car owned by a person who will never of a mug clutched by a falling person and the poet can demonstrate musicality as well as brain transposed into his own? The wind is a
drive again. It reminded me of an image from a hard story happens between the lines, like powers of close observation. Ironically Brian particular animal and islands prefer their own
very early Dunn collection, Terry Street where much good drama. It’s the pertinent detail Holton's lively poems are all translations from company.
a man is seen pulling a lawnmower along a which hits your heart, rather than rhetoric or a lifetime's immersion in different languages Elsewhere in this harmonic construction,
pavement. The poet wishes grass for him. Also eloquence in itself: but, in this case, all from the Chinese. Perhaps this poet can admit the sea can say much
in Second Wind Vicki Feaver uses her tricks of '... no-one seemed concerned lest we it's because of his command of Scots and its about wood but is no real judge of the stuff
prosody but remains anarchic. A mower in her might/be making a break for the number canny suitability to the material but these 'knowing only the broken ends of trees.'
hands will decapitate the flowers. Her work is eight bus.' versions of ancient verses are fresher than On the facing page a meditation on grass is
as painterly as one of its subjects, the work of Tom Pow also tells his story by implication the average daisy. The format of the book informed by the aside that this writer can
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham but remains as after its bare bones are quietly put in place. He is well chosen to carry original poem, Scots hear its voice. I believe him.
energetic as the brush strokes of the painter is about to travel to Lagos to play his part in version and a standard English version which Shoestring Press's production, with another
at the age of ninety. I thought also of meeting an international exchange (Commonwealth makes a glossary unnecessary. How can such a Gerry Cambridge design, adds to the pleasure
Margaret Mellis and appreciating her most Poets United) but 'A feather of blood seeped, scholarly project have the tone o a chiel i the of this volume. I'd ask readers to look out for
recent work most, in the long span of a unannounced,...' into the brain of his wife. selfsame howff? a forthcoming title from this publisher. The
retrospective exhibition. The last word in The poet spends much space in describing Maybe Holton can talk to ghosts. If so, Tasmanian, Pete Hay is known to several in
the anthology is Diana Hendry's wry Praise the 'fudge-coloured' and 'glove puppet' like he has that in common with a poet who Scotland from conferences comparing island
Poem which could easily have been written in body of a stranded baby gull before making has just published a powerful selection of his matters. He is a poet with the most robust of
prose format, depending more on the writer's the comparison of a helpless look in the life's work to date. Thus it is surely fitting to voices and his kinship with Angus Martin will
ability to step outside and look at what she's human eye, within a few sketched lines. This attempt to discuss this one on its own terms. be clear to those who encounter both poets
doing, than the format it adopts. Angus Martin is known to those of and thinkers. n

*' Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(-
:FEKI@9LKFIJË9@F>I8G?@<J
Chris Agee is Editor of Irish Pages Yowann Byghan is a fluent the Cat was published in 2015 and Ingrid Leonard comes from Jim Miller lives near Inverness Karin Slater is a Creative Writing
(www.irishpages.org). His third Cornish speaker. He lives on the his play Badbea Waterloo, was given Orkney, which inspires much of and has written several books graduate from the Outer Hebrides
collection, Next to Nothing, was Isle of Seil, drinks cocoa, writes a moved reading at the Tron. her poetry. She is studying for on the north, including The with a love of all things poetry.
shortlisted for the 2009 Ted Hughes poetry and rides a large motorbike, an MA in Writing Poetry from Gathering Stream,The Dambuilders,
Award for New Work in Poetry. but not simultaneously. Mandy Haggith lives in Assynt the University of Newcastle. The Foresters, and Swords for Hire. Rebecca Smith grew up
and writes in a shed with a tree-top in the middle of nowhere in
James Andrew has had two books Maoilios Caimbeul Bàrd view. Her latest novel is Bear Witness, Pàdraig MacAoidh – À Leòdhas. Donald S. Murray is from Ness Cumbria. She now lives in
of poetry published and a third is due agus sgrìobhaiche às an Eilean published by Saraband. Mandy can be Na fhear-teagaisg aig Oilthigh in the Isle of Lewis. He now Central Scotland and writes short
to be published by Dionysia Press. Sgitheanach. Tha cruinneachadh contacted at [email protected] Chille Rìmhinn. Cruinneachadh lives in Shetland. His latest book fiction. She tweets @beckorio
ùr bàrdachd leis, Tro Chloich ùr bho Acair am-bliadhna. is Herring Tales (Bloomsbury).
Jean Atkin’s first collection Not na Sùla, a’ tighinn a-mach bho Edith Harper is influenced by her Ian Stephen’s most recent novel, A
Lost Since Last Time is published by Clàr san dàmhair 2014. north-east upbringing, particularly Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh Bàrd Alison Napier lives in Perthshire. Book of Death and Fish, is published
Oversteps Books. Her recent work in use of language, and finds that a tha air an dreuchd aige mar fhear- Her fiction has appeared in various by Saraband, as is Maritime, his
has been published in magazines Catherine Eunson has been nature inspires much of her poetry. teagaisg ealain ann an Inbhis Nis a journals and anthologies and her latest collection of poems.
including Envoi,The Clearing, fairly busy in Benbecula for leigeil dheth o chionn ghoirid. first novel, Take-Away People, is
The North, Earthlines, and also twenty years this year with family, Jennifer Morag Henderson currently seeking a publisher. Kenny Taylor lives on the Black
commissioned by and performed various arts jobs and community is from Inverness. Her book Maggie Mackay lives on the east Isle, works mostly in non-fiction
on Radio 4. www.jeanatkin.com projects. She also writes music. Josephine Tey: A Life (Sandstone coast of Scotland and is enjoying Tom Pow’s most recent collection features and books drawn from
Press) was listed by the Observer in life as a final year Masters Creative of poems is At The Well of Love, nature and science, but also relishes
Gabrielle Barnby lives in Orkney Jane Fuller lives in the Mull the best biographies of 2015. Writing student at Manchester published by Mariscat. other forms of storytelling.
and works in a variety of genres of Galloway on a rugged cliff Metropolitan University.
including short stories and poetry. top overlooking the sea. The Nick Holdstock’s first novel, The Maggie Rabatski has two Marie-Therese Taylor’s work
Her first novel will be released spectacular Scottish landscape Casualties, came out last year. He’s Meg Macleod was born in 1945 poetry pamphlet collections, has appeared in Soundwaves, Mixing
by ThunderPoint next year. informs and inspires her writing. also the author of China’s Forgotten in England. She lived in America Down from The Dance/An Dèidh the Colours The Glasgow Review
People. He lives in Edinburgh. and Canada for a few years and has An Dannsa and Holding, both of Books, Nutshells and Nuggets,
Henry Bell is a writer and editor Peter Gilmour was born 1941 in a BFA degree in Fine Arts from published by New Voices Press. and The Snare’s Nest.
from Bristol, working on poetry and Glasgow where he still lives. He has Stephen Keeler is a recipient of a Univ Of Victoria in Canada. In 1974
theatre. He lives on the Southside of had a pamphlet of poems published Scottish Book Trust New Writing Meg came to live in Scotland where Olive M. Ritch, an Orcadian poet, Roseanne Watt is from Shetland.
Glasgow and edits Gutter Magazine. by Happenstance Press and two Award and is currently completing she writes, paints and knits. has been published in many literary She makes filmpoems, writes poems
novels published by Vagabond Voices. work on his first collection of magazines and anthologies, as well as and is poetry editor of The Island
Josephine Brogan is the pen-name poems. He lives in Ullapool where Angus Martin’s most recent having her work broadcast on Radio 4. Review (theislandreview.com)
of Molly Donachie She lives in Merryn Glover was born in he teaches creative writing. collection is A Night of Islands: Selected
Edinburgh and finds poetry a satisfying Kathmandu. Her fiction and drama Poems, published by Shoestring Press. Cynthia Rogerson’s novel I Love Ali Whitelock’s memoir, ‘poking
and challenging way of enjoying life. have been broadcast on Radio Chris Lamb lives in Edinburgh You, Goodbye was shortlisted for seaweed with a stick and running
Scotland and Radio 4. A House where he works in engineering. This Richie McCaffery’s first full the 2011 Scottish Novel of the away from the smell’ was launched at
Paul Brownsey lectured in Called Askival is her first novel. is his first published short story. length collection of poems, Year, and developed into a Woman’s sydney writers’ festival & published
philosophy at Glasgow University. Having returned to live and work Cairn, was published in 2014. Hour serial. Her latest novel is If I by Polygon 2009 & Wakefield
His book, His Steadfast Love in Nepal for four years she now Tariq Latif ’s most recent collection Touched the Earth (Black and White). Press 2008. Her first poetry
and Other Stories, was reviewed lives in the Highlands of Scotland. is The Punjabi Weddings (Arc). His Marion McCready lives in She is a Royal Literary Fellow collection is almost complete.
in Northwords Now 31. pamphlet Smithereens also by Arc Dunoon. Her second full-length at the University of Dundee.
Lily Greenall is a writer from was short listed for the Callum poetry collection, Madame Ecosse, Howard Wright was longlisted
Douglas Bruton won the Neil the Isle of Lewis. She is currently MacDonald Memorial award. He is due to be published Spring Kirsteen Scott lives in Edinburgh in the 2015 National Poetry
Gunn Prize 2015, The William studying a PhD in Creative Writing is currently looking for a publisher 2017 by Eyewear Publishing. now but she belongs to Argyll and Competition and highly commended
Soutar Prize 2014 and HISSAC at the University of Aberdeen. for his fourth full collection. most of her writing comes from in the Torbay Open. Other poems
2008. He was recently published Rhoda Michael began writing there. Several pieces have been are due to appear in Stand,The
by Aesthetica Magazine. George Gunn’s last book of poems Joan Lennon is a Canadian Scot, after she retired. She was editor published in New Writing Scotland. North and The Antigonish Review.
was A Northerly Land. A prose book living and writing in the Kingdom of of Northwords Now up to 2010.
about Caithness, The Province of Fife, with a fine view of the silvery Tay.

N_\i\kfÔe[X=I<<Efik_nfi[jEfn
Efik_nfi[jk_XebjXcck_\cfZXk`fejY\cfn]fik_\`ijlggfik`e[`jki`Ylk`e^Efik_nfi[jEfn%Jg\Z`Xck_Xebj^fkfXcck_\c`YiXi`Xejn_fglkljfe[`jgcXp%

@em\ie\jj Birnam Arts Centre An Buth Bheag, Ferry Rd, Kyle Giraffe Cafe, 51 South St, Perth
Waterstones, 69 Eastgate Centre Anderson Restaurant, Union St, Fortrose An Tobar, Tobermory, Mull Ewart Library, Dumfries
Eden Court Theatre, Bishop’s Road John Muir Trust, Station Road, Pitlochry The Tolbooth and Albert Halls, Stirling
Inverness College UHI The Bakehouse, Findhorn (village) 8Y\i[\\ej_`i\
Leakeys Bookshop, Greyfriars Hall, Church St The Blue Cafe, Findhorn Foundation Oxfam Bookshop, 5 Back Wynd, Aberdeen <[`eYli^_
Moniack Mhor Writing Centre, 4 Teaverran, Kiltarlity Moray Arts Centre, Findhorn Foundation Books & Beans, 12 Belmont St, Aberdeen The Fruitmarket Gallery, 45 Market Street
Highland Wholefoods, Unit 6, 13 Harbour Road Sutor Creek, Bank St, Cromarty Lemon Tree, 5 West North St, Aberdeen Blackwells Bookshop, 53-9 South Bridge
Museum & Art Gallery, Castle Wynd Cromarty Arts, Church St, Cromarty Newton Dee Café, Newton Dee Village, Bieldside, Aberdeen Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichtons Close
Waterstone’s, 69 Eastgate Centre Spa Pavilion, Strathpeffer Blackwell’s, Old Aberdeen, Aberdeen Elephant House Café, 21 George IV Bridge
HICA, Dalcrombie, Loch Ruthven, by Dores Waterstone’s, Elgin Aberdeen City Libraries The Village, 16 S. Fort Street
Visit Scotland, Castle Wynd The Loft Bistro and Venue, E.Grange Farm Woodend Barn, Burn o’Bennie, Banchory Filmhouse, 88 Lothian Road
Bogbain Farm, Drumossie, Inverness History Links, Dornoch Yeadons of Banchory, 20 Dee St, Banchory Peter Green & Co, Warrender Park Road
WEA, 57 Church St, Inverness Dornoch T.I.C Aberdeenshire Libraries MacNaughtons Bookshop, 3-3a Haddington Place
Inchmore Gallery, Inverness Hammerton Store, 336 Gt Western Rd, Aberdeen St Margaret’s House, 151 London Road
Simpsons Garden Centre, Inverness @jcXe[j#N\jkEfik_ Spindrift Studio, The Marina, Banff Summerhall, 1 Summerhall
Caledonian MacBrayne Ferry Terminals
?`^_cXe[jgcljDfiXpXe[G\ik_j_`i\ Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Slèite, Isle of Skye Jflk_ >cXj^fn
Highland Libraries Blue Shed Cafe,Torrin, Isle of Skye Stirling Libraries Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street
The Green Kite, The Station, Strathpeffer Cafe Arriba, Portree, Isle of Skye Midlothian and East Lothian Libraries Òran Mòr, 731 Gt.Western Road
The Community Centre, Tulloch St, Dingwall. MacIntosh’s Bookshop, Portree, Isle of Skye Kings Bookshop, Callander, 91 Main St, Callander The Piping Centre, 30 McPhater Street
Picaresque Books, High St, Dingwall Carmina Gadelica, Portree, Isle of Skye Dundee Contemporary Arts, 52 Nethergate, Dundee Caledonia Books, 483 Gt Western Road
Kilmorack Gallery, by Beauly An Buth Beag, Skeabost, Isle of Skye Clementine, Gray Street, Broughty Ferry Tchai Ovna Teahouses, 42 Otago Lane
Timespan, Dunrobin Street, Helmsdale Mor Books, Struan, Isle of Skye Jessie’s Kitchen, Albert Street, Broughty Ferry Mono, King’s Court, 10 King Street
Dornoch Bookshop, High St, Dornoch Ravenspoint, Kershader, Lochs, Isle of Lewis Broughty Ferry Library, Queen St, Broughty Ferry Gallery of Modern Art, Royal Exchange Square.
The Nairn Bookshop, 97 High St, Nairn An Lanntair, Kenneth St, Stornoway The Byre Theatre, St Andrews Tell it Slant, 134 Renfrew St
Moray Libraries Hebridean Jewellery & Bookshop, 63 Cromwell St, The Forest Bookstore, 26 Market Pl, Selkirk WASPS Studio, The Briggait, 141 The Bridge Gate
The Ceilidh Place, 14 West Argyll St, Ullapool Stornoway Kesley’s Bookshop, 29 Market St, Haddington, Oxfam Books, 330 Byres Rd
Ullapool Bookshop, Quay St., Ullapool Taigh Chearsabagh, North Uist East Lothian
Storehouse of Foulis, Foulis Ferry Shetland Arts Trust, Tollclock Centre, 26 North Rd, Lerwick Prestongrange Museum, Morrison’s Haven, Prestonpans Invitation to readers to suggest additional locations - contact
Achins Bookshop, Inverkirkaig, Lochinver Shetland and Orkney Libraries Montrose Library, 214 High St, Montrose, Angus [email protected]
Caithness Horizons, Old Town Hall, High St,Thurso Western Isles libraries Su Casa, Lorne Arcade,115 High St, Ayr We will also send packs of 12 or 25 or 50 to individuals who
VisitScotland, High St, Aviemore Carraig Mhor, Isle of Islay Moffat Bookshop, 5 Well St, Moffat are keen to distribute locally.

Efik_nfi[jEfn@jjl\*)#8lklde)'(- *(
KlXk_

K_…`[c\XjXZ_X[_“i>~`[_c`^X`iEfik_nfi[jEfnX`i 8e\n>X\c`Zjlggc\d\ekkfEfik_nfi[jEfn\ek`kc\[
XY_\`cKlXk_]_f`ccj\XZ_X[_XfekliXjXeZfd_X`i KlXk_n`ccXgg\XifeZ\XeelXccp]ifdk_\`jjl\`e
eXYc`X[_eXY_f~`i\Xd_Xe\XiiX`Z_)'(.X$dXZ_c\ jgi`e^)'(.fenXi[j#n`k_jlggfik]ifd9Ži[eX
kX`ZY_f9_Ži[eX>~`[_c`^X^lj8cYX:_ilk_XZ_X`c% >~`[_c`^Xe[:i\Xk`m\JZfkcXe[%Lgkfefn#]fii\Xjfej
>lil`^\j\f#c\Z`fe~`k\#k_Xk_XiX`iZl`[\XdXZ_li f]jgXZ\#k_\\dg_Xj`j_XjY\\efegf\kipXj>X\c`Z
X`iY~i[XZ_[dXijklk_>~`[_c`^XeejXe`i`jXZ_c\ dXk\i`Xc`ek_\dX^Xq`e\Ylkn`k_dfi\jgXZ\efn
YXiiXZ_[]XijX`e^\XZ_[X$e`j#k_Xk_XiXe[ŽZ_XjZli `k`j_fg\[kf\ogXe[k_`jZfej`[\iXYcp%N_`cjkn\
i`j\f^ldŽi%>\[XY_`fj~`k\XeeXe$ZŽd_eX`[_ Zfek`el\kfcffb]fiXe[glYc`j_e\ngf\kipf]Zflij\#
X`ijfeeXY~i[XZ_[^lek\X^Xd_#k_Xk_XiX^`XiiX`[_ n\Ëi\cffb`e^]fifk_\i]fidjf]ni`k`e^Xjn\ccefn%
i`fZ_[Xe\`c\j^i‰fY_X`[_X$e`jZl`[\XZ_[%DXk_X N\nflc[m\ipdlZ_n\cZfd\jlYd`jj`fej`ek_\]fid
ÔZj\Xe^f`i`[X^X`Y_ef\XiiXeeXe~ÔZj\XeeXj f]j_fikÔZk`fe`eZcl[`e^\okiXZkj]ifdcfe^\infibj#
]_X`[\eXZ_Zl`ij`Y_[_Xe`i`j`X[6K_…`[]~`ck\X kiXejcXk`fejkfXe[]ifd>X\c`Z#i\m`\njXe[Xik`Zc\j`e
Z_liZl`[\XZ_[X`ik`fee[X`[_\Xe^l>~`[_c`^`j Xe[XYflk>X\c`Z%K_\[\X[c`e\]fijlYd`jj`fejkfk_\
Y_fe>_~`[_c`^#fYX`i$Y_i\`k_e\XZ_X`[_X^ljX`ck dX^Xq`e\efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb `j).AXelXip)'(.%
jX>_~`[_c`^X^ljdl^_efk_X`Z_\Xe>~`[_\XcXZ_%
ÊJ\XeZ\Xee$cXk_Xdl[_\`i\X[_^ljjklk_XZ_li Rody Gorman
X$jk\XZ_^lc‰feeX_$`i`j\efik_nfi[jefn%Zf%lb ). Gaelic Editor
=Xf`cc\XZ_)'(.%J`lk_X[X`Y_

Rody Gorman
Deasaiche Gàidhlig