This
image seems to fit Matthew Sweeney's poem, A dream of honey, in PS 17. [It
also reminds yr Webmaster of his trip to the Caucasus in 1982]
Hello and welcome to Poetry Scotland’s new website. It is not ‘just’ a website: it is the other half of your Poetry Scotland magazine. The broadsheet, distributed widely to the general public in Scotland, and to our subscribers world-wide, still holds the main contents: good new poems by a variety of Scottish and international poets. This website provides the extra information, news, discussion, book information and features so essential to the poets and contributors, subscribers and onlookers who want to go deeper into Poetry Scotland; literally behind the scenes.
Contributions of letters, articles, comments, news, rolling poem, mend-a-poem, photos to illustrate poems in Poetry Scotland, any poems offered specifically for the website, and any other suggestions, may be sent by post or email (or of course dropped round at Spittal Street).
This
image seems to fit Matthew Sweeney's poem, A dream of honey, in PS 17. [It
also reminds yr Webmaster of his trip to the Caucasus in 1982]
To start with, we’re using poems where the writer has found a particular lacuna or problem patch. I don’t want to have to turn down your ‘problem’ poems for lack of space, but we’ll see how it goes. Please send your MEND-A-POEMS with the usual SAE, or email them. You can send MENDING suggestions for the poems without an SAE.
Sally writes:
PS16 included a Renga chain. As we move towards a community of poets, healing some of the divisions caused by pursuit of individual excellence (or more to the point, individual reward), the communal poem may have a future (In Japan of course, it has a considerable past). It is certainly worth an investigation.
I have invited three other poets to begin cantos of the poem, and I have begun one myself, and you may send your additions, or successive waves, suggesting to which canto you would like them attached. Each individual contribution will be signed on and off with the author’s name, and titles of the cantos or sections may be developed. We’ll make more rules if we have to, as we go along. We’ll kind of vote for when we think the whole is finished, and if it’s good enough, we might publish it.
If anyone wants to start a second rolling poem, with different parameters, let me know.
Three separate poems started by Stuart B. Campbell
The first fulcrum waits no longer than
the first white light, obliterating soft pink
paradise forever to a state more longed for
than recalled; now to treat with this small world
*******************************
This feeling is a cunning trout, slipping
between my guddling fingers;
it is the suspended sand
between my paddling toes and
***************************
the sextant and the clocks have been
dismantled to meaningless
cogs, numbers, needles, scales;
the chartroom locked and denied
***************************
There you go folks, I know I'm going to add to at least one of these, but the more the merrier! I can see that each contains the seeds of its own completion, but getting there should be an interesting journey. Colin
Sandy Hutchison poem (PS16)
Sandy writes: In the third stanza ‘check’ became ‘chick’, which briefly makes a kind of sense, but doesn’t work in sustaining the syntax. It’s a famous fault line in geological terms – as you may know. I liked the idea of the predatory birds using it as a kind of territory marker.
Corrected poem:
The Shimmer
It's no good:
I can't catch that
bantie cockerel's cry
kro-heigh-hoo
kro-heigh-hoo
Long persistent
volley at twenty past
four and now another
blast at two.
The sun this morning
chased through cloud
like a silver
sickle as we
piled out to gawp.
Buzzard and daw check
beck-bank and fell-clump
drifting down
the fault line to Dent
under Knoutberry Haw.
The nearby rookery's
ablaze with noise
kaah! kaah!
like the dragon party
four thousand years ago
when Hi and Ho
astronomers royal
neglected the drum rites
neglected the arrows
and chanting
(pished then comatose
the charges read)
so the fiery worm
took its bite
unimpeded.
No need
to lose the
head (or eyes) today
though, boys, even
the rooks
will settle
in their own good time.
By mid afternoon
the pasture
beats with heat;
the happy shades are
dancing with flies.
Lambs carp
calves slobber;
an almost
obligatory kestrel
hangs
its shimmering T
over Baugh Fell.
Garsdale, August 11, 1999
Colin Will poem (PS14)
Colin writes: In the first line, 'Crunching' became 'Crouching', which doesn't really make sense. In the second stanza ‘Sika’ became ‘Sitka’ – a little deer transformed into a giant conifer by a single ‘t’.
Corrected poem:
Cairngorm Lift*
Crunching over the night's crust,
frost needles furring each snowy pillow,
we pass the white field
where summer gliders soar.
Now packed in long boxes,
flight-coffined, they wait,
towplane parked by barn's edge.
Further into the trees
the burn rushes, bubbling
between its white blanket banks.
Pine needles, snow-furred,
drop thaw-loosened lumps
to cover deer tracks -
at least two species,
probably Sika too.
In the home-walk woods I speak
the Frost-words - have to -
and as we spike the ice
to cross a slide see
no plane, just blinding meadow.
We are in the cottage, fired and friendly,
when the flier circles, winter-muffled,
clear to land, in a cloud
of blown frost, triple track
grooved, three ice ruts
on landscape's linen,
Glen Feshie's air lines.
* lift = sky, heavens in Scots
Two poems sent to PS have become detached from the covering letter, and Sally is keen to contact the writer. If you recognise yourself, please let Sally know:
Title: Green and Gold
First Line: At every turn the sitka walls
Title: Jazz in Summer (for R.C.S.)
First line: My father is playing Jelly Roll Morton
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