THE LOST WORDS BLESSING Enter the world with care, my love And speak the things you see Let new names take and root and thrive and grow And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter May you enter now as …
The Big Hooley 1st July 1999 In the Assembly Rooms the night, people want tae dance, an celebrate. The hall swirls tae the Fish Band, kilts, skirts, troosers, shorts, even the odd ball gown twirlin an birlin in time tae the music lik a shoal turnin as wan in the ocean’s currents. Ah’ve jist danced …
A Winter Morning By Gerry Cambridge (at aged 14, Ayrshire) Puddle ice cracked like lightbulb glass. Frost had furred the last of the hips and haws. My breath plumed out like a dragon’s In the cheering cold that morning the class Was off for the day as the heating had failed – Off for the …
I have chosen a poetic passage from ‘Charles I’, a play by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which he began writing in 1820 but did not finish. He was, I believe, a revolutionary and socialist poet and the poems are still relevant now. I found Shelley nearly 30 years ago, when I was given the book ‘Red …
Eternity He who binds to himself a joy Does the wing`ed life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise. By William Blake (1757 – 1827) ‘Blake believed that a bigger force than himself worked through him. He held the pen, the graver or the brush. He was …
Caterpillar He stands on the suckers under his tail, stretches forward and puts down his six legs. Then he brings up the sucker under his tail, making a beautiful loop. That’s his way of walking. He makes a row of upside-down U’s along the rib of a leaf. He is as green as it. The …
McLellan Poetry Competition – An evening with Sean O’Brien 30th August 2019 Arran Theatre and Arts Trust presents for the first time on Arran, poet Sean O’Brien, the judge of this year’s McLellan Poetry Competition. Music with Arran Dawn, Arran’s famous harp and whistle duo. Corrie and Sannox Hall, 7.30pm £12 / Children and young …
Peaches A mouthful of language to swallow: stretches of beach, sweet clinches, breaches in walls, bleached branches; britches hauled over haunches; hunched leeches, wrenched teachers. What English can do: the warmth that chuckles beneath fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet richness, plashy juices. I beseech you, peach, clench me into the sweetness of your reaches. By Peter …
SOMETIMES By Mary Oliver 1. Something came up out of the dark. It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before. It wasn’t an animal or a flower, unless it was both. Something came up out of the water, a head the size of a cat but muddy and without ears. I don’t know what God …
Poetry and Rhetoric (II) by David Constantine When I think of persuasion, of the persuasiveness, I see You that morning on the Circle Line With a seat for once but squashed in knee to knee In a thicket of people somewhere on your own Among them standing, swaying, slumping half asleep You reading poems through …