This collection contains poems written between 2000 and 2005, and includes
a short sequence from a Japan trip.
I've really enjoyed the process of working with Sally and Ian in assembling
this collection - it's been a joy. For an insight into the process, there's an article
in Information Scotland, June 2006, vol 4 No 3, p. 18.
The poems span Scotland, criss-cross Europe, and then vault a frozen Siberia
to land in Japan. They’re about people, places, nature, art, history, and the
importance of chicken soup. They spring from a passionate desire to communicate,
to share thoughts, experiences and feelings through the medium of a precise
yet poetic language.
ISBN 0 946230 81 1, 60pp, £5.20
Available from diehard publishers, 91-93 Main Street, Callander, FK17 8BQ, or
Calder Wood Press, 1 Beachmont Court, Dunbar, EH42 1YF. More details on
the Order form. All payments in GB pounds please, and with cheques payable
to diehard publishers (Callander orders) or Calder Wood Press (Dunbar orders).
Sample poems:
Back to Glenbrittle
Just off-road, thickwinter,
wind gust shovels a pile of snowdust
onto the hard shoulder
where it melts to salty darkness.
Loch Garry reflects ochre sky
in a wind-harrowed mirror. The sun
draws a bright line between clouds
then dims to December-glow.
Sliced glens strike Southwest,
each bonny-burned and loch-bottomed,
dam-stopped. Trees are pastelled
by a misting of blown snow.
You have to grasp the seconds
on this journey. Around a bend
mountains imbricate; ridge after ridge
of flashy snow, white heights.
Dawn, blue boy steps out along the sea track,
avoids a dog sausage, glazy rock, sights fishing light
angling from creel-float to jetty, hears peeps
of redshank, curlew’s bubble.
Youth and present flicker together
in zoetrope animation, until memory
and imagination can’t be unzipped.
This is where we once were,
And we are here again, but here
is somewhere different. There’s still a bridge
suspended over the Brittle, shaky, strong,
but rebuilt? God knows we are.
It’s forty years since we sunned
on a warm grey beach that’s wider now,
colder, worn and washed. We snap it,
and the fall before the hostel
Where we cooked and slept …
and the constant Cuillin. Gullies picked out
by rain-thaw remind of unseen cliffs
we climbed, before the fear and fat
Of middle age, then just age,
took our lives. Optimism, hope,
yestermorrow, moments gripped
like hand-holds on rough, chill rock.
Sparrowfall
I held the little bird,
palm of one hand, still,
no need to form a kist
with the other.
Eyes were shut,
beak open and,
I saw, cracked
and blood-beaded.
Wing-shaped feather dust
on the kitchen window
a visual echo
of the sudden thump.
Back arched up slightly.
I still felt fast heart beats
flutter, then the moment
everything stopped.
Colin Will