Poetry Scotland's Big Party

Callander 2008

We read poetry in the Sally Garden (thanks Yeats)


Getting set up, before the first session

in the Kirk Hall


Robert Ritchie

and in the shop.


Sally James

 

Audiences were fascinated

amused


Maoilios Caimbeul and Ian Blake

entertained


Brian Johnstone, Richard Ingham, Louise Major

and inspired.


Larry Butler

as poets read


Sheila Templeton

and performed


Robin Cairns

until Magi McGlynn closed the proceedings.

More photos in the Gallery page.

And the poems have started to arrive:

Chanterelles
    for Larry Butler
 
There's a slight smirr of rain.
It blows on and off as weather trails
among the central Scotland hills.
 
The poet whose tent is pitched
beneath the apple trees, is out at dawn,
crossing woods and water, slopes and rock.
 
Early creatures, wildfowl, siskin, jay,
red deer and roe deer, red squirrel.
Then he sees this gold, apricot scented.
 
No one else to claim it
he picks it, carries it in cloth
down to the Kirk Hall kitchen
 
where two poets converse in Gaelic,
three from Chester, two from Devon, listen
and the poetry and jazz winds down.
 
He asks for garlic, butter, oil.
With all the proper instruments
he improvises chanterelles for lunch.
 
Sally Evans
 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

AFTERGLOW

Just trees, and a so distant lake,
and a tiny burn singing.
In the quietness
I sat a mile in the sky, or so it seemed.
My friends made it to the top.
Craigs, this beautiful place, The Craigs.

For three days it was poetry -
the listening, my ears and stomach filling,
while each new voice
wrapped their words round my heart.
Until like a three day tapestry
of symbols and colours - completed.

And there I sat, a mile in the sky,
or so it seemed.
Like the woodpigeon who called
and flew away.
Just trees, and a so distant lake,
and a tiny burn singing.



The Craigs, Callander, Scotland


Maureen Weldon

****************************

saturday wordsmiths

in a garden of auras

poetry circles

 

Eileen Carney Hulme

 

Callander Sept 08

As sky stole light from our windows
and the gloaming lit dark wood to gold,
the busy folk, the passers-by, who all day
had ignored Poetry Festival notices and poets
criss-crossing in droves from shop to hall,
began to take notice. The chippie crowd,
noses pressed boldly against the glass,
the boy with dirty blonde spiked-up hair,
a couple going to dinner, a grannie with shopping,
all stopping now, under the ruby, gold and green
jewels of the chandelier, looking and wondering
what they are missing. What they have missed,
today. Words birlin and skinklin through the air,
backed up, slithered off, flying again. Vowels
as wolves, dancing. A witch, island-marooned
for the crime of writing poetry. Another, buried
in meadowsweet, spitting words through cold clay
back into her world. A fly, caught in amber, alive
and buzzing when dinosaurs swayed across the earth.
A garden, receiving poems amongst plumes of tall fennel
and old roses whispering by the water, giving them back.
So they linger at the window, our curious moths,
perhaps not even knowing why they are drawn
to the warmth, to the light here inside, yet yearning
now, to be part of this circle, this sharing, this poetry.

 

Sheila Templeton

 

Home | Gallery