The Poetry of Soup

I have to say that in this pic we have already
eaten rather a lot of it.

Our last and largest pumpkin ripened in the conservatory, turning from a striped green to a deep orange in light and frost-free conditions.  Though it got so sharp outside(so minus 16)that in the end I did worry about the frost free bit. 
Every now and then I remembered to check the pumpkin was still solid.  Last weekend I carried it back into the kitchen, and distilled a huge pot of golden soup from last summer's store. 

Sorry if this sounds smug, but, you know, I am.  Think of all that weeding and forking compost.  My dues are paid.  The ends have justified the means. I claim this comfort in the black-ice dark of January. 
As Robert Crawford so rightly said:
'A soup so thick you could shake its hand
and stroll with it before dinner.'

Making the Beds for the Dead

I've just noticed my copy of 'Making the Beds for the Dead' by Gillian Clark, is due back to the library tomorrow.  That's the excellent Scottish Poetry Library outpost in Dumfries.  I've already renewed it once, and might just ring up and see if I can keep it for another month.  Eleri Mills did the cover.

What a lovely collection.  Try this from 'The Physicians of Myddvai':

A crack in glass,
the scream and shadow
of a Hawk, close and low
enough to blow the heart.

There's something so sudden, so loud, so disorientating about this stanza. - and then that intimate body blow in the last line and a half.  I absolutely love it.  It reeks of the mysteries of the Mabinogion, though it's not such an old story.  The Physicians of Myddfai were a family of physicians who lived in the parish of Myddfai, Carmarthenshire. I did a bit of looking up.  They are thought to have been related to Rhiwallon Feddyg and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffudd and Einion, who were physicians to Rhys Gryg, Lord of Dinefwr in the thirteenth century. It is believed that their descendants continued to practice as physicians in the area until the eighteenth century. The gravestones of the last physicians in the line, David Jones (who died in 1719) and John Jones (who died in 1739) are to be seen in the parish church of Myddfai today.

Gillian Clark writes very well about sheep.  I appreciate 'Wethers':

Spring-born, their lives lived
on the one slope, in the one flock.
Summer, they forget their mothers,
forget our hands, learn grass,
grow wild, wander afield on the hill.
Winter, they know us again, grow tame,
calling for hay at the gate.

True.

Cheered up by thoughts of St Andrews

I've sprung into action and bought my tickets for StAnza.  Was inspired to be very sharp off the mark in order to lay hands on a ticket to John Burnside's Round Table reading.  But it all looks fabulous. I'll hear Stewart Conn, Marilyn Hacker, Paul Farley, Selima Hill, Ciaran Carson, Douglas Dunn, not to mention the one and only Rab Wilson and the devastatingly unique Hugh McMillan, and (as they say) more.

Tonight it's snowing.  Our 11 year old spent his Christmas money on a faster sledge, so there is loud rejoicing.

Christmas has brought me the Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations, edited by Dennis O'Driscoll.  It's a little book packed with the pithy, insightful remarks of hundreds of poets and poetry readers.  I've been sitting by the Christmas tree grinning over such as:
'Keats was the first poet I got really excited about.  In fact, I was rather in love with him until I found out how tall he was.'  Wendy Cope
or
'Watching large poets work with miniaturist forms can be a bit disorienting, like meeting a heavyweight fighter out walking a chihuahua.'  Blake Morrison

The book is divided into themes (What Is It Anyway? Poet At Work.  Profit Motives.  Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know.  Pushy Poets), which I'm finding irrestible.  And I love the way the poets contradict each other:
'Difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings.'  Geoffrey Hill
'So-called difficult poetry is often very rude.  It ignores the presence of the reader.'  Billy Collins

Fantastic insights:
'A poem is partly grace, partly discovery, and partly a struggle...to conquer another foot of territory from the unconscious.'  Agnes Nemes Nagy
'Poetry is the purest of the language arts.  It's the tightest cage, and if you can get it to sing in that cage it's really really wonderful.'  Rita Dove
'A good poem is almost always about something else, which is why they are hard to write.'  Charles Causley

And then there are remarks which are scarily recognisable:
'...the problem with most poems is that there is too much language chasing too little of an idea.'  Peter Johnson
'Technique is important.  I think that if most people who called themselves poets were tightrope-walkers they'd be dead.'  Michael Longley
Still, cheer up -
'If good poetry is to be written, enormous amounts of bad poetry must be written too, if only because it is important for a serious poet to know what it is she/he is trying not to do.'  Germaine Greer

Recommended.

Lost At Sea

Today I got a first proper view of what my new pamphlet with Roncadora Press is going to look like.  And it's entirely beautiful, thanks to the skill and artistry of Hugh Bryden.  It's 4 metres long, folded into zig-zags, with the skyline of Shetland running right through it, and the poems 'floating' in the shifting sea. 

The sea really looks as if it's shifting and has light glancing off it, due to the aforementioned artistry.  This photo is just a wee bit like it.  Hugh has done less sky and much more sea.  But the linear feel is about right.  It's off to the printers next week. 

Coincidentally I came home from work to find a copy of 'New Shetlander' on the kitchen table, sent because they've kindly published two of the poems which will be in 'Lost At Sea'.  Here's one of them.

Telescope

Dark wood polished by use and damaged
down one side, it’s been
familiar to my touch since childhood.
He must have known its balance
intimately, weighed it in decisions,
fingered the fine milled edges of its eye.
All through his grainy, deck-tilt years
he shut it safe away.   

I learned to tweak with a fingernail
the tiny pin on the metal shutter
which slides back to reveal  
the eyepiece just as
I’m pulling on the casing, shlunck
shlunck, and this
neat cubit passes me
the vision of a sea eagle.

Far back through the glass
a wide grey sea and slant
of rain, a rig of swaying furrows,
medallions of salt, each stamped
by some small imperfection on the lens,
a whorl and ripple that lays
a long century
between my eye and his.

Snow, light, different days

It snowed again last Monday night, and on Tuesday morning 4 inches of snow creaked underfoot in temperatures of around minus 6.  The outdoor thermometer is read in a slightly approximate way by our household, because it blows away so often.  Still, it was obviously a very cold morning. 

We worked from home, and gave the boys a Snow Day.  Sledging and snow fighting were partaken of, though the snow was too cold and feathery to make good snowballs. The boys came in glittering with it.

Snow makes the world new.  It's so bright, in a dark month. It didn't last.

Sign of Summer

As this crab apple shed its leaves, the first bird's nest to be built in the trees we planted here 8 years ago has emerged.

I took the camera out early this morning when I let out the hens and fed the sheep.  It was minus 3, snow still lying.  The garden pond is solid, and the lochans below us frozen right across.  There's a young blackbird haunting the haybarn.  I'm not quite sure if it's ok, or just the cold is making it tamer than it would be.  It sits on the beams and watches me fill haynets.