Marvels

One of my favourite poets, Seamus Heaney, became fascinated by the idea of the miraculous to be found in the mundane.

Denise Levertov writes too about the importance of paying attention in her well-known and much-loved poem, Witness.

Witness

Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

Over the summer I became fascinated by the idea of the marvellous and the need to pay attention to the here and now.

Scotland opens up and shows many new colours as the light changes and intensifies our everyday responses to nature. And not just to nature - we stumbled upon a group of people dancing on the street in Edinburgh back in September when we had a small heatwave. 

A poem came out of this thinking:

Marvels

You’re so lucky, they say

To live here, to have seen

Dolphins and puffins and guillemots

But I think,

No – we put ourselves out

We went in search

We climbed over Troup Head

And braved the steep paths, the vertigo

We took a boat and braved

The seasickness, the discomfort

But then I thought

What about the peacock

That just appeared from nowhere

And crossed my path

Popped out of a field

And flaunted its colours

In the morning sun:

Electric blue neck

orange striped flanks

The outrageous tail

It fluttered up onto a post

And posed there like a model

(Transvestite perhaps?)

In an evening gown

Showing off its gaudy train

With its little fan comb stuck

On its pea-head.

Sometimes we have to put ourselves

Into the way of seeing things

Othertimes marvels just appear

Sally Givertz©2014

I'd like to think that we can retain our capacity to marvel at the world no matter how tough it becomes to live with the reports of misery brought to us by the media.  This is real too of course; but only part of the picture.

The Thistle and The Rose

Post-referendum post

Some of us are relieved and some of us are disappointed with the outcome of this strongly-contested referendum. 

But all of us now want to make Scotland as strong and united as possible and create a good future - both for its people and the environment. 

Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy was born in Scotland and now lives in England. 

She published this reconciliation poem in many of the national papers on Saturday 20th September.

The poem is a peace offering; a gift; a plea for reconciliation and rebuilding.   

 

                            

September 2014

 

by Carol Ann Duffy 

 

Tha gaol agam ort *

A thistle can draw blood,

         so can a rose,

growing together

where the river flows, shared currency,

across a border it can never know:

where, somewhen, Rabbie Burns might swim,

or pilgrim Keats come walking

out of love for him.

         Aye, here’s to you,

cousins, sisters, brothers,

in your bold, brave, brilliant land:

the thistle jags our hearts,

take these roses,

         from our bloodied hands.

*I love you

   

The Great Tapestry of Scotland

The Great Tapestry settled for a while in Aberdeen

and it really increased the amount of foot traffic passing through the doors of the Art Gallery.  



The Great Tapestry of Scotland – a unique project to stitch the entire story of Scotland from pre-history to modern times.

If you want to know more about the Tapestry follow the link here and this will also let you know where it is on its journey around Scotland. Go and see it if you can but allow more than one visit - we took two and would have preferred three or four.  


My concern here is to look at the poetry so I will focus on the panels about Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Burns (of course) and Robert Louis Stevenson.

This panel celebrates MacDiarmid's splendidly named poem "A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle". 

from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
BY HUGH MACDIARMID

The function, as it seems to me,   

O’ Poetry is to bring to be   

At lang, lang last that unity ...   

But wae’s me on the weary wheel!   

Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel,                                                  

And little it cares hoo we may feel.

Twenty-six thoosand years ’t’ll tak’   

For it to threid the Zodiac

—A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’!

This is a very short bite of a long poem but I like the sentiment and it seems appropriate to the aim of the tapestry. This is what Wiki has to say about it: 

A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is a long poem by Hugh MacDiarmid written in Scots and published in 1926. It is composed as a form of monologue with influences from stream of consciousness genres of writing. A poem of extremes, it ranges between comic and serious modes and examines a wide range of cultural, sexual, political, scientific, existential, metaphysical and cosmic themes, ultimately unified through one consistent central thread, the poet's emotionally and intellectually charged contemplation, from a male perspective, of the condition of Scotland. It also includes extended and complex responses to figures from European and Russian literature, in particular Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, as well as referencing topical events and personalities of the mid-1920s such as Isadora Duncan or the UK General Strike of 1926. It is one of the major modernist literary works of the 20th century. 

Here's the Burns panel focusing on the wonderful Tam o'Shanter:

Robert Burns    (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)

Tam o’Shanter – a tiny sample

   

Verse 1

When chapmen billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors meet,
As market days are wearing late,
An' folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
And getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky sullen dame.
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Verse 5

But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You sieze the flower, its bloom is shed; 
Or like the snow falls in the river, 
A moment white--then melts for ever; 
Or like the borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm.-- 
Nae man can tether time or tide; 
The hour approaches Tam maun ride; 
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, 
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in; 
And sic a night he taks the road in 
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.

                                                 Tam o'Shanter 

 I love this poem as an adult, especially the atmospheric descriptions and its mix of humour and lyricism.

                                             

Robert Louis Stevenson has also been hugely influential all over the world. 

The Scottish tapestry panel devoted to Stevenson quotes, "Tusitala - teller of tales, dreamer of dreams on gossamer sails."   RLS was one of the millions of Scottish migrants and Tusitala was a name he adopted when he lived in Samoa - it is the native word for "storyteller".  Illness forced him away from Scotland to warmer climates and childhood illness prompted this clever and sensitive child to become more introspective.  Hard to choose one poem by him as he was so prolific but this one is especially Scottish.  He must have been so homesick at times.

In the Highlands

IN the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
   And the young fair maidens
   Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the hill-recesses
   Her more lovely music
   Broods and dies--

O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted, 
   And the low green meadows
   Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
   Lo, the valley hollow
   Lamp-bestarr'd!

O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
   Through the trance of silence,
   Quiet breath!
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
   Only winds and rivers,
   Life and death. 

 Robert Louis Stevenson

RLS died in Samoa - a long way from home.

The Scottish diaspora pretty much cover the globe and more than 4 million Scots left home for new worlds in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Of course, Sir Walter Scott also gets a panel but he's not one of my favourites and I must admit that his novels make me laugh! Perhaps I'll try again...

The Great Tapestry also celebrates ordinary people and the lives of its women - famous or otherwise which is as it should be.  Almost all of the stitchers who created the panels and helped to design and choose the content are women. 

These are two of my favourite panels of working women - fishers and knitters:

  

I don't think that Norman MacCaig features in the tapestry but perhaps he should.

In an interview still available on Youtube here he says in his typical provocative way, that he hates history because it is the story of violence - of battles and destruction; that he doesn't much care for mankind but likes some people.

In his introduction to the book about the making of The Great Tapestry of Scotland, Alastair Moffatt tells how he and the artist Andrew Crummy became very aware of  pitfalls when deciding what to include:  "....the military option, the temptation to see our history as a series of invasions, wars and battles, many of them grey defeats."

The tapestry is anything but grey and a definite victory.

For me part of the appeal of the Tapestry (and it has become hugely popular) is the vast scope of its timeline and the carefully selected details so that it encompasses so much of human experience. I leave you with some tiny details that the stitchers added around the edges of the main panels. There is even a selection of famous Scottish healthfood.          

  

              

Poet's Pub and Other Stories

Poet's Pub -  Alexander Moffat 1980 - Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

This imaginary portrait shows some of the most famous late twentieth century Scottish poets gathered around the central figure of Hugh MacDiarmid. A favourably situated seat allowed me to have a long look at this picture and to wonder about the people, the style and the fact that they are all men. I wonder what sort of portrait would appear now?  Our first female British laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was born in Scotland and now lives in England. Perhaps we would see a very different sort of line-up clustered around the wonderful CAD.

Here's a sample of MacDiurmid's writing from one of his best known works:

HUGH MACDIARMID 1892-1978

SCOTLAND SMALL? from DIREADH I

 Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small ?

 Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner

 To a fool who cries 'Nothing but heather!' where in September

   another

 Sitting there and resting and gazing round

 Sees not only the heather but blaeberries

 With bright green leaves and leaves already turned scarlet

 Hiding ripe blue berries; and amongst the sage-green leaves

 Of the bog-myrtle the golden flowers of the tormentil shining;

And on the small bare places, where the little Blackface sheep

Found grazing, milkworts blue as summer skies;

And down in neglected peat-hags, not worked

Within living memory, sphagnum moss in pastel shades

Of yellow, green, and pink; sundew and butterwort

Waiting with wide-open sticky leaves for their tiny winged prey;

And nodding harebells vying in their colour

With the blue butterflies that poise themselves delicately upon

   them;

And stunted rowans with harsh dry leaves of glorious colour.

'Nothing but heather!' -

How marvellously descriptive!

And   incomplete!

But the name that excites me the most from my reading so far is that of Norman MacCaig. (He's the tall, skinny one on the left of the picture.) I came across one of his poems, Stars and Planets, some time ago and have read it many times with great pleasure. I won't breach copyright by quoting it in full but I'd like to. Here is the first verse:

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996)

Stars and Planets

Trees are cages for them: water holds its breath
To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus.
Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground;
Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths.

There are some wonderful stories about MacCaig - famously he claimed that, for him, the time needed to write a poem was: "Two fags. Unless it's a wee one, then it's one fag." Who could fail to like a poet like that? Another bonus for non-Gaelic speakers like me, is that MacCaig chose to write in English.  If you haven't come across his work yet, do try to find some. He's a wonderful lyric poet with remarkable powers of observation.  Swimming Lizard is another one I can recommend.

This Blog Post is all about my trip to Edinburgh in March and it was a restorative and stimulating sojourn after a long, wet winter in Gamrie. I am still digesting much of my experience there. There were many other pictures in the National Gallery that grabbed my attention - most notably a self-portrait by Stanley Cursiter with his wife Phyllis Hourston and his model Poppy Low. This little image doesn't really give a sense of the picture itself  but I found it captivating and want to write about it some time.

Also a very old and strange (to modern eyes) painting from the late 15th century called The Death of St Ephraim and Other Scenes from the Lives of the Hermits. - Florentine School. It is on loan to the SNG and I hope it stays there as a visitor needs much time to study it.  I have found out a little about the meaning of the picture and intend to study it further - and of course to write about it. The gallery staff were very helpful when I emailed some questions and it's fascinating to see how differently people made sense of their world round about 1500. The painting is, to me, very beautiful with some charming details as well as some grisly ones. I especially love the line of spiky conifers showing up against the sky on the hill in the right hand corner of the painting.

This is more than enough for one post. I'll leave you with a picture of something I stumbled upon in St Andrew's Square:

Bruce Munro's Field of Light has been touring the UK for some time but I'd never managed to see it before. I was thrilled to walk into it and many other people wandering through the square at dusk were similarly excited and there were phone cameras and tablets everywhere attempting to capture the experience. (In my case not a very good result.) 

The next blog post will be about a trip to Aberdeen Art Gallery to see the Great Tapestry of Scotland - well it was two trips as it's quite a marathon to view and worth every second of the travelling time. 

http://www.scotlandstapestry.com/