Tag: poetry
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the rose is obsolete
Some more rose poetry for you today. These verses are taken from William Carlos Williams’ famous collection Spring and All (1923) and it is fascinating to me that all of the poetry I’ve included in these posts date from the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. In poetry, this was a time when…
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Sea Rose
In spring and summer, the lanes and field margins of South Kintyre are awash with flowers: primroses and bluebells, cow parsley and campion. Each is lovely, and each has its season: midsummer being the time for nodding ox eye daisies and fragrant roses. Because I’m thinking a lot about roses at the moment, I’ve noticed…
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I see you, Rose
Perhaps for no poet did the rose serve as a more powerful motif than Rainer Maria Rilke. As he lay dying in 1926, he composed the epitaph which was later inscribed on his gravestone: rose, oh reiner widerspruch, lust,niemandes schlaf zu sein unter soviel lider rose, o pure contradiction, desireto be no one’s sleep beneath…
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Brèid
Following on from yesterday’s missive about my Òran Eile / Another Song design, here’s a pattern closely related to it: Brèid: Brèid (pronounced like beige, with a rolled ‘r’ in it) is a Scottish Gaelic word for a kerchief. In Gaelic, brèid is a term applied to many different kinds of cloth or flappy things…
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Another song / Òran eile
Good news this morning: our work is done and the Wester Ross book is away to the printers in Glasgow, which means we should be able to publish it around the middle of next month. I’m sure that in time, with the benefit of distance, I’ll be able to feel proud of this book –…
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Norwegian Forest
Christina Campbell introduces a beautiful shawl, inspired by where she is, and where she is not.
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Na Séasúir
Mary O’Shea introduces a glorious circular scarf whose colours turn with her, through the seasons
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this oak is
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really struck by how colourful the oak trees I see on my morning walks are at this time of year, with their wild orangey-red foliage so different to the surrounding trees heavy green. So here’s a poem I wrote in my head about those oaks this morning. The…
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At Carry Farm
Yesterday I showed you some photographs that Tom had taken of an object I’d found on the beach at Carry Farm, and about which I’d subsequently written a poem. Here’s that poem. At Carry Farm Here, at the brink of land and water a pale ghost grounded. Supple, limpid, damp in the palm, in two…
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object lesson
Last October, I went to stay for a week at Carry Farm, in Argyll, to think about my writing. I took BOB the dog with me, but was otherwise alone. I walked by the sea every day, I did a little knitting, a little embroidery, and a lot of thinking. Some of the poems I’ve…