Poets' Blog

That was a long gap, but here I am again, having submitted my poem with a glossary and comment to accompany it. After the furious writing and rewriting which followed that Sat when the baited line quivered, and the fish was hooked, I did what I always do with a new poem – let it sit, ignored, until it called me back.

Very often, in the interim, a poem changes from wonderful into dross. Never have I known one to change the other way. At the very least, on reading after a time-lapse, rough bits are revealed – where the rhythm doesn’t quite come off, or words don’t actually say what I thought they meant. Waiting means doing other things. An urgent request came in to shorten the running time for The Lasses, O – my story and song play which reveals the life of Robert Burns through stories of five women who knew him.

With rehearsals imminent, cutting the script was challenging. I woke, worked, ate, worked, slept, worked – till it was done. Then I looked at the poem again – something wasn’t right. The rhythm staggered in one stanza but what else, grammar, punctuation, meaning? A couple of trusted friends read it. Their comments were useful, but didn’t address my disquiet. I decided to send it in. That can be a spur to completing a poem, caused by embarrassment when the flaw suddenly reveals itself as soon as the email departs.

No revelation happened. I turned my attention to the copy-edit for my new novel which is due out at the beginning of July. It’s a painstaking word choice, grammar and punctuation check. By now, I’m tired to my bones, wanting language to stop running around in my brain, to do some gardening. I would happily have dusted or hoovered. But there was no time, everything was late.

Copy-edit delivered, and without a pause, more problems arise at the play rehearsals – mainly the loss of the director for health reasons. By last Wed, I flopped, slept for twelve hours, woke and began writing the comment for the poem. The editor had already been enormously patient and kind, and I had promised final delivery for Fri.

While writing the comment, I re-read the poem and saw immediately what bothered me, two words standing side-by-side to form a cliche, and how it should be fixed. Next day, Fri as promised, I reworked the comment, tidying it up, did the glossary, and re-read the poem several times. Full-stop or comma? Hmm. I left the full-stop. Maybe at proof stage, it might want to be a comma. We’ll see. I sent it in.

Sat, with second son supervising my two grandsons at friends parties, and actor son in London rehearsing a play, the remaining four congregate for lunch to celebrate the youngest’s birthday, which is actually on Wed. We meet his lovely girlfriend for the first time, and I catch up with pregnant daughter-in-law who’ll soon produce my third grandchild. At family gatherings, I’m always outnumbered by blokes, my own fault, and love it when any of their women can join us.

The restaurant is a favourite, local, and employs two of my nephews, niece-in-law and great-niece, all of whom came to chat during breaks. Last night, I filed emails. Today, in gorgeous sunshine, I cleared dead winter debris from the raised flower beds which front my house. I fed the goldfish, who jumped around in the pond as if spring had sprung, looking none the worse for winter.

And, now, having drafted a proposal for the next novel, here I am. Is the poem any good? I hope so, at least to some who will read it. Is it actually finished? Same goes. I can’t, of course, reproduce it here. But maybe I can tell you this much, it’s about the credit crunch. Yip, you’re thinking just the same as me. What?

In Scots Wha Hae, the Burns poem I chose, the Battle of Bannockburn is the immediate threat. It’s an episode in the struggle to survive as an independent nation. Currently, our immediate problem is the collapse of credit, and the need is for economic survival. It was exactly the subject I intended to avoid writing about.

I’ve written a poem. Thought you should be first to know. It’s there, on the page. Like a fish caught for the table needs prepared and cooked, it needs editing and polished. But it is there, a whole thing which can now be worked on. It’s not the poem I was trying to make, which was a poor thing anyway, but quite different. It might even be the poem I was trying not to write, but there it is.

So how did this happen? Since my last post, I worked on an idea, and despaired of it. Yesterday, the deadline arrived. With great shame, I confessed my failure to meet it. The contract could have been cancelled. Instead, with generosity and kindness, I was offered extra time. Truthfully, I can’t say I believed a worthwhile poem would come. I agree with Wendy Cope. Yesterday, contemplating the post of Poet Laureate, she explained poems worth having don’t come when asked. But I hoped I could, from long practise with language, at least hammer out something passable.

Last night, with the pressure off, I couldn’t look at the piece I worked on. Instead, I slept. This morning, the son who lives with me, and has severe health problems, was having a bad day. Eventually, with help, effort and courage, he got off out to where he was expected. I put the need to write out of my head, arranged transport to my grandson’s fourth birthday party tomorrow, read the news, and walked round to the village shop to post a card to my son in London. It was cold, a bright day. On the way, the first line of a poem popped into my head. The fish had taken the hook.

I walked back, sat down and wrote, easing out the words, listening for the sound of it, not thinking much about meaning or sense, just to get it.

Who knows if it’s any good, that’s for readers to decide. It’s a poem. If it speaks to no one then it doesn’t work. If it speaks to someone, it does. Good poems speak to many people, the best to almost everyone.

Possibly, just possibly, I’m not done yet. My original idea, of something humorous and downbeat as a contrast to Scots Wha Hae, might rapidly manifest as a second [third?] catch. If it does, fine. If not, equally fine. I have a poem.

Sometimes you can tell there are fish in a deep pool. A shadow moves, light darts, a shape shifts. Sometimes, from stillness, you know nothing lurks. Driving to Loch Awe after dark, around densely forested bends in unfamiliar territory, I sensed a loch behind the trees on our left, and behind identical trees on our right, the steep slope of mountain.

“What sense is that?” number 3 son asked, peering out into the wooded shadows beyond the wedge of headlight, seeing nothing but tree trunks.

I had no idea what sense. Sound? It felt open one side, closed the other. A flat expanse, in that terrain, could only mean water. The sense of a barrier, like a wall on my right, had to be hill. Coming round the next blind bend the left-hand trees thinned to reveal a broad expanse of loch behind. Opposite, the mountain we skirted glowered above the road.

That was Thursday evening. We returned on Sunday. In between we visited Inveraray and Oban, walked around Ardbrecknish, chatted with my birthday son’s friends. Instead of joining the evening parties, I babysat my sleeping grandsons, accompanied by notepad and pen. It was the first uninterrupted quiet time since before Christmas. I wrote one word.

Sometimes, it’s just too late. When my mind drifts, it doesn’t fish for words, phrases, to catch a poem. It searches memory, turning over moments of life shared with my sister. Two wee girls up to mischief. Teenage squabbles. Adult trauma. Closeness and distance. Returning home, the practicalities, things still to be done, leapt into the space that hadn’t, after all, been empty.

This morning, I was wakened by a call from my cousin in New Zealand. It’s almost fifty years since we spoke. He was seven when they emigrated, the contact kept by his mother, my aunt. He had abandoned a difficult email in favour of the human voice and spoken words. I’m amazed, yet again, at the strength of that physical connection we call family, at its survival even when deprived of shared events, involvement, history.

The poem, complete with comment, is due on Friday. Today is Wednesday, and it’s night. I have a title, an idea that might or might not have worked but even though I sense it shifting, I doubt it can be fished out now.

It seems we’re all numpties. Some of the business community want the government to sell off Scottish Water in order to fund the new Forth bridge – the same some who would buy it, probably. Worthy newspapers reported this without even a hint of chuckling. What kindness. Philanthropy is not dead. Us yins’ll buy this cash-guzzling utility so youse yins kin have the new brig yeese’re needin. Aye, right.

And, of course, there would be investment, new jobs and cleaner, safer water which would cost less because, as we aw ken, business folk exist tae look efter oor interests and no their ain. But isn’t that the role of government? And isn’t the purpose of any business to make money, a subtle change from when the purpose was to earn money by making products or providing a service?

So why am I thinking that if Scottish Water is profitable then the government could use those profits to pay for a new bridge? Obviously because I’m a numpty. Same reason the words ’snake oil’ rattle in my head. Same reason I remember warnings about conmen who feign interest in worthless furniture in order to relieve the unsuspecting of priceless antiques by ‘taking it off your hands’ at the same time.

Well, we’ve been there, done that and to prove it are now paying spiralling electricity bills to middle men who never manufacture so much as one watt of power but appear to resell it cheaper than if we buy direct from the producer. Consider it a timely warning. Orders should be placed now for water butts to accompany our windmills and solar panels before the price rockets, and while the rain’s fair comin doon.

Current capitalism means make it, grow it, fix it, dump it yourself while paying extortion rates for the privilege of having so much fun, including time hilariously spent on equally pricey phone calls while clicking through endless options in the vain hope a human being might eventually surface to reply and maybe, eh, resolve your problem.

Government has said no to the water idea, but watch that space. Money talks – usually to say cheerio as it runs out. Cash aye hurries tae hang oot wi its mates.

If you want to get ahead get a barrel. But at least I now have a title for my poem.

I hoard. I don’t mean to. It happens like this. Something breaks. The plug still works. I cut it off, put it in a box of electrical bits and bobs, stick box back in cupboard. Time passes. I buy a new appliance. Either it comes with plug attached, or I buy a new one ‘in case’. In the cupboard, plugs, switches, fuses and light fittings breed.

Then there’s hair. Like most owners, I have it cut now and then. Mousse, gell or protein heat-protection sun-screen sprays will be a must, even though weight flattens hair, clean locks shine naturally, I never blow-dry and this is sunfree Scotland. When a glossy mane doesn’t toss, attractively tamed, round my face because new wonder product acts like oil, starch or glue on my hair, I stop using it.

Minimalists look away now. I can’t throw these out. That’s waste. They’re almost full. So they languish in another cupboard, added to at every hair cut. Today, this matters. Number 5 son is here to finish re-fitting my kitchen. I’m asked to throw out everything I don’t use or that’s out of date. My older sister arrives – we spend a lot of time talking these days. She tells me the composition of liquids and creams alter over time. Number 1 son has come to visit number 3 son who lives here. He points out that aerosols have use-by dates stamped on the bottom. Who’d have thought?

Both are horrified. I’m surrounded by sprays, jars, and tins that probably qualify as chemical weapons by now. Hardware includes a dead iron long since replaced, a charger for batteries that no longer exist, scales on which I’ve never weighed anything, bits of obsolete things that might come in handy – except they never will because I forget they’re there or what they’re for or invention has progressed beyond the wheel. Is it poverty, habit learned from Mum’s button box and string collections, or can I not let things go?

My nephew phones to talk about Tuesday – the funeral – and to ask questions, some answerable, some not, about his mother’s last moments. Number 2 son phones to check arrangements, and talk to number 5 son who has hired a towerhouse for his looming 30th birthday to which we’re all going at some point next week – a few days away in unfamiliar scenic surroundings, with 50 of his friends. I’ll take a notepad, pens. Maybe I’ll write a poem.

Who am I kidding? I never write by hand, except for scribbled notes. A laptop, which I don’t have, would be useful. Type lets me see the shape of what I write, plus I can read it later which I can’t with my handwriting, ruined long ago by exams on too many subjects that required lengthy essays while the clock ticked. I wonder if there’s anything in my head that wants to be written now. If there is, I can’t hear it.

It’s 3am. An hour ago, I decontaminated in the shower. Outside, a promised wind is rising. The gates on my drive need closed before it does.  On the way, I’ll pass the bins. The contents of my cupboards, suitably sorted for recycling, will be deposited therein. Catharsis beckons, space, an uncluttered quietness, sleep.

We’ve had a family bereavement – unexpected, and shocking for many reasons – my wee sister. I mention it because I can’t not. Everything else is minor in the face of finality.

New Year began with toothache, an abscess, rearing as they do when my dentist is unavailable for several days. That time of year I usually work uninterrupted by anything other than celebratory phone calls. My sister went into hospital on Sunday 4^th with back pain – a fractured vertebra – contracted pneumonia and died on Sunday 11^th. How baldly I state that week – shunted back and forth between two hospitals, that life – a tragedy of secrecy, that end – a mess of organ collapse. I was with her, is all I can say.

My usual response to deadlines is to ignore them till the last minute, and then meet them – usually. If I have a year, I write nothing for 6 months. If I have a month, I write in the last week. What happens, or what I hope happens, is my brain gets to work without me consciously directing it, and when I finally sit down, the work will be there – drawn out like a fish from a deep pool – whole, almost. Often I’m actually working on other things, because I work constantly. When I can, pre-writing time is spent gardening, and not thinking. Sometimes, I even dust. The beginning announces itself, a phrase surfaces that wants written down, and then I’m doing the piece without intending – fishing it out. If I must work without that ‘dream’ time beforehand, I believe what’s produced will be dull and uninspired.

Burns – I’m enjoying James’s comments – used music that impinges its tune if you let it. That way lies grief. He could marry content to song so neither overwhelms, both equally strong and convincing, as if those were the only words for that music – and they are. To borrow the tune would be to write a poor imitation.

I am likely to also write in Scots yet perhaps the exact opposite might be the way to make a new poem that is mine and not an echo – to write in English with its constraint, clipped consonants, quiet vowels rather than the rough, rolling richness of my native tongue. Perhaps I should also control the alliteration.

It’s the season we hae oor pooches emptied. But not this year, according to retailers. The national characteristic of thrift returns. For thrift read skint – Scots wha hinnae. Credit has come home too roost. Yet most of us were raised to go without in the absence of cash. The ‘tick’ man was despised – a usurer. Folk in his clutches were pitied, as if they failed somehow. So who was it touted credit as a benefit? The bill always arrives, greater than the original cost we couldn’t afford in the first place.

Young folk can’t buy homes if they already owe the joint equivalent of a mortgage. When government forced our penniless students into debt, financing education on the never-never, I expected the NUS to call a strike. It’s what we would have done. Students have unassailable power to withdraw labour, the only group who need fear no reprisal. Youth has time on its side. What’s a year out? The cost of inactive universities and colleges would rapidly have caused a policy rethink. Sadly, by then, even our students had been robbed of courage.

So, crunch away, I’m inclined to think. Capitalism parts consumers from cash for less and less return. Mechanical goods are meant to break. Deliveries arrive already broken to save the time spent using them for a few weeks first. Service is a cursory word. I spent last winter with no heating despite an expensive 24-hour repair contract. This year it’s the price of electricity. We’re told to switch off, turn it down, wear extra clothing, freeze. If we do, profits will fall and the price rise again to recover them. We’ll pay for it, we say of unexpected good. Guess what, we pay for the bad bits too.

Take rubbish. When rates covered that, bins were metal and lived round the back. Binmen walked round to lift, empty and replace them. Now we have heftier Council Tax, three bins which we wheel to the pavement after sorting to recycle everything, and more waste than ever. It doesn’t add up. It multiplies. Real solutions might include less packaging, paper bags, products made to last. Instead, a new tax is piled on top of the one we already pay for a service we now mostly provide for ourselves. Pay as you throw, and since we can’t eat packaging or burn a fridge, throw folk will, fly-tipping over hedges, land-filling canals and rivers with old furniture and appliances.

Take the combustion engine. It kills, ruins health, snarls up cities, damages our economy, threatens the planet. So politicians create effective public transport, force goods to go by rail, ban our poisonous cars. No, they don’t. They tax – petrol tax, road tax, parking charges, tolls, zone charges. None of which reduce traffic. Even poor folk must still get from A to B, go to work, shop, visit medical and other facilities that aren’t on the doorstep. Taxing a problem only makes it cost more, increasing stress on those least able to pay. Why not solve it instead?

Scots Wha Hae is political. It exhorts us to rise against oppression, to fight and die as free people rather than live as slaves. Obviously, it’s still relevant. But an opposing army is nicely concrete – a bunch of folk you can swing a sharpened stick at. Rampant capitalism is brutally nebulous. Who gets the fruit of our labour, what do they do with it, how does it benefit us and our society?

Culprits cover their tracks. Sleight of hand shoves single mums and sick folk into the firing line. Diversionary tactics target the poor, the weak, the addicts, the immigrants. Legislated intolerance sets those wha hae against those wha hinnae while the real mob shores up an out-of-date barter system whose time is up. The enemy is thoughtlessness, stupidity, lack of compassion, greed. The weapon to wave would be a new form of moral economy.

Maybe if we slip this servile chain of debt that shackles us from birth to grave, we might move forward, be creative, think things through, decide before we set out where we want to end up.

Somewhere in there lurks an inspiring exhortation for now. But how  do I make a poem of that?

Ach weel, hae a guid New Year – we’ll pey fur it the morra.

What was I thinking about? Would I write a poem connected to one by Robert Burns? Yes, I said. Yes is a rather too frequent word in my vocabulary.

Can I wire a plug? Yes. Will I drive to Edinburgh in the middle of a freezing night to buy newly released copies of an obsessive interactive on-line computer game? Yes. How about juggling four imminent deadlines for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, a play, and blogging at the same time? No bother. Could I pop over to Russia to talk off-the-cuff about contemporary Scottish literature to an international academic symposium, oh, and would I throw in a talk on writing film? It’s a dawdle. Would I – well, you get my drift.

A poem though, one poem? What a gorgeous, uncluttered request. If I was ever forced to write in only one form, providing I recovered from the amputation of several creative limbs, it would be poetry. It’s the selfish one, the most indulgent, the form where I needn’t please anybody but myself – mainly because nobody will read it or care but, hey ho, it’s the greatest art form of all. It’s also the most disciplined, the hardest to do well, the most complex, the one that might speak to all humanity throughout time and across cultures, it’s the one that sings – a small spark packing the potential to explode a moment into a world, or a new way of seeing, and best written in a frenzy of creative mania. Maybe.

One poem is quite a challenge. But, as Keats said, and I paraphrase, poetry should come easily or not at all. Burns seemed like an omen. A few years ago I wrote a five part radio series on the Bard. A few months ago, three amazingly talented people consisting of a producer, director and actor asked if they could put that series on stage next year. All I had to do was adapt it. Yes (you guessed) I said. So, coming hard on the heels of that, the Scottish Poetry Library’s request for a poem derived from or inspired by one of Robert Burns’ was a rare moment of connection – fate or serendipity, call it what you will.

All I had to do was say, before writing, which of the Bard’s poems mine would connect to. If you haven’t read much of his work, there is a broad spectrum of interest to choose from. He can be moving, gentle, tender, inspiring, bawdy, humorous, political, fierce, caustic, cynical or spirited. His subjects range from lice to revolution. He exposes and celebrates. So what do I choose?

Scots Wha Hae.

Go figure.

What was I thinking of?