Stravaig 2 by Stephen Pardue

Stravaig #2

Aisla Craig Creag Ealasaid Reaching below a boling sea An island sentinel looks on A towering inferno of noise Eu Ban An Sgdain White bird of the herring Installation at Whitelee Wind Farm Steve Pardue

Stravaig #2 Coast to Coast Contents 4

Christian McEwen: Isle Ornsay

Tessa Ransford: Barra

Tessa Ransford: Croft

Gordon Peters: Coast to Coast in Samoa

Susan Richardson: Gudrud the Rare

Elizabeth Rimmer: The Occasional Tang of Salt

Tessa Ransford: White Sands of the West

Nancy Campbell: Riddle

Bridget Khursheed: Sookin-in Goats

Bridget Khursheed: The Green Path

Georgina Coburn: Boundaries of Perception

Michael MacKimm: Houlderness Boulder Clay

Bill Stephens: Light ...Words

Nat Hall: Errances Wanderings

Elizabeth Rimmer: A Twenty-first Century Dance of Death

Mavis Gulliver: Otter Trail

Nancy Campbell: A Slap and a Song

Roger Bygott: Shoreline and Watershed

Tessa Ransford: Water West Coast

Tessa Ransford: Seahood

Norman Bissell: A Place to Think, A Place to Be

Stonecrop, Ragged Robin, Tormentil, each one carefully labeled in an earnest, girlish hand. There are postcards too, bought with my weekly pocketmoney: postcards of Isle Ornsay and Skye and “the ferry we came in,” plus a solitary Highland cow standing stolid and melancholy against a luridly tinted meadow. We had seen Highland cattle on our long drive from the Borders, our first ever.

Isle Ornsay Christian McEwen The summer I was nine, my family stayed for two weeks on Isle Ornsay, a tidal island off the coast of Skye. It was a beautiful windswept place, with a tall white-washed lighthouse, two converted cottages, and a walled garden filled with brambles and wild roses. Soon after we arrived, our mother presented each of us with a cardboardcovered scrapbook filled with cloudy gray-blue pages. “You can write in this,” she said, “or draw, or stick in postcards. I’ll show you how to press some flowers if you’d like.” The scrapbook has survived, and I turn the pages slowly, smiling at the shriveled corpses of Thrift and English

Without the scrapbook, I would remember none of this. I would have forgotten the hermit crabs, with their strange bunched claws, and the bits of broken china we found washed up on the strand, water-thumbed and fumbled, their edges soft as chalk. I would have no record of the old boat we liked to play in, or the mussel soup my mother made, with its tiny iridescent grayish pearls. People say that a child comes into his or her identity at eight or maybe nine. As for me, I know exactly when it happened. I was standing in the garden one windy afternoon, alive to everything I saw around me: the big lumbering sheep with their dung-encrusted tails, the rush and thrust of the encroaching sea, the seagulls crying just above my head. I had a pocket full of sea-glass and colored shells, and I was as happy as I’ve ever been before or since.

Isle Ornsay was a lot of “firsts” for me, and I tried valiantly to contain it, to pick it, count it, catalogue, record. Exasperated by my clumsy artwork, I pestered my father to draw a lobster for me (which he did, skillfully), and then a crab in swift electric green. Meanwhile I did my best to keep track of everything I thought might be important: the twenty-nine cars lined up ahead of us as we waited for the ferry, the twelve waterfalls we counted on the way back. I wrote about my brother and sisters and the games we played, how we had made a house among the rocks, and kept two shops where we sold stones and shells and colored glass, how my sister had found a sea-urchin and it was “quite rare,” how she also found a starfish and a baby prawn. I took my crayons and made a picture of the rock-pool, with its bulgy pink sea anemones and Extract from World Enough & Time: sea urchins and crabs, titling it On Creativity and Slowing Down by in bright fluorescent letters, “A Christian McEwen (Bauhan Publishing, Rock Pool By the Sea.” “I never thought it would be so nice,” I wrote. “But it was lovely.”

2011, available through UPNE (University Press of New England) Order Dept. via www.eurospanbookstore.com.

Barra Tessa Ransford The wind the tide the cockle strand larks and plovers wheeling a belt of flowers between the sand

the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;twin otterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; keeling round the headland over rocks as if a seabird landing

a seabird messenger of gods an angel taken for granted while men with mail and luggage bags

unload load-up unhurried the wind the tide the cockle strand together and concerted

allow the little plane to land where duck and seal play dive and seek Douglas Robertson

and swim and fly and seem to speak of wind and tide and cockle strand

Croft Tessa Ransford The grazing place of cattle on the rounded seaward slope The passing through, gateway between rocky outcrops

The brow of the hill, suncatcher, and marshy burn below Make feeding grounds for sheep

The place for corn to grow is in the minstrelsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; gallery where lark and curlew call

The fallow-field with hens and pony waits for seed to fall

These pieces form my land parts that I make fit together strength of hoe, scythe and spade bank of peat against the winter

Children gather dulse and shells and swim around the place of seals

Love of folk, place, work names that make light in the dark.

Coast to Coast in Samoa

with bountiful help from nature. And there we bathed. Not hard to understand why later Gordon Peters presidents of Samoa chose to live in Tusitala’s * house at Sometimes you have to wander Vailima. far to get your just deserts. We had climbed up Mount Vaio to The walk up to Vailima and back see the grave of Robert Louis had reminded me of a coming Stevenson, following in the of older age in Samoa, and steps of the nearly two hundred hence from the south coast -men who had cut this path where we had left Apia and its through the island jungle in one unassuming mixture of fraying night after he died, in 1894, to verandas and lichened concrete honour the self-exiled writer --- to the recent hurricanewho took their side against battered north coast, required a American, British and German bus. Nothing like the long slog in searing heat which Stevenson’s designs on Samoa. party must have had as they Looking out over Apia, the came off the boat and dragged capital, in a gentle south Pacific all their possessions to the site smirr, and towards the island at Vailima. A man, in reverend of Savai’i, I was thinking of how collar, wants a hundred dollars RLS -Scoti per diversivagantes - to help his family who lost their found home with his American house in the hurricane. True lady and how he wrote or not? I give him fifty. He told adventure stories to subsidise quite a story. his own adventure, and living and writing.A poet both at heart There are many shades of green and in mind. I hadn’t noticed a in this rain and sun soaked plaque, beyond his own epitaph, island, and along the north side, when Rahul pointed to it, a scatterings of smashed palms, homage to ‘the three Roberts’ and bent tin roofs and broken laid by Edinburgh District metal. Not so many churches Council. Stevenson had planned --- in the south coast resort to erect a plinth to Robert country between Aggie Gray’s Burns and Robert Fergusson, as seaside lagoon and Apia, in Burns had recovered Fergusson, twenty miles I counted seventy and now Edinburgh could finally three churches. From resort to place them together in the salvation. pantheon, if across the other The next day happens to be side of the world, on top of a 25th January, Burns’ birthday. mountain. Rahul and I take a ferry from the Near the bottom of the west coast of Upolu to Savai’i mountain, a twenty feet drop ; a large metal box with a few below a forest path, is a wide, railings, it pitches and rolls in a round rock pool in its own gale, but it skelps on through botanic garden and falling spray and blast, although unlike waters, a Stevenson creation Tam o’ Shanter, we are not oiled 7

for the journey. The minibus on Savai’I has to turn back at the first swollen river. No turtle watching then. A man from Australia is being very unZen, and complaining about not being prepared for this outback. The pitching and rolling on the voyage back to Upolu shuts him up. Samoa may be prone to natural forces, and it may also have been one of the places from which the first settlers of New Zealand set off in long canoes a thousand or so years ago. However it is still managing to bend to the various anthropic forces that have come its way, such as a rebound of Kiwi resorters, Sydneysiders, and the evidence of the two most striking monuments on the government promontory at Apia: the huge plinth outside the Land Court with the inscription ‘Samoa – Founded on God’, and the ultra-modern new Courts of Justice, paid for by the Government of China. My last sight, though, on that promontory was of an elderly, stooping man, a bit unsteady and singing gently, wearing a very large fedora style hat, and carrying a toy water pistol, rain pouring down in 30 degree heat, and I am sure that as I ventured up close he had a lapel badge with Stevenson’s portrait. * Tusitala was the name given to Stevenson by his Samoan friends and enshrined by later admirers.

Gudrud the Rare

to some new God, but I’m still drawn to spells.

Susan Richardson

I’m drawn to Thorstein too. He smiles and oh, such a strange and perplexing feeling wells

1. Arnarstapi, Iceland I know the gasp this grass gives

up in me. Like the land I used to know,

when it’s first touched by snow.

I’m all surface ice - but fire burns below.

On deep winter nights,

3.Vinland

I hear the darkness breathing.

The sea which brought us here was calm, our boat cupped like a gull’s egg in a child’s palm,

I know the sigh of these cliffs

then set down in this nest of sedge and spruce

when the guillemots leave after breeding.

in this brand-new land

I hear the cry of whales

and the sun is a new sun,

when their meat is hung to dry

stronger than the sun we knew,

and the shriek of this sky

bold as the taste of a crowberry

when fire streams from the mouth of the mountain. and Karlsefni loves me in a new way I know each place where this rain’s absorbed by the sea,

his words soft as skyr,

as after my mother died

his sperm like buttermilk

when Halldis and Orm absorbed me.

and we have a new son, our Snorri.

2. Greenland They call it the Green Land: it is not green.

There is no need for spells in this new place

Green has gone, along with my innocence.

where I smell no ghosts,

Each day I replay the terrible scene

no need to pray.

of our journey here – my foster parents

Yet still, for my son, I stay on guard

seized by the sea, waves snatching them away.

like an arctic tern at Arnarstapi.

The wind still echoes their screams: I can sense

I’m ready to dive to fend off threats and - should it invade this new land -

them everywhere. Faces glacial-grey,

to peck out the eyes

they loom from the gloom of the fog which dwells

of Death.

throughout this charmless land. I’m told to pray

4. Rome

My limbs have stiffened,

Here, it’s easy to believe –

in an honest merchant-God

into basalt

who trades kind skies for virtuous deeds,

Only my soul is supple.

as we gained bright cloth and gold

It has

the year we sailed for home

as the land has split at Thingvellir,

with our cargo of sagas from Vinland.

to entice

Arnarstapi’s cliffs, pillars.

opened,

God Here, my head’s free of doubts,

in.

sharp chunks of black lava.

But there, dwells a God who’s mad as the sea, who can take from me husbands, sons, cattle, sheep, who makes each bush feel pain at the birth of every berry.

I will mount the horse of my belief and ride it there over boggy ground to face Him.

5. Nun’s cell, Iceland

My mind, at this time, creaks on mighty

Snaefellsjökull;

like the longboats on which to

like the ice

I sailed

the Green Land, Vinland, Norway, Rome –

and home.

Sequence previously published in ‘Creatures of the Intertidal Zone’ (Cinnamon Press) Susan Richardson

The Occasional Tang of Salt Elizabeth Rimmer At sixty miles distance, this village of Cambuskenneth where I have lived for thirty years is about as far from the coast as you can get in Britain. It wasn’t always so. About 10,000 years ago, when the last ice melted, there was a long sea loch here which stretched another twenty miles inland, and the fossilised remains of whales were found just up the road, near where the famous battle of Stirling Bridge took place. But since then the land has lifted and the water has drained away. It’s all about the earth round here now, farmland reclaimed from the mosses, coal and silver mined in the hills, gravel for roads and clay for making the tiles all the houses in the village had, before we became a conservation area and had to be gentrified to slate. Gentrified doesn’t bother this house, though. Gentrified has been where it’s at from the start. Unlike my neighbour’s houses, which were built for miners and rope makers, this house was built as three holiday lets for the Glasgow Boys, who came to the village in great numbers at the turn of the twentieth century (drawn, it is said, by the lure of the modern girls, art students at Denovan’s school of animal drawing a mile up the road). This is why our house, despite its small rooms, has unusually high ceilings, some original cornicing, and, under

the seventies woodchip in our guest room, the very latest in Edwardian interior design chic – plastered walls painted in a kind of mustard/old-gold colour, with a fine line of dark green along the skirting board. We put the wood chip back. I like to know the original work is still there, but I’m not inflicting it on any of my guests! We’ll come back to the Glasgow Boys later. They are only one set of the ‘wandering Scots’ who have flowed through this strange inland peninsula, which turns out to be much less of a backwater than you might think. Although we are now so far from the sea, we aren’t entirely landlocked. The Forth is still tidal here, and when there is a high tide and an easterly wind you occasionally get the tang of salt in the air. There’s even a bore sometimes at the spring equinox, but I’ve never seen it. I do sometimes see seals rolling lazily upriver after the salmon, and in winter sea-birds come this far upstream looking for shelter, guillemots one year, young loons, identifiable only by their eerie unmistakeable call, two years running, goldeneye, goosander and the sinister black cormorant every year from August to April. There was a thriving harbour just a little downstream until the thirties, exporting hides and cloth, and importing timber and wool from northern parts and wine from the south. Road traffic came this way too; it was the first place you could cross the Forth until they built the bridges at Queensferry. But the 10

deep meanders of the river cut us off from the urban sprawl of Stirling, making this place feel a little apart and secluded, a little bit special. That has been an attraction for ages. A recent archaeological dig found a fortified ditch from Pictish times encircling the vulnerable north side of the village, and effectively closing off the river.The Arrouaisian monks who settled here in the twelfth century built (local tradition has it) on the site of a church founded by an Irish monk from Derry - St Kenneth, a friend and follower of St Columba. He was the son of a poet and a scholar, who travelled widely in Ireland and Scotland, even going as far as Rome, and united in his teaching the traditions of Celtic and Roman learning. The Arrouaisians themselves were a cutting edge blend of the oldest and most radical in monastic thinking – the canons Regular of the Augustinian order, and the Cistercians. Augustinian Canons had been around for centuries, often in large urban centres, at Cathedrals, specialising in services to travellers (not only hospitality, but in the building and maintenance of roads and bridges), liturgy and learning. They developed skills in medicine and diplomacy and often found themselves caught up in affairs of state. But at the time of the first Arrouaisian Abbot Gervaise, they had begun to long for a little more solitude, more peace, and the perspective you get from being more grounded. They

came under the influence of the new kids on the block, the Cistercians, who were keen to get out of the courts and the cities – they’d have understood Kenneth White’s motorway of western culture –and get some real work done. Cistercians chose waste places and learned to farm them (becoming ironically, very wealthy and powerful in the process) and expressed their love for the places they settled in the monastery names – so many bright valleys, beautiful valleys, clear springs, monasteries of the forests, snows or gardens. So the Arrouaisians got out from under the shadow of the castle across the river, settled here, and made orchards which outlasted them by some four hundred years. Travellers, scholars, earthconscious – they already sound quite interesting, but what really concerns us as geopoeticians is their connection with things that were happening in Europe. They came back fairly quickly into the Augustinian order and made contact with the highly influential School of St Victor in Paris – a fore-runner of what would eventually become the Sorbonne. Kenneth White talks a lot about the ‘scoti vagantes’ wandering Scots of the Middle Ages, but he doesn’t mention my favourite, Richard of St Victor.

Kenneth White doesn’t have too much time for him. His writings are mystical, theological and burdened with some very cumbersome allegorical interpretations of Biblical figures. But in an age which could veer wildly between contempt for any learning that wasn’t directly theological and contempt for any intellectual activity at all, the Victorines were inspired by their first Abbot, Hugh of St Victor, who produced an encyclopaedia of all the branches of knowledge including philosophy, carpentry and agriculture, and who famously said “Learn everything, and you will find out later that nothing is useless.” Richard of St Victor produced a study of the mind which held a balance between intellect and emotion, and between science and imagination which I don’t think has ever been bettered. It sits nicely in my head alongside White’s talk of erotic logic, body-mind and sensuous abstraction.

over it, and Jacobites – they are still discovering cannon balls and musket shot from minor skirmishes, alongside lead from more modern wild-fowlers. The orchards lasted, and the village grew up, served first by a ferry and then by a footbridge. But towards the end of the nineteenth century, Joseph Denovan Adam set up his art school a mile away across the fields. Soon the Glasgow Boys followed, and several, including William Kennedy, James Guthrie, Crawford Shaw, George Henry and A.E. Hornel spent their summers in Stirling and Cambuskenneth. Some of their paintings – for example Harvest Moon by William Kennedy show the village pretty much as you can see it today. The Glasgow Boys were in reaction from the Edinburghbased Scottish Academy, and believed in getting outside, away from the Romanticism and desire for sentimental prettiness, to paint real people in real places. They were influenced by Japonisme, in contact with the Impressionists in France, and travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East. Once again, this little enclosed pocket of ground became a crucible for artistic developments from elsewhere.

Of course, being so close to the Castle they couldn’t entirely keep out of public life. They were all over the political scene during the Wars of Independence, and under James IV, who was a leading patron of the arts, they benefited from In between times, things the royal court’s openness to sometimes settle and stagnate. the Renaissance in Europe. Mists sometimes gather here After the last Abbot left to because we are low-lying, All that is known of Richard is become the head of the First trapped between the Ochils, that he was Scottish, and I can’t Court of Justice in Edinburgh, the Trossachs and the Campsies, even find out what grounds the Abbey became a place for and so do stories of ghosts, there are for thinking so, but wanderers who couldn’t afford of monks, orphaned children he was Abbot of St Victor from to be seen drinking in Stirling screaming, and grey ladies. The 1162-70. It’s not surprising that to hide out. Cromwell fought older generation of miners 11

who used to travel through the village to the pit at Polmaise didn’t like walking through the village after dark. It’s easy to understand when your view is cut off by the trees, the familiar hills, the village boundaries, but in thirty years I’ve never met anything worse than myself. And it’s autumn, now. When the leaves have fallen I’ll be able to see out to the north as far as Ben Ledi on the skyline.The pink footed geese and the greylags are coming up from the coast in their thousands ahead of winter’s gales, filling the air with their clamour, with rumours of Norway and Iceland, and the occasional tang of salt.

marin du nord Nat Hall

White Sands of the West Tessa Ransford

feed our creels Alexander’s surviving cohorts after campaigning for years

Lir, Mannanan, tide and current,

in Central Asia, yelled “the sea! the sea!” and pranced about

wind and storm, mountain and cloud, gulf stream and water convection, tectonic plates and sea-bed shifts

like goal-scoring footballers as they threw off their trappings

bless us, today, tomorrow, our going out and coming in: destroyer and provider, send the shoals and feed our creels.

and ran down to embrace the wine-dark Aegean.

Had they lighted upon Luskentyre or Valtos the long-white western beaches of the Uists Eigg’s singing sands, Barra’s cockle strand, Iona’s north sands or any shell-blanched Camus in the west they would have known they’d reached the Tir nan og where Ulysses set sail beyond the sunset:

Jade, turquoise, emerald, luminous, the Gaelic glasfhairge--colours wildly pure that strike and change to deep gentian as first sunset streaks then moonlight shimmers a path directly shafted to the entrance of our spellbound hearts.

‘Sea-roads of the saints’ and of the Viking plunderers Columba ‘s expert mariners sailed alone to bring their tough survival skills to rock cliffs and coasts where they built their humble citadels. Living off goats and seagulls, sheltered by solid stone, they fished those churning whirling waves along with seal and whale, dolphin, and porpoise, diver, cormorant, and gannet ; they gleaned the shores along with otter, heron; they gathered herbs and sea-weeds to make medicines and then illustrated all in those gospel manuscripts of stories from the east, transferring them into a creed or manual on god-in-sea-nature:

Riddle Nancy Campbell I cut the ocean from a cherry tree. It was invisible to everyone but me until I washed each wave in water. With every wash, the waves grew darker and dirtier, and these dirty tides traced lines over identical white islands where berry bushes bent to meet the waves: their cracked bark, beaten smooth, casts no watery reflection but only acts as mirror to my ocean.

(Answer: Japanese woodblock artist working on a print)

Douglas Robertson

Sookin-in-goats Bridget Khursheed sunkenpath through the wild garlic we could sell this to tourists health walk the headystink it is isn’t it the gorge an armpit sweating out this cooked smell

in its crease far below a pattering stream still erodes the sandstone beneath the thorn and scrub impenetrable goldcrest song the slightest fly stab movement

a cottage so perfect with its row of beans and weatherboard wood store hides from beach wind we walk right out into the mist past every kind of known rockpool

until we find Muir’s goatsucks a Norse remnant? put a hand in one touch its cool depths and you are dragged under into kelp, stones and gills only one portal out of nine hundred

on the shore rocks sandpipers are busy disappearing into the sea morning fog so busy until their bodies are cut in two and pop back together again

the tide is coming in and will wash up the beach, next the cottage, one day the garlic, the tourists, the viaduct where our car is parked, eat up our very home blow us down it is before we’ll see

The green path Bridget Khursheed walk out on the turf above greywacke and siltstone laid down at the bottom of the sea 500 million years ago. walk out into air pocketed with kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, shags, herring gulls, fulmars who nest in the creased ridges of the folded Head volcanic lava flow.

the turf cuts between pink tufted chasm and abyss patterned into gullies and sea stacks ideal for nesting sea birds. And for dreamers who take this path roll the green carpet right out to sea and its gannet pierced tidal slop of tooth brushes and tampons and wire and algal bloom back into eden again.

Boundaries of Perception A New Highland Territory Georgina Coburn Boundaries of Perception-A New Highland Territory was originally presented at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh on 26th June 2010 as part of the State of The Art: Visual Traditions and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland conference. In its original form the paper was delivered as an aural and visual essay, with 57 slide images as an integral element of the live presentation. What follows is an adaptation of my original paper for the Stravaig journal, which has been edited and revised to include recent examples of both artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. When I first heard Kenneth White speak in Inverness seven years ago, I immediately recognised a framework of understanding akin to what I saw being practised in the studios of contemporary artists living and working in the Highlands and Islands. This trajectory of ideas, together with what I see as the political and cultural implications of a Geopoetic approach in the field of Art History, have continued to inform my work as a freelance writer, arts correspondent Venus Stone (Detail) Steve Dilworth and critic. Whiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language, like the distillation of visual language in the work of artists like Steve Dilworth and Mhairi Killin, has much to teach us about the territory we inhabit and our way of being in the world. The idea of island and shore as historical and mythological sites of convergence between elemental forces of nature, human life and the divine expand our field of reference beyond geographic boundaries of perception.The journey to this territory, a conception of place which is carried within, embodies exploration of both physical location and creative process; the island as a site of confinement and isolation but equally of transformative possibility and expanded perception.

Art is that which contains and exudes the power to transcend. Steve Dilworth In October 2005 Professor Kenneth White founder-president of the International Institute of Geopoetics and recipient of the first HI~Arts International Fellowship, delivered three lectures in the Highlands and Islands under the heading of The Geopoetic Project. The second of these lectures “A Return to the Territory- A Highland Reconnaissance” 1 explored the idea of “cultural cartography”- as White described it; “the shaping of a mindscape in a landscape”. Central to White’s argument is the idea of “Reconnaissance” rather than “Renaissance”, a movement towards the revaluation and regrounding of Scottish culture in a global context. White’s conception of Geopoetics as “a basis for a coherent and cogent culture in our time and in our space”2 represents a trajectory of creative energy, a drive to acknowledge, redefine and reeducate. As an interdisciplinary movement which acknowledges the separation of humankind from nature, White’s Geopoetics offers not a new reading of the Highland landscape but an alternative language in the contemporary world, a framework of understanding indigenous in its nature. Central to this language is the idea of territory- a definition of landscape which proposes a new revivalism- not in the service of Nationalism or in memoriam of a culture long past, but as a living creative act. Steeped in myth and Romanticism the popularised Victorian image of the Highlands and Islands persists to the present day. This dominant perspective; of a pristine wilderness or vast leisure park defined primarily by market values, regional administration and the politics of cultural ownership represents what White has described as a “reduced cultural geography”3 and I would argue, a persistent boundary of perception. White’s concept of territory rather than region echoes an earlier conception of Gaidhealtachd; of territory not defined by land ownership or administrative boundaries but a vision of landscape encompassing land, people and memory, ancient in its origins. The reinvestment of power and meaning in visual expression is essentially a question of language, a language of verbal and visual images that within

Boat of Blessings Mhairi Killin the Bardic tradition leads us back to the essential purpose of creativity as a source of illumination, transformation and renewal. The choice of location for contemporary creative work based on the concept of territory rather than landscape within the Highlands and Islands is significant, part of a coherent visual history in the region, situated in the wider context of world Art History. The re-examination and acknowledgement of the visual history of the Highlands and Islands within Scotland and the UK is of global importance, in actively redefining the region’s “cultural cartography” and as part of a fundamental reappraisal of the cultural values of our time. As White has suggested, by digging deep within the earth on which you stand, you expand your frame of reference, being uniquely local and naturally global simultaneously.Although not part of a formal or collective theoretical movement, visual artists and makers living and working in the region have understood and employed Geopoetical ways of seeing in their work for centuries, not in the creation of scenic illusions, but in the creative act of seeing in direct

the strata of human marks upon the landscape of Iona and her handling of materials including use of digital imaging onto silver, use of naturally eroded found objects and metal weave, challenge the boundaries often fixed between Fine Art and Reductively rural and idyllic imagery from Craft traditions. Landseer to current Visit Scotland television advertising arguably perpetuate cultural marginalisation, reinforcing the image of the region as edge rather than centre. In cultural and creative terms it is both. When re-imagined as territory the cultural landscape of the Highlands and Islands becomes what it has always been in a Hebridean context; a powerful and universal centre of cultural gravity. The poetics of visual language in the contemporary studio practice of Iona based artist Mhairi Killin and Isle of Harris based artist Steve Dilworth are two exceptional examples of creative exploration of this multilayered territory. Both artists make an internal landscape of human experience powerfully visible, representing in Geopoetical terms; “the voice of a mind integrated into the land”. 5 response to their environment. The process of remapping and reimagining this territory and our collective way of seeing through visual expression reflects White’s idea of an expansive “horizon of intention”.4

Mhairi Killin’s practice represents continuity in terms of the rich visual history of Iona and contemporary innovation in its exploration of Fine Art and Craft disciplines. The physical and spiritual landscape of Iona has inspired an extraordinary visual legacy; from Bronze Age land works, to the Book of Kells, Medieval cross slab sculpture, the Arts and Crafts revival of Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie, the art of Iain MacCormack, the Iona Press, work by the Scottish Colourists and the contemporary work of Killin herself. In 2009/2010 the artist’s solo touring exhibition AbsentVoices, a series of five sculptural installations, presented an expansive vision of land, people and memory. Killin moves with accomplished ease between creative disciplines of drawing, weaving, silversmithing, sculpture and installation. The impact of design and visual literacy within a culture has remained one of the central concerns of her work over the last twenty years, exploring the role of the artist and creative process in both rural and urban contexts. The scale of reference within these sculptural installation works is both epic and intimate, the multilayered nature of textile construction drawing a powerful thread between the contemporary artist’s work and that of her ancestors. Killin is acutely aware of

Detail Prayers To Mary Mhairi Killin In many ways the creative process itself is an act of remembrance, not just for the individual artist but as a mark of recognition of collective cultural value and identity. Historically the indigenous craft skills of boatbuilding, carpentry, weaving and silversmithing on the island of Iona represent a symbiotic relationship between art and life.The nature of Craft as a signifier of social cohesion and cultural identity is a strong current within the artist’s work, reflecting the pride and integrity invested in a handmade or hand finished object as part of its tradition. Mhairi Killin’s work is both a continuation of this inheritance and a powerful comment on cultural decline and survival. 6

Detail Waulk/Wake Mhairi Killin

Waulk/Wake Mhairi Killin In a work such as Waulk /Wake the artist makes the human mark upon the landscape visible in a revealing choice and handling of materials. The combination of delicate silver wire and translucent woven microfilament, the erosion of glass by the etching process and gossamer like frayed edges of weave convey the fragmentary, transient nature of human memory. In a process of personal and collective archaeology, Killin illuminates the human element in Waulk/ Wake, visualised in each silver thread extending from bobbin racks mounted on the wall above and drawn down into a woven panel upon a waulking table of etched glass. Upon these individual threads the names of family members etched in silver are suspended. The way that light is reflected by silver, textile and glass is central to our reading of the work. Constructed from materials of fragile delicacy, the radiance and beauty of every thread is revealed to the viewer, creating an affirmative and enduring statement within the installation.

The rippling lines of the silver weave read like the ghostly echo of the rhythm that would have pounded the cloth upon the table, a rhythm once central to island life. The sense of poignancy and loss within this work however is not coloured by nostalgia or sentimentality. The evocation of weaving and waulking and the social cohesion such processes generated is not an attempt at reconstruction but a mark of recognition. It is both an acknowledgement of separation from oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own culture or homeland and a means of reconnection, both for the artist and audience. In Killinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work we see a continuation of traditional rituals of creation, a care and reverent attention to detail that is transformative. Just as the physical act of waulking is transformative due to the rhythmical construction of the song, the act of making and viewing visual art allows us to connect with an essential inner rhythm. The role of the individual within the waulking process, as part of the circle illuminates the essential nature of Craft as a living creative act.

Detail Waulk/Wake Mhairi Killin 20

Drawing upon primary source material including poetry, waulking song, images, postcards and letters of correspondence between Iona and the New World the artist creates a point of contact between human experience past and present.This is also revealed in her exploration of traditional methods of textile construction and silversmithing combined with new technology. Killin’s use of digital imaging onto silver creates a living patina, akin to the earliest forms of photography. In the daugerrotype the light reflective surface creates a unique and fragile image of human recollection. The crafting of images with light is a significant touchstone throughout the artist’s work.

invites closer inspection and contemplation. In this way the viewer experiences an act of seeing or journeying into the landscape akin to the artist’s own creative process.

The Blessing of the Ship Mhairi Killin Precious Cargo Mhairi Killin The land and seascape of Iona as a site of holy pilgrimage and emigration is beautifully revealed in Precious Cargo, a work constructed from a boat fragment, photo etched and etched silver. In this work the naturally eroded material peppered with salt spray contrasts with the glint and lustre of hand worked metal, heightening our appreciation of both natural and crafted human elements within the work. The fluidity of Precious Cargo as a three dimensional drawing is enhanced by oxidization and etching which introduces a finely controlled tonality into the gestural, calligraphic like mark. This bold visual statement is on closer inspection finely balanced with meticulous attention to detail, allowing precious elements to emerge from charred or eroded fragments. Two plaques inside the boat fragment; the first reading “Precious Cargo June 1847”, the second “98 people” illuminate the human element within the work. The viewer is drawn initially not by the text which at first is hidden from view, but by the worked metal surface reflective of light that

This quality can also be seen in The Blessing of the Ship constructed with found objects and etched silver with text from the 1887 Iona Press publication of the same name. The influence of colour and light drawn from the winter landscape of Iona can be seen throughout this body of work not as a descriptive element but one of essential illumination.The symbolic associations with silver as a precious metal of healing and transformation permeate the artist’s work and her highly skilled treatment of this element heightens our conception of light within the work as both a physical and spiritual presence. Killin’s recent work with the artist’s collective 6 °WEST document her direct response to the Island of Inch Kenneth; repositioning the island as a site of universal illumination and ritual through creative process. In An Taistealachd/ The Pilgrimage (Digital print with etched silver and silver wire detail. Ed of 8) the idea of journeying and pilgrimage is experienced by both the artist and viewer in the fluid perspective and multi-layered treatment of the site as a vessel and repository of human experience. The central image of the

well or portal, together with use of silver in an unpolished state bound around the entrance and extending into the white ground of the image is powerfully distilled. Flanked by photographic views of human dwelling and archaeology on the island, shifting focus and depth of field, together with the reflection of a window in an aged mirror within Inch Kenneth house, explore the concept of time and a horizon of human aspiration over centuries. The artist’s adept handling of tone and texture contribute to the rich interior life of the image in three living dimensions. The finely burnished silver luggage tag overlaid at the centre, incised with text in reference to an ancient cairn, implies a journey of illumination through ritual both in the choice and handling of materials. Killin’s evocation of individual and collective memory through landscape relies not on a conception of this territory as a view or even as geography, but on an understanding of the earth beneath one’s feet as a potent site for collective cultural excavation and reappraisal.

at An Lanntair, Isle of Lewis (6 October – 17 November 2012) presents the artist’s unflinching vision from the late 1970’s to the present day. Use of found objects including once living material and elements gathered directly from the land and seascape of Harris are an integral part of the interior life and psychology of Dilworth’s art. Mountain Air (2002), a work in bronze containing phials of Hebridean air trapped at midsummer dawn reveals the ambiguity of the art object in Dilworth’s practice. At the core of its creation and in the photographic documentation of the work Mountain Air is an act of making, an event and a superbly crafted object. The raw material at the heart of this creation is the element of air, elusive, intangible, invisible- our belief and imagination combine with this physicality drawn from a specific location to complete the work. Storm Water (1987) comprised of three works each containing a vial of seawater taken during a storm; the first in alabaster, the second in alabaster, bog oak and long line and the third in bog oak, whale bone, brass and long line, are all potent examples of external elements cast within sculptural objects. In Storm Water Dilworth draws upon a tradition of offerings to elemental forces in the natural environment; “casting a kist from a boat to feed the maelstrom.”7 Described by the artist as “hidden beautiful object(s) that could belong on a boat” 8, the function of these pieces introduces the idea of altruism in Dilworth’s art. The idea of art as a ritual offering echoes earlier cycles of creation and belief within the landscape.

Hooded Crow/ Rook Steve Dilworth The sculptural and land based works of Isle of Harris based artist Steve Dilworth equally refer to an essential continuity of vision and transcendence of the art world object. Dilworth gives equal consideration to the internal and external parts of a sculptural object, describing in his exhibition catalogue Acts of Faith (A solo exhibition at An Lanntair 1992) “materials as sources of power” and “construction as ritual”. Twenty years on, Calm Water Steve Dilworth Dilworth’s current retrospective Mortal Remains 22

Calm Water (Harris stone and walrus bone), is a deeply meditative work both in its execution and physical presence, containing at its centre a phial of seawater gathered on a calm day. Backed with a piece of gold the inner opening is reflective of light from within.The content of the phial invokes the act of gathering the symbolically emotional conductor of water; it simultaneously holds a moment, an idea and a manifestation of infinite, oceanic scale. The emotional intensity of this work lies in a timeless human experience, that rare feeling of calm, beauty and peace to be found in nature. Beautifully crafted the elusive core of the object is revealed, Dilworth distils it into pure visual poetry, presenting the viewer with an object greater and more expansive than itself.

within. There is present in Dilworth’s art the idea of illumination through darkness, an archetypal narrative akin to folklore with both the artist and viewer as protagonist.

Constructed from found driftwood and drift rope Sea Chest (2010) is another magnificent Boulder, Isle of Harris example, seemingly dredged from the ocean of our collective unconscious. Raw materials drawn directly from the land and seascape of Harris are transformed by the artist into an object of individual and collective contemplation. Here the carapace, which appears consistently throughout the artist’s work as a form of concealment and revelation, is evocative of a seed pod or human heart. The organic curvature of soft wood grain is crafted with exquisite care, exposing closely bound fibres of rib-like rope. The poignancy of this work lies in its form which becomes figurative by association and in the binding Craft Rocking Stone Steve Dilworth of generations. There is a profound feeling of loss held in the interior mindscape of the object, it feels as though it has travelled incalculable distance , a timeless archetypal human mark on landscape and memory. Like many of Dilworth’s objects it contains that which we cannot see, a kist of precious things held within; a vessel and an enigma. Hidden inside is the bronze cast of a sand eel revealing an essential relationship between living and decaying matter, mortality inverted by the relative permanence of metal, held beyond sight. The hidden internal construction in Dilworth’s art is just as important as the outer form and within this model or design lies an inherent mystery of life and of death.The artist’s sculptural objects are powerful acts of engineering, perseverance and faith. At the heart of the sculpture is an inversion of the art world object, its essential value held

Cupstone Steve Dilworth Whilst works such as Rocking Stone (2002) and Cupstone (2004) (Images 16, 17) clearly draw inspiration from the geology and prehistory of the ancient landscape, the artist’s work reaches far deeper into the earth and our place upon

it. Dilworth’s sculptures are three dimensional poetry- visual language distilled by craftsmanship and extraordinary command of form.

Claw Steve Dilworth

Lure Steve Dilworth Scales of reference can be intimate such as in his throwing objects; Lure (2005,Alabaster with Rivets) or monumental, almost architectural in their conception such as Venus Stone (2008) installed at the Goodwood Sculpture Park, West Sussex or Claw (2007) in 9 tonnes of polished black granite on the same site. Common to all is the creation of a “physical connection to the mysteries”10 through art. The inner and outer design of Dilworth’s art makes this powerfully tangible. His work is a reflection of visual continuity and collective mythology drawn from the unique environment in which he has chosen to live and work.

Navel Breathing Stone Steve Dilworth Work in the landscape such as Navel Breathing Stone (1996) A carving created on the belly of the hag, a mountain ridge on the Isle of Harris, connects the scale of the mountain with a human being breathing into it, an interaction with the landscape linked with ancient ritual. Seer Stone (2004) draws upon the legend of seer stones and second sight, with water at its core drawn from a natural pool discovered on the mountain ridge where the eye of the hag should be. The eye sculpted in alabaster and ceramic, containing a phial of water within, draws the contemporary viewer into contemplation of human form within the landscape. This territory of legend visualised in the land mass itself, together with the fluidity of water gathered from the natural pool at the core of the work, is an evocation of the human necessity to make art and the essential connection between humankind and the environment. Such a work expands our conception of landscape, drawing on strata of human experience and memory, making this visual and oral history visible once more.

In a series of burial cairns commemorating the dead carried across Harris from Cuidinish to Seilbost the artist draws our attention to the communal rites that existed on the island, linked with ancient burial chambers. Dilworth has commented that “the burial ground at Seilebost which was ploughed over by the factor during the clearances to remove any trace of the people” would have contained “a series of stones not much bigger than a football, each marking a grave” 11 like those still to be found at Hushinish. The simplicity of these monuments without inscription as enduring human marks upon the landscape are a powerful influence on Dilworth’s distillation of visual language. The artist’s land drawings in animal fat and fire ( Runes 1997, Fat Man/ Fat Andy 2005, Fat Rock, Burning Man and Fire Rock 2002) also engage with the human mark upon the land as a visual tradition, encouraging us not to simply to look at a scene but to perceive “a mindscape in a landscape”.

The artist’s series of throwing objects on a more intimate scale including Wren (1993) enshrine the once living body in a casket of its own mythology. Considered an omen of death if a wren flew into your chest, this throwing object as described by the artist “can be cast into our internal landscape.” 12The concealment of dead matter within a sculptural form of stone, wood or bronze and the idea that absolute knowledge eludes the powers of human sight establishes the function of the artist as maker. The formal strength of Dilworth’s art is coupled with fragile delicacy of design- recognition of the fallibility, vulnerability and mortality which define the human condition. Dilworth’s choice and handling of materials is significant, creation, death and transformation contained physically and metaphorically within many of his sculptural objects. Equality of technique and ideas is a major strength throughout the artist’s work. Dilworth has commented that; “I want to retrieve that moment of understanding not by describing, but by making. Of course I’ll fail, but in the chemistry of making another moment will appear. These objects are drawn from an internal landscape, of shifting sands, connections are constantly being discovered”.13

Burning Man Steve Dilworth

Porpoise Steve Dilworth Wren Steve Dilworth

Both artists’ engagement with visual language, technique and materials reflects a continuation 25

of visual traditions in the Highlands and Islands and striking innovation in terms of contemporary practice. Both Steve Dilworth and Mhairi Killin exemplify the significance of Craft in relation to Fine Art practice and encourage us to expand our perception of the Highlands and Islands as territory, rather than landscape. This visual legacy allows us to reconnect with the essential value of art as a means of human expression, illumination and aspiration. The exquisite craftsmanship and design of both artists’ work is culturally significant in a global context and has much to teach us about the territory we inhabit. Whilst the visual history of the Highlands and Islands lacks documentation and wider public recognition, it is my sincere hope that wider acknowledgement and awareness of the studio practice of artists such as Killin and Dilworth, continued academic research and significant long term investment in art education will continue to expand our conception of the Highlands and Islands as territory. In Kenneth White’s lecture A Return to the Territory - A Highland Reconnaissance he refers to Wittengenstein in his discussion of cultural cartography: ‘Consider the geography of a country for which there is no map, or only a fragmentary one. The difficulty with this is the difficulty of philosophy, where the country is language, and the geography grammar.’ 14 These fragments are illuminated in the contemporary works of Mhairi Killin and Steve Dilworth, actively redefining the boundaries of our own unique territory and ever expanding our perception of the world.

Mhairi Killin images courtesy of the artist with photography by Shannon Toffs. Steve Dilworth images courtesy of the artist with photography by Bekka Globe. www.mhairikillin.com www.stevedilworth.com

References

1 A podcast of Kenneth White’s lecture “A Return To the Territory- A Highland Reconnaissance” can be downloaded at; http://northings.com/2012/10/20/northings-podcast-17-kenneth-whitegeopoetics-lecture-2/. All three lectures as part of The Geopoetic project can be accessed through www.northings.com and in the publication; On The Atlantic Edge - A Geopoetics Project by Kenneth White. (Sandstone Press 2006.) 2 Kenneth White Lecture, A Return to the Territory - A Highland Reconnaissance, audio recording. (Hi~Arts 2005) 3 Kenneth White Lecture, A Return to the Territory - A Highland Reconnaissance, audio recording. (Hi~Arts 2005) 4 Kenneth White Lecture, A Return to the Territory - A Highland Reconnaissance, audio recording ( Hi~Arts 2005) 5 Kenneth White Lecture, A Return to the Territory - A Highland Reconnaissance, audio recording. (Hi~Arts 2005) 6 Essay Journeying and Separation The Art of Mhairi Killin by Georgina Coburn- Absent Voices Exhibition Catalogue 2009 7 Conversation with the artist Steve Dilworth 19/03/10. 8 Conversation with the artist Steve Dilworth 19/03/10. 9 Artist’s website www.stevedilworth.com 10 Conversation with the artist Steve Dilworth 19/03/10 11 Artist’s website www.stevedilworth.com 12 Artist’s website www.stevedilworth.com 13 Artist’s website www.stevedilworth.com 14 On The Atlantic Edge - A Geopoetics Project; A Highland Reconnaissance by Kenneth White (p57) (Sandstone Press 2006)

Holderness Boulder Clay Michael McKimm January. Midnight buffetings reveal

And something else he lifts up from the sand;

Baltic Amber, black flints, quartz,

a finely polished double-yellow line.

a fencepost hanging from a whip

September sees a balmy orange sun

of wire, and plastic drainage pipes

and the fields above stripped bare

like pillarbox guns, their artillery

by rolling combines; the upper ridge

of soapsuds and effluent. The sea

dries out; mud-balls loll like peppered

knows no other path but February,

steaks at the lowest tide. Winds work

waves coaxing new erratics

through October, bring up

right through March, glacier-scored

gobstoppers of sandstone, granite,

conglomerates, jasper, Weardale

Norwegian Porphyry, carnelian;

limestone, and molluscs, ostracods,

bring up ammonites, gastropods,

fish teeth, fish scales, fish spines, and then it’s

tight-nippled cirripedes; bring

April, the pounding ocean undercuts

another layer from the cliff face,

where pebbles milled a cave

enough to show the light to agate,

and out into the water flows silt, clay,

and garnet, and gneiss, and November.

Devil’s Toenails plucky as iambics,

A huge swell takes the life out

fossil wood as hard as lumps

of a groyne, saws non-stop for days

of coal. On the verge the caravans

at beds of clay. And that’s

roll back; then just like that another

two full metres gone before December.

two feet fall. May and June bring sand martins, burrowing above the latest slump, hundreds nipping grasses from behind the Public Beach Conveniences, clearing bugs before the second brood. Soaked July, the channels fill with rain, then scorching August, creaking in the air, a good half metre crumbles with a Scafell thud. A man out with his trowel, checking silt grains on his tongue, measures with his eyes the tide’s new reach, the Millennium defences now they’re breached. 28

garish pastels, but perhaps that’s what the artists thought would sell. The free wine and canapés were appreciated, however, and, although I might have overdone it a little, one of the artists was greatly amused when I pulled on my spraydeck and buoyancy aid before paddling back to Bryher.

Coda Mary Morrison

Light...Words Bill Stephens It was the light.Two white flashes every 15 seconds against the inky blue black velvet sky, the sea a shade darker. Pharos et Phthalo. Approaching the Scilly Isles from the Atlantic, mariners steer clear of the Bishop’s Rock Lighthouse but from Rushy Bay on Bryher it had the opposite effect and was inexorably drawing me to it. The revelation was at the start of a week’s exploration of the archipelago by sea kayak, after paddling across The Road from St Mary’s. During the first two days paddling around Bryher, Samson and Tresco, I was immediately struck by the unique summer colours and light of the Scillies -a big sky, eroded granite rock producing white sand everywhere, islands in myriad shades of green around a shallow sea, lots of sunshine, all washed by the occasional Atlantic storm. The Abbey Gardens onTresco go a little overboard on ‘getting lost in paradise,’with exotic plants from all over the world and themes like ‘South Africa Cliff’. No wonder the imposing variegated marble sculpture of Gaia in mother earth mode has a worried expression, but perhaps this might be more to do with her more pressing concerns elsewhere.

The second evening coincided with the weekly gig racing from St Mary’s to Tresco. In the 19th century there were several gigs on each of the main islands. Then the race was to be the first to put a pilot on a ship wanting assistance to progress up the English or Bristol Channels or seeking shelter. The oldest now is Bonnet, built about 1830, with Golden Eagle, Serica, Dolphin, Czar, Shah, Slippen, Islander, Tregarthen, Men-aVaur and Nornour the others, only the last three proper Scilly names. Despite trying to wash-hang one of the many spectator boats, it wasn’t a great surprise when I fell behind the pace set by the gigs. But I did manage to catch up with the crews in the bar of the New Inn on Tresco and spent the rest of the evening chatting with the helm of Nornour. Gig racing is obviously thirsty work, Guinness, as I recall. Then it was off to Tean, St Helen’s, St Martin’s and the Eastern Isles. Northwethel, Men-aVaur, Hanjague, Nornour, Innisvouls, Ganilly and Menawthen to name but a few. Almost every name a word poem, as enjoyable to say out loud as those of the Western Isles of Scotland but without the pronunciation challenges.

On St Helen’s the excavated remains of an 8th Paintings on display at the opening of an exhibition century chapel within a walled enclosure was in the Gallery on Tresco attempted to capture evocative of similar sites in the Hebrides and the essence of the Scillies. They ended up as provided a peaceful interlude. Sitting on the beach 29

in the warm sunshine afterwards I noticed some painted pebbles, presumably left by children from a visiting boat, one of these having a thin black wavy cross with the quadrants in the primary colours. Exposed to the weather and waves the colours would have soon faded if I’d left it there and it now sits on my desk at home. Moored off East Porth on Tean where I was based for this leg of the trip was Michael Stephens, a former lifeboat and one of the ‘Little Ships’ that helped with the Dunkirk evacuation. Sharing a surname, I obviously had to have a closer look and its owners, Liz and Charles, couldn’t have been more welcoming.There followed an evening in the Seven Stones Inn on St Martin’s with their friends from another boat and then back to the beach at Tean for some quiet reflection on another day in paradise as the embers slowly faded from a driftwood fire.

Hathor 1920 in the same spot, Earl of Lonsdale 1886, Charlotte Dunbar 1881, River Lune 1879, Thomas Lawson 1907, Hollandia 1773, Castleford 1887, Schiller 1875. Lethegus, Melledgan, Menpingrim, Minmanueth, Crebawethan, Gorregan and Pednathise, more word poems for the names of the islands and rocks here, but with a sinister edge, perhaps reflecting what they’ve witnessed. Jolly Rock is the obvious exception but perhaps named with more than a touch of irony, sitting as it does on the western side of the Western Rocks, facing the full force of Atlantic storms. The next day dawned with a hazy sun but, more importantly, a steady barometer for the intended crossing to Bishop’s Rock. Although there was little swell from the Atlantic and the crossing was timed for when tidal streams were at their weakest, there was still a lot of surface movement and it was good to land on Rosevear where the remains of the blacksmith’s workshop and houses for the builders of the lighthouse are still clearly visible along with the rusted remains of shipwrecks.

The next morning I paddled out to the moored boats to say my goodbyes and Liz insisted that I took with me a huge bacon and egg butty wrapped in tinfoil which was greatly appreciated. The weather was set fair for the crossing back to St Mary’s and onwards to St Agnes, landing at the Bishop’s Rock was another 3 kilometres away east end of The Bar that links it with Gugh, very but having come so far it was now or, probably, handy for The Turk’s Head near its west end. never.Seemingly named because it’s shaped like a The Troy Town Maze on the other side of St Agnes Bishop’s mitre, the rock rises sheer from a depth is made with round beach cobbles set in grass and of 45 metres with the tower reaching a height was supposedly laid out by the bored son of the of 49 metres above this and is an impressive island lighthouse keeper, but archaeologists think sight close up. Made with 5,700 tons of Cornish an earlier origin is possible. Unique in Britain, it granite blocks, the door is about a third of the resembles the pebble labyrinths of Scandinavia way up, but to get at it a ladder with individual where there are several hundred on islands rungs (I counted 43) set into the sheer face has close to the sea, used by fishermen to magically to be climbed. This only happens rarely nowadays raise the wind, give protection and increase the as the last keepers left the lighthouse in 1992 and catch. One version has it that the youngest crew there is now a helicopter landing platform at its member would run as fast as he could from the top. Yes, the ‘circle ident’ film clip which often centre of the labyrinth to the waiting boat leaving precedes the BBC One News is of the Bishop’s the smaggubar, or gremlins, trapped. Perhaps it’s Rock Lighthouse. no coincidence that the St Agnes maze is close to The lighthouse is the finishing post for the Blue St Warna’s Well, dedicated to shipwrecks. Riband Trans-Atlantic races and getting there ‘on There are many wrecks on the Scillies but the numbers increase around St Agnes and the Western Rocks. Association, Eagle, Romney and Firebrand, all part of a Naval Squadron returning from the Mediterranean going down with the loss of nearly 2,000 men on 22 October 1707, Italia 1917, Scillonian 1951, Plympton 1909 and

my steam’, as it were, felt as satisfying. Latitude 49o 52’, longitude 6o 26’, it very much felt like reaching the edge, an experience made more intense by the potentially precarious situation. I’d liked to have stayed longer but the tide had turned and it was time to head back to St Agnes. ***

More than 1,200 kilometres to the north, as the Arctic Tern might fly, the name was the attraction this time. Muckle Flugga, the words roll round the mouth like boiled sweets... poetic Ultima Thule indeed. Out Stack, 500 metres further north, should really have that accolade but the words don’t ebb and flow in the same way. Mike and I were travelling to a weekend sea kayak symposium on Shetland when we met for the first time on the ferry from Aberdeen. We were both intending to spend the rest of the week paddling and as soon as Muckle Flugga was mentioned it instantly became our objective. The symposium was based on Papa Stour where wind, tide and waves have created some ofthe finest geos, stacks, natural arches and caves anywhere. At Bordie, on the northwest corner of the island, a subterranean passage runs for more than 300 metres across the headland with two bends making the central section completely dark. Head torches were required to negotiate this, or in my case a mouth held Maglite, but it was still difficult to see the sides at times. Just as well, as we needed plenty room to deal with the swell from the Atlantic. Lyra Skerry was even more impressive with 250 metre east-west and 100 metre north-south passages meeting dramatically in the middle. The larger Fogla Skerry was also honeycombed with one huge chamber having several entrances. A mosaic of red, green and white anemones, seaweed and barnacles clung to the pink rock,with the aerated peppermint marble green sea illuminated from the arched side passages and the sluicing and booming sound effects created by the Atlantic swell adding to the atmosphere.A natural cathedral, more Byzantine than Presbyterian.

a relief to arrive at Ramna Geo on Yell. This was the big day. Instead of following the coastline we made a direct crossing to Unst, taking advantage of the tide pushing us ever northwards. Then the sky started to clear and there it was in the distance, Muckle Flugga, shining white from the coating of seabird guano, not the lighthouse. Together with Hermaness at the north end of Unst it’s a National Nature Reserve ‘at the edge of the world’, to quote Scottish Natural Heritage, home to more than 100,000 breeding sea birds. About a third of these are Gannets or Solans as they’re called in Shetland,and most of these were taking advantage of the break in the weather, flying round and round sun-wise in what seemed an enormous vortex above us. The scene was almost biblical and Turner’s ‘Morning after the Deluge’ came to mind. Was that the sound of angels singing we could hear above the raucous screeching of the birds? The Great Skuas, or Bonxies, provided the reality check by chasing Gannets that had just caught a fish to try and get them to disgorge it. Their favourite trick is to grab the Gannet’s tail feathers and giving these a twist invariably worked. The expected tidal overfalls between Hermaness and Muckle Flugga were short-lived, and we managed to land beside the steel staircase bolted to the eastern rock face that runs from sea level to the lighthouse 46 metres above. Mikla Flugey, or large steep-sided island, it was called in Old Norse.

We climbed the steps and arrived at the lighthouse. Although no one seemed to be there we could hear a TV game show in the depths of the building. After some knocking on the door,eventually two keepers emerged, more than a little surprised as When the others returned to the Shetland we were their first visitors for six weeks, but they Mainland, Mike and I headed north passing the made us most welcome. After tea and biscuits Drongs and Dore Holm before arriving at Esha they showed us round. Ness on a grey day. The volcanic rocks were There seemed no obvious reason why the black, the breaking waves were white, everything windows were covered with iron mesh, security monochrome, our bright yellow kayaks providing not being much of a concern here, but it’s to the only splash of colour. It was a committing protect the windows from wave thrown rocks. five kilometre stretch with no place to land According to the year planner fixed to the until reaching Hamna Voe, one of many in the kitchen wall, ‘The Big One’ occurred on New Northern Isles indicating a safe anchorage.The Year’s Day with wind speeds well in excess of 150 next bit round Fethaland, the northern tip of the knots, the maximum reading on the anemometer Shetland Mainland, wasn’t much better, and it was gauge, when a radar ‘golf ball’ on Unst was blown 31

off its tee, never to be seen again.The same thing the water looking intently in the same direction. happened to the Hermaness bird watching hide. Only the largest and one other fin could be seen Having come this far we couldn’t leave without now but close inshore, a surface wave was fast paddling the extra kilometre around Out Stack. approaching and it was obviously the other two It sits in splendid isolation at Latitude 60o 51’on Orcas going for the kill. Instead of heading for the its own bit of map beyond the topmost grid line seal, they suddenly did a U turn towards where on the Ordnance Survey Landranger Sheet 1, we were standing. The calf was swimming in the confirming that this is as far north as you can slipstream of what was presumably the cow, and get in the British Isles. The stack sits in its own then it happened, a moment I’ll never forget. Eye small patch of the blue tone indicating sea on the contact. map, beyond there is only white, and is perhaps where Terry Pratchett could have got the idea for Discworld. Head due north a couple of thousand kilometres and at about Latitude 80o where the Arctic sea ice forms it becomes properly white, but it’s receding fast and you’ll need to be quick before it disappears altogether. *** On the way south we called in to the Post Office at Haroldswick on Unst, the most northerly in the UK, where an ‘alternative’ history of Shetland was displayed: In the beginning it was like a page out of Genesis. The ice age receded some 12,000 years ago, leaving a rock outcrop devoid of vegetation or wildlife. There was daylight and darkness but precious little else. It was unnaturally quiet... Adam and Eve were a pair of hairy Orcadians, with a boatload of disease, a few seeds, a dog, a couple of sheep and, being towed behind, a cow and a mother-in-law.The land-with-no-name soon fell to these overwhelming odds. The paddle to Fetlar was hard with a strong wind ‘on the nose’ most of the time. This meant we landed at Urie Ness later than expected but the ‘simmer dim’ allowed us to pitch camp without the need for torches.The morning was dreich but sitting hunched over warm muesli I noticed Gulls also in a feeding frenzy off the far end of the Ness. The reason was soon obvious. All two metres of it. It was the dorsal fin of a bull Orca, soon joined by three others that seemed to make up a family group leaving behind the remains of a seal that the Gulls were now squabbling over. The pod continued west following the tide and was about 500 metres away when another seal at the end of the Ness was bolt upright almost clear of

We were being eyeballed by the calf. Had the cow noticed us standing there and decided to show her offspring what humans looked like? I’ll never know but had the distinct feeling of getting the once over. There was no time to take a photograph and, even if there had been, the chances of capturing the fleeting moment were slim to nil. I’d thought that its brown iris might be due to the peaty water but later learned that an Orca has the same eye colour range as humans. It showed no fear or even curiosity, displaying only what seemed mild indifference - and why not? As the top predator of the seas, known to attack a blue whale (originally they were called ‘whale killers’ not ‘killer whales’) humans must be of little concern. Or maybe not. The industrialisation of the planet is increasingly affecting the oceans with large areas of the sea bed around our coast now destroyed by dredging. The latest threat is from offshore wind farms that crowd the view and crush the soul, never mind their effect on the marine environment. There are arguments for and against this form of renewable energy but there now seems to be a backlash against any more on land, with the noise from the revolving blades being as much of a concern as landscape impact. Water is an excellent transmitter of sound and vibration and offshore wind turbines must have an effect on whales with their sensitive hearing. Orca occupies the same ecological niche in the sea as the wolf once did on land and the councils of the Wisconsin Oneida Indians always had someone to speak for the wolf. When deciding on matters that affect the future of our marine environment ‘Who speaks for Orca?’

Liminal Mary Morrison

Errances Wanderings Nat Hall Errances Wanderings Au fil de l’onde et des rivages,

From coast to coast,

les pas se fondent

footprints blend

entre galets between pebbles and et sable white blanc; sand; que des bras de mer ensorcellent

bewitched by Sounds

pour se noyer dans l’océan.

to drown inside the ocean world.

L’enfant mémorise la terre,

Child’s mind imprints sense of the earth,

cornets de glace et cerf-volants,

ice cones and kites,

d’ Etretat from Etretat aux Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,

to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,

vagues encablures time’s own du temps... stone’s throws… Au gré des arches & des falaises,

Along cliffs and arches,

depuis l’Aiguille,

from the Aiguille*,

craie ou Crin Blanc -

chalk or Crin Blanc* -

les marées sâlent le caractère,

tides add salt to your character,

ton cœur si fier bat en gitan.

outside the cage, proud gypsy heart.

Nomade en quête de déserts, Tu erres dans les couloirs du vent,

Nomad in search of empty space,

you roam in the wind’s corridors

Nord par Nord-Ouest,

North by North-West,

Là où le goémon

where wrack

emplit l’air

fills air

de tous tes rêves d’adolescent.

from all your adolescent’s dreams.

De ces montagnes de galets,

From those great mountains of shingle,

Dieppe - Dungeness,

Dieppe – Dungeness,

tu as l’étoffe des géants;

you have the makings of giants;

écoute les rumeurs de la Manche,

hear the Channel’s waves of gossip,

dans ses humeurs,

in its array of marine moods,

tu vagabondes hors réverbères,

you wander off lit beaten tracks,

discuttes avec les goélands.

argue your case with herring gulls.

Toujours plus Nord,

Always more north,

là où here, where la lumière éphémère, dans cet abysse de l’hiver

thin light ephemeral

inside this abyss of winter

attise les bas-fonds de la mer;

rekindles dreams from the seabed;

à pleins poumons, sans amertume,

with all their strength, so bitterless,

sur le sable, les filins d’écume,

relient Mallaig à St Ninian.

threads of white lace

connect Mallaig to Ninian’s Sands.

A chaque grand banc ou bout de terre,

To each grand bank or tongue of land,

Les poches gonfflées de coquillages,

with equal pockets full of shells,

ton coeur, siléger, virevoltant

entre hier & maintenant;

your flitting heart

in between yesterday & now,

rappelle-toi, remember, child - le chant du monde dans les galets

song from the earth inside shingle

du bocage saxon ou normand,

on either side of The Channel – Saxon, Norman;

ce littoral this littoral, remonté à contre-courant,

where you wandered against the grain,

dessine toutes tes nuits boréales,

helped you etch all boreal nights -

Sandwick, Sandwick, cartographié cartographed dans chaque étoile,

inside every star,

a esquissé ton univers,

drafted and spelled your universe,

vert-orangé de l’atmosphère.

in atmospheric hues of green.

Ton cur a trouvé son élan.

Your heart has found its impetus.

Notes: *L’Aiguille: name of the needle-like chalky stack off Etretat, France. *Crin Blanc: name of a horse from the Camargue based story of the same name, Crin Blanc.

A Twenty-first Century Dance of Death Elizabeth Rimmer Back in what was designated by the historian E J Huizinga as the ‘decline of the Middle Ages’ – the late 14th-15th century – an art-form developed called ‘the dance of death’. The earliest recorded example is a performance piece from Spain in 1360, but it also figures in carvings, paintings, poetry (e.g. Timor Mortis Conturbat Me by Robert Dunbar), plays such as the English Everyman, and the Steeleye Span song The Shaking of the Sheets. It appears throughout Europe, and even in Spain, and is usually reckoned to be a reaction to the social cultural and economic trauma of the Black Death. Back in the day, when technology was going to save us all and we even thought that global warming was going to even out the earth’s temperature, resulting in a global sub-tropical Eden, the dance of death was seen as morbid, if not neurotic and downright perverse. Historians hardly paid attention to it, hustling on as fast as they could to the burgeoning of the Renaissance with its new

human-centred and progressive thinking. But times are changing. We recognise the virtues of a world-view which saw humans as only one species in a cosmic whole (and not the wisest or the one with the most rights), and we are beginning to recognise that all that progressive humancentred thinking has led us up a blind alley.

“We live in an age of loss; we are saturated with it. Think of the species which have passed out of being --- of the human languages – one of them is lost every fourteen days --- lost certainties--- lost people falling through the patterns of pain, denial, anger, bargaining and despair---“

Angwin, strange and disturbing fiction from Margaret Irish and Darren Allen, art work in various media, some beautiful and with its roots in tradition like that of Rima Staines and Thomas Keyes, some mournful and innovative like Brian McKenzie’s Dream of a Drowning Man. There are interesting collaborations like The Fixing of Things by Steve Thorp and Kim Major-George, and cross-media works like Mat Osmond’s Deadman and Hare. And there is a lot of discussion – political, economic, cultural. In fact there is so much going on it’s a bit like being in a pub full of artists, some thoughtful, some resentful and satirical, some reminiscent, some provocative, even slightly wacky. Particularly interesting are Paul Kingsnorth’s essay Dark Ecology, Andrew Taggart’s Following Nature’s Course, and Matt Szabo’s Bending Like a Peasant. They all have fascinating things to say, and I disagree with about half of all of them – an irresistible combination.

It is, like its predecessors, an exciting mix of art-forms and ways of thinking. Here are the laments, the calls to repentance and conversion of life, the glimpses of new and more perfect ways of living which might come after, and the beginnings of reflection on how we can respond – the wisdom we can preserve, the memories and mutual kindness we can share which might make the process bearable – even benign. There is strong and beautiful poetry from writers like Tom Hirons, Susan Richardson, and Roselle

The strength of this collection is also its weakness.This bringing together of so much intelligence and creativity has only been possible because of some gifted and heavy-duty networking, and it feels a bit monolithic – urban, Anglo-phone, protestant, professional. Outside this cloud, there are other discussions happening which might change the emotional tone a little - the Scottish and Irish discussion of the concept of duthcas, the Alaskan nuka initiative, the largely Franco-phone geopoetics ateliers, the Bolivian

So it was with a slight sense of déjà vu that I picked up the third anthology of the Dark Mountain Project. This is our own dance of death for the twenty-first century, a lament for the age we live in, whose defining characteristic, as it says in the editorial, is a sense of loss.

‘living well’ movement. There are, even in Western Europe, philosophical traditions which have not entirely taken what Kenneth White calls ‘the cultural motorway’ (homogenous, sociological, technology and profit-based), and ethnic groups who are not so radically disconnected from their land. But its weakness is also its strength. A discussion that started out as pluralistic as I hope it’s going to get would probably lack enough mutual recognition and common ground to spark ideas. And there is a profound sense here of a mighty fire kindling. The Dark Mountain is going to be a project to watch.

New stories for the age of endings ‘When the cities lie at the monster’s feet, there are left the mountains.’ The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times. We promote and curate writing, art, music and culture rooted in place, time and nature. Dark Mountain book 4 - our latest anthology of uncivilised writing and art - is published in July 2013. Find out more, and buy a copy, by visiting our website.

www.dark-mountain.net 37

Otter Trail Mavis Gulliver At the south end of Islay there is a tiny island which is only accessible at low tide. Barely seven acres in extent, the distance from coast to coast is a mere two hundred yards. Follow the otter trail from east to west across this tiny isle â&#x20AC;&#x201C; see how his feet imprint in silty sand, how his tail leaves a meandering line between salt pans where nothing moves except reflected sky and tiny tide-trapped fish quicksilvering; see where he weaves between birch scrub, willow and berried juniper, flattens grasses, grooves between tussock and hummock, tunnels under bracken to reach the farther beach where he slips from a small stream into the sea. Â

From: A Slap and a Song Nancy Campbell A fish to catch a fish Nothing worse than a bare hook, but mussels are dangerous cargo, thirsty for the sea. Rake them from the water, or gather those beached by storms. Salt or sugar keep the colour. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s light bait and red bait, whelks and quahogs, lugworms and lumpsuckers, sandeels, cod roes and cod cheeks. The squid come every other autumn: a red sinker will draw them, or, by twilight, a lantern with red glass strung to the mast. Blood and Spit Cut those little fish up even smaller. Redden the bait with fish blood and should you cut your fingers, all the better. Be sure to spit on the bait before you throw the hook and sinker over. Cures for Seasickness Eat seaweed. Eat raw mussels. Drink water in which mussels have been boiled. Drink two large draughts of seawater. Tickle your throat with a feather dipped in cod liver oil. Smell rose root. Cut grass in the churchyard and place it in your shoes before sailing. A Slap and a Song A stone pulled up on a hook should be kept on land. A knot in a tangled line may not be undone. When the nets are in, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always a slap and song.

Iced Haylor Nat Hall

Shoreline and Watershed Roger Bygott British Landscape – Contemporary Print – Historical Collection Anthony Ratcliffe Exhibition at MMU Special Collections Gallery 17 September -14 December 2012 This exhibition held special interest to me for several reasons. Firstly, I have appreciated Tony Ratcliffe’s work since he was my Foundation Course leader at Manchester School of Art a couple of years ago. Secondly, my link with the artist extends to the very locale we both live in, the mill town of Mossley on the edge of the Peak District in the North West of Britain, part of the geographic and geological source of the ‘Watershed’ images presented in this show. The line and grain of Ratcliffe’s woodblock prints reflect the hard landscape of the millstone grit Dark Peak. The moorland is peaty and broken, the lambs have weathered wool, cotton-grass and heather have fragments of grounded aircraft poking out - the bent metal of a relatively recent history. In these prints even the rare sunlight has a granularity. A white hare slides into an eroded peat channel. Ice breaks to reveal the water-

black reservoir. The ‘Shoreline’ series carry us from the Pennine spine to the edges of the landbody: the stonewall enclosures of Aran; a pock-marked Celtic cross on Skellig Michael; rusty tractor wheels in the Brough of Birsay, on Orkney; a shipwreck in Bulmer Steel on the NE Yorkshire coast. And between the large woodblock prints we have an impressive, sympathetic, collection of artists’ books Tony Ratcliffe’s own books, made with care and technical skill, and others from the MMU Special Collection including Kenneth White and Ronald King’s collaboration ‘Late August on the Coast’, Richard Long’s ‘River Avon Book’, and many other examples backing up the curatorial topography. Some of the prints are framed to include found objects from the moors an empty gun cartridge, a small section of rusty wire fencing, a square of abandoned Calcutta jute; others are footnoted with poetry (some of which are successful: In frozen clough / arteries of ice / dissect the plover bare upland’ ; a couple of which tip into whimsy “Bitter and wild is the wind tonight / tossing the tresses of the sea to white”).

treeless, climate battered, exposed, scrubby places. But there is a strange social life in this landscape. There has never been much human habitation on the moors, at least on the higher ground, but there has been endless and pervasive human influence on the landscape for centuries. Heather is constantly burnt back to increase the grouse, which in turn are prey to seasonal shooting. Hence the ubiquitous array of colourful gun cartridges. Wire fencing and wooden posts are never far away as reminders of the enclosure of wildness and the ownership of the inhospitable. Wool is scragged on twigs of scrub - a reminder of the long standing sheep-farming tradition. Memorial poppies and crosses appear each November at the bases of war memorials and amongst shards of crashed warplanes. Telecommunications masts broadcast digital air. Victorian tracks and dams force many of the valleys and cloughs into folded history books.

This exhibition is a good example of creative collaboration between artist and special collection - the collection feeding the artist, the artist feeding the collection. The displayed dialogue is of great educational Spending time in this exhibition value, visual enjoyment, and is rewarding. The intention historical interest. to record the ‘features of the More information about the moorland watershed and how MMU Special Collection, they are transformed by the including opening hours, seasonal change in weather, flora, can be found at http://www. fauna, agriculture and current specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk moorland reclamation activity’ is effective. Moorlands can seem initially bleak. They are generally 40

Water West Coast Tessa Ransford It seems as though the principal element from which all things derive in the west is waves, is water, water, water, only water, the ultimate end of substance. The quartzite vein that runs through the mountain rock becomes a cataract in a night of rain; the road a river; rocks and trees are manifestations of waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essence. And sunshine seeps, distils from a molten core, displays through rainbow seaward in slanting rays; the moon is ice, is crystal hardened, blanching the ocean and dwindling shoreline. Our very breathing knows itself born of mist; our limbs and fingers flow into coiling streams whose current courses through the body, thickens to densities when we waver. The boats, the houses, shops and the wooden pier; the heron, oyster-catcher and dipping swan; the curlewâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cry a floating ripple; water, the soul of the land and people.

Seahood Tessa Ransford On a headland pine trees stand in their shadows; around them the ocean swirls in a thousand eyes of light, and sings its ageless song of worlds and red rocks, of diving birds and their wings flying beneath the waves, of tiny plant and creatures that live because of the tide and its wayward faithfulness. Unthought-of happinesses shall occur, shall become of us, because of the seahood we enter in each other, the distant travels, adventures each of us brings ashore.

Douglas Robertson

A Place To Think, A Place To Be Norman Bissell

love the coast and to want to live by the sea one day. What I especially loved about the Kirn Lido where we went each day was that I could scramble along the rocky shore, explore the rock pools, wonder at their hermit crabs, darting shrimps and maroon anemones, and could go out in a rowing boat, ship the oars and lie back and listen to the sea chortling under its varnished sides. Clyde steamers still called in at Kirn Pier in those days and we used to row out to get as close as possible to catch their stern waves and bob into them to impress their passengers and each other. The great thing was that if you helped Reggie Brooks, the boat hirer, to lift the boats down in the morning and back at night and helped the holidaymakers to get in and out of them from the gangway, you could take a boat out for free and pretend you were a master mariner.That my Gran Jessie Moore worked in the ice cream kiosk, and later the tearoom that was built just above the shore, was an extra bonus. Many a wet afternoon was spent nursing a soft drink and looking out through misted windows at the grey waves that came rolling across the firth. It didn’t matter that the mackerel we caught and the sea we swam in were polluted by radioactive discharges from the nearby American nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch. We were oblivious to this danger and were happy living in the moment of our teenage years.

I suppose it all began when I was a child. The earliest holidays I can remember were to places like Cullercoats and Dunbar on the east coast. Later on we went to Girvan and Dunoon in the west, but it was always to the coast we went on holiday. Somewhere there’s a small black and white photo of me being hurled in a pushchair to Cullercoats beach. I can still remember the long journey we took every day through a residential suburb to get there but not the beach itself. Dunbar was different. I must have been a year or two older by that time and I can still recall swimming in the icy waters of its outdoor pool. One boiling hot summer when the road tar melted, with my pals I played cricket with Ronnie Simpson, the Scotland goalkeeper, on the sand at the Cauld Shore in Girvan. Many years later I revisited that shore one dark night and wrote a poem about hearing the voices of the dead whispering in the wind. But it was Dunoon that became a second home to our family, and it was here, or more precisely in Kirn, that I came to My parents wanted to retire 44

to Dunoon and bought a flat overlooking the East Bay where you could watch the CalMac ferry coming across from Gourock and walk round to meet it at Dunoon Pier. Sadly it wasn’t to be, for my Mum’s ill health and death prevented them from realising their dream. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been around that time that I began to look for a place by the coast where I could spend the rest of my life. One Easter I bought an Island Rover ticket and fitted in as many islands from Islay to Lewis as I could in a week. The following summer I drove right up the west coast to Cape Wrath and back down via Dornoch and the Black Isle in search of that special place to live. However, it was to the Isle of Luing in Argyll that I was drawn after I came across it one bright May morning. That day I visited Toberonochy on Luing’s east coast and was charmed by its white-washed cottages and hanging baskets. At Blackmill Bay, Scarba loomed large like some west coast Bali Hai. But as I came round the corner towards Cullipool, I was bowled over by the sight that befell me. A string of islands in the midst of a sparkling blue sea, the long coast of Mull stretching out towards the Atlantic, and Fladda lighthouse twinkling white in the vast ocean. I fell in love with it at once and pulled up the car to knock on the door of a house with a For Sale sign outside. That wasn’t to be, but, after several years of searching, l eventually found a cottage

in the Conservation Village of Cullipool which suits me down to the ground. Of course, geopoetics can be practised anywhere – whether it be urban, rural, island or mainland - since it’s a heightened way of perceiving and expressing the world we live in, but it does involve becoming much more aware of the natural environment of which we are part and that’s certainly made easier if you’re living by the shore and able to witness Atlantic weather systems approaching and basking sharks and otters

feeding along the coast. That said, these last five years living on Luing haven’t exactly worked out as I had expected. I’ve been writing a feature film script and a memoir rather than the poems inspired by this beautiful place that I’d intended, and I’ve been taking an active part in the Isle of Luing Community Trust and its successful efforts to obtain funding to build an Atlantic Islands Centre here as a focus for the regeneration of the Luing community. You can take the boy out of Glasgow ... However, in a way this coastline

has inspired all of this activity since it has given me the urge to be more creative and to reconnect with the childhood I spent both in the city and by the sea. I have found the coast where I want to spend the rest of my days and the coast has helped me to find myself and to lead a productive life. The Community Trust interpretation panels which are scattered around the island bear the legend ‘The Isle of Luing: a place to think, a place to be’. And that’s exactly how it feels now that my life’s journey has brought me to these shores.

To join the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics please see www.geopoetics.org.uk