archipelago

2021.

Twenty years ago, I heard the call from 60N and answered. I believed in the stars that showed the way.

Stars. A good trillion of them can’t be wrong. 27 is an odd number… I was gifted one at Yule, which made me feel like le petit prince… Another bears my name in the constellation of Auriga…

• 

• 

My dear stars ✨

Here is a short piece I wrote at dawn this morning to welcome 2021. Like the rest of my community and humanity, filled with hopes.

• 

• 

• 

The island on 1 Jan 2021 during the Golden hour.

She ran to the edge of the land, where birds gather before each dive.

Her eyes searched for the faintest sight of stars. Winter has clawed her every breath, wrapped in that wind straight from the pole, she felt at one with her own world.

Circular beams from the lighthouse are reassuring in winter. She turned her heart to the ocean where tides collide and kiss at will. The taste of salt left on her lips reminds her of her sense of home. Home, where sea pinks thrive in early June; where each skylark sings in deep blue… Home, where time wanders inside rollers.

Home. The twigs she planted in the ground have grown to trees. She learnt the clicks of each starling, as she replenished hooked feeders on the tip of strongest branches.

Hame. her heart listened for brand new words she harnessed as her midder tongue. Her sense of belonging in her community nestled for the first time when she discovered wicks, holms and her taing of land, heartfelt welcome fae folk., peat fire in their hearth.

On the strange primal night, she looked up to the stars. She looked at them as her angels. The constellations of her heart, Orion and Andromeda, Aquila, Auriga and Taurus…. She finds solace, there in Lyra or just the Plough. She knows clouds don’t stay forever.

On the tip of her loved headland, she listened to wrath from The Roost. Each wave heaves kelpies and njuggles – awakes spirits from the water. Two footsteps back, she loved the safety of the stones an islander used for a wall like a jigsaw to guard against the Roost’s anger.

She remembered her own journey in between skerries at high tides, treacherous straits, hell from hailstorms… Yet she believed in her dear stars to find her archipelago.

This archipelago, her own world. She knows the lighthouse is safety.

© Nat Hall 2021

Thanking you for your continued support and wishing each and everyone the very best for 2021. Take great care and stay safe, wherever you walk on the planet.

Namaste from the island.

vision for #nationalpoetryday

This year’s #nationalpoetryday explores the theme of “vision”.

Here is my stone to the great edifice:

Vision

The paradox of sight, where
iris turns to dust -
the sheer white beam of light lost in corners of space, where
blackness sips cold sweat out of trillions of
stars in this void of silence;
Saturn in
your spyglass,
a glimpse of ice and rocks
trapped around
a planet nobody spots at night.
Prisoners of iron,
gravity and apples as 
laws defined by one visionary great mind at
rest against a tree, here on
our home planet,
blue marble of wonders 
humanity plunders,
bleeds, 
slashes by
billions in the name of progress.
Look again through
the glass,
Saturn so far away, void of life in silence;
the blind can look away till
our world turns silent,
trapped inside
their own
fate,
empty
space on the ground.

© Nat Hall 2020

A Tale of Two Islands

You, in your corner of Antrim, where your sea jewel emerald, a giant heaved up a causeway in

a story black as basalt, hexagonal to crystalise wrath from ocean;

and yet too short to reach my shore. He never thought of a land bridge, since you fret at

Carrick-a-Reede,

planks and ropes, in suspension between two cliffs, where fulmars glide, cackle with pride – in that Northern Irish accent…

You should be dreaming in Glasgow.

Broch making in Hoswick

Here, we build brochs as watch towers from rounded stones to eye each movement from the sea.

Da Roost has declared us landlocked.

I made a fresh pot of veg soup with enough carrots, leek and kale; freed my coatrack from winter tales And polished taps to revive chrome…

A full spring clean I call redd-up.

I count minutes between two gusts, knot for windspeed around headlands where lights still blink and

refract hope…

Instead our world’s tied to bollards, silenced and still; locked inside docks, behind closed doors,

I too wish to forward the clock;

watch you sail past my island shore, as the sun rises in your eyes… Watch you glide across the pressgang, long corrugated corridor that reunites our words and smiles,

Instead, I listen to the wind…

What a start to the new decade, April and voar. Somebody unleashed a devil, a terrorist invisible that sweeps and snatches blindfolded…

And pray it spares you in Belfast.

© Nat Hall 2020

contagious

Earth dweller on stone wall

Last Tuesday night, I heard the shalders call in flight well after dusk for the first time. Too well known avian voices that notably signal a return to warmer days and crystalline dusks… How many days to the Vernal Equinox? For months on end, my nearby playing field filled with silence. And as Mother Earth lives in cycles, hissing gales are gradually giving way to a more clement earthsong. Tis the time for familiar crooners, such as the curlews and oystercatchers, we, on the island, call shalders.

There is an air of impatience, as blackbirds begin to advertise their will to love on chimney stacks – sparrows quarrel around willows, and even robins play dare-devils out of their hide-away stone walls. And if we are still to get away from treacherous March (with its last spells of icicles) rose bushes have begun to display their first leaves. Already, a few daring migrants have made their way to the Island, such as a stonechat in the Westside yesterday… Wildflowers too begin to bud and display their colour, such as the Lesser Celendine and the Coltsfoot showing a bit early!

On our way to Aith Meadows

The daily trip home at the end of the day can now divert away from the main tarmac artery that links South to North. At last, longer days allows us to meander around much more timeless corners of the shared wild and civilised. A drive along the coast, meadows and still heavily waterclogged fields to catch a glimpse of a skylark still to sing. Life is creeping back around our shores. Already golden plovers’ and curlews’ calls fill the still crisp air. So enchanting.

The first sight of a black guillemot in full regalia always feels a priviledge.

Sunrise over Mousa

This will to get out of darkness, witness a glowing sun after eight above a well loved offshore island is contagious.

March remains our month of rainbows, with its cortege of shine and hail, squallid showers & icicles. And as Imbolc now feels a distant memory, our dear great celestial star begins to dominate our world with less shame. It is wakening this hemisphere of Mother Earth with its flamboyant warmth, only to strenghen as we speak and cross the Vernal Equinox, when night and day cross swords to reach out parity. This dormant world needs to emerge and reveal its beauty! For Mother Earth has only one goal, life.

2018

Yule and now Hogmanay behind us.

The tidal loch remains frozen at Wadbister on New Year’s Day, and it may well stay in this state for a while…

Wadbister is the place where I buried 2017 with good friends & two of their neighbours. I woke up this late morning and breakfasted with my hosts, Sharon and Andy, looking at a brand new sky. Blue, serene, by a garden and bay that homes a wonderful wildlife. If I missed the otter, I was blessed with my first avian visitors – starling, blackbird, sparrow and robin – when an unusual visitor (to our latitude here anyway!) graced the garden, a great tit. What a grand start to the primal day of the year! 

By the time I left my friends’ home, a West wind was recolouring the heavens, as light rain showers began to christen the land… 

2017

A year of contrasts – a tale of two halves, with its kaleidoscope of emotions – that took my heart across headlands, bays, the English Channel and the North Sea. 

A creative year, as it has anchored my pen into this second collection of poetry in the making… Writing on both sides of the North Sea, with a fabulous return to West Norwegian shores last September.  

And our descent to Yule marked by the shifting of our AHS to its new 21st building at Lochside, which proved an extraordinary exercise. 

Yet October was graced by extraordinary moments, reunions and meetings that began to pave my way into 2018. For this, I feel humble, blessed and grateful to 2017. 

Christie Williamson and Hazel Frew, see you both in your great Celtic town in April! 

November also graced by new humane and creative connections thanks to friend and poetess Choman Hardi, who made me discover Barbara Cumbers, a kindred spirit based in London, and regular visitor to Shetland. Magic slices of life shared since, including two readings at the Book Fest and in Scalloway. 

December crowned by many smiles

The joy of reaching Yule marked with many delights – a poet’s working blurb published in Shetland Life, a poem inside the Yule Issue of the New Shetlander. 

The island clad by sun and snow on the eve of a well deserved break. 

A peaceful end to a year that felt a real roller coaster, and as the twelfth month was about to draw to an end, a brand new project now at my writer’s table in the translation of a manuscript. Wonderful challenge and task that began on the Eve of Hogmanay.

So,

Thank you, 2017, for your joys and tears, harvest of adventures, new friends across headlands and seas.

Today, on the primal day of the year, there burns a fire in my heart, like a beacon for the twelve months ahead.

Hello, 2018. Let me welcome you with fresh eyes, a shameless smile, heart filled with hopes.

The road ahead feels both very exciting and promising.

A very happy new year to you all, wherever you walk on this amazing planet. May 2018 grant you good health and happiness.

wild

October, the month of heaven & grace

Marvellous moments of lightness, privileged times among paired swans, preening and sharing love in grace at last light… Statuesque haigries (herons) around our bays, the joy to reconvene with our beautiful Earth. I observe them from the distance, with that humble feeling, so intimate the moment. The light is soft, nearly sunset. The air is charged with tenderness and love in that autumnal sense of rawness…

Intimate. So privileged, I feel.

Sensual, magical.

This north end corner of Spiggie Loch gradually welcomes them back, as the Arctic winter dictates. They will flock in and preen, share a few weeds with a few ducks – gather on the shore for bathing and arrange their feathers, and roost by twos… A bit of love inside a world so few can taste.

tilbake

 Back with eight bairns/ åtte barn

I never thought I would be back with eight pupils and a member of staff, leading them all to twelve days of Norwegian experience in families and school.

It took just under a month (from our new term in Shetland) to land back at Flesland, and wander back in my now familiar Bryggen i Bergen, Vågen, via Bybanen – Bergen’s Light Railway that links BGO to the great sentrum – only this time for a pioneering trip to 62N.

I love school exchanges. I still reminisce that in Germany three years ago, led by my colleague and friend Peter Haviland. This one, however, had a couple of twists: back to familiar territory, and, unique in its nature, for it encompassed four Shetland schools with that in Måløy, Sogne og Fjordane, on the island of Vågsøy. It felt such a great honour to be vetted with both such leadership responsibilities and setting a precedent by both the Association – under the helm of Graham Nicolson and Per Kåre Nybakk – and my school. Three years earlier, I was asked to find host families for a small party of young Norwegians by friend and Shetland-Måløy Twinning Association… This time, I would return with a small group I affectionately christened “the Shetland Gang”. That first term at my High School in Lerwick would prove both hectic, challenging and exciting!

The trip proved to be epic! A two-day trek that would require two boats (Shetland-Arberdeen and Bergen-Måløy) and an aeroplane (ABZ-BGO). And what a saga!

Back in the mythical land, back in what I have always called heim since I first stepped onto Norwegian soil… Where I feel home on this other side of the North Sea.

Back in Måløy, Anita’s homeground… The one who opened the door to it all – NYBAKK, more than a boat, a clan, now my Norwegian family. My first visit there would prove the stepping stone to this year’s voyage and exchange. The great Norskie jigsaw is shaping up with flair and grace.

The ride would prove long and tiring for us all, as we arrived long after dusk on 14 September and engulfed ourselves inside the ferry terminal. Arve was there, with such a huge smile! Our host families, ready to welcome those young Shettis, as the school’s Rektor (Headmaster) Kåre Bakke nicknamed us all, for a good night sleep before our very first day at his establishment. Happy but exhausted.

Some stories to write and share! A brand new taste of Norwegian life began for all. And each of us – pupil & staff – experienced our own along the way. For my part, I was reunited with Anne-Mabel, Arve and Jarl Eirik at Gate 6. And my temporary Norwegian home life was rekindled with unbound joy. Immersed in norsk (with flings of English to relieve my brain!) inside their home, with family and friends, would help me improve my humble knowledge of Nynorsk, and local dialect. Challenged by so many voices, including that of a friendly story teller on the first Friday night at Kraftstasjonen Restaurant! What a night! Anne Mabel and Arve ensured I would have a memorable time, and that they managed effortlessly. I really felt home; helped out Jarl Eirik with homework, felt an integral part of the clan, especially once Sam (their dog) accepted me fully… Hmmm. I knew that leaving them would mean tears in my heart, and it did. They ensured I would explore this wonderful island called Vågsøy.

heim (home) with a view

to each sunrise, new adventure!

skog trening (forest hiking) with Anne-Mabel, Jarl Eirik and Arve for fun!

The Educational Experience

Up at 0630 every morning – each school day began at 0830 and finished at 1410. The Norwegian system encompasses different ethics, which would either make smile or terrorise any British teacher! Some differences – from the day structure to the more informal working relationship – we all tasted for five full days. Our Shetland Gang was challenged every day, and undertook a blend of private study, assembling and delivering their Shetland presentation (as requested by the Association) which they delivered on nearly 10 different occasions to a myriad of class groups – as well as start preparing their own for Shetland, and they even cooked for their Norwegian counterparts & Rektor. Colleague and friend Tanya Myhre would keep us smiling every morning. The In-School programme shaped up for such pioneering experience, and, every single member of staff made us welcome and fully supported. My Deputy Leader would also prove invaluable on a daily basis. What an eye opener!

But we did more than this.

Whereas Tuesday was spent visiting four different local businesses around Måløy, the final Saturday would be felt as the ultimate prize: sightseeing in and around Geiranger , where we also celebrated one of our pupil’s 14th birthday. I believe he will never forget.

trekking through the mountains

Geiranger at water level

stepping out at snow level on the roof of Western Norway

Per Kåre Nybakk and Kåre Bakke worked hand in hand all all levels, and employed a gang of host drivers for such unforgettable experience. I cannot thank them and everyone enough for enabling this entire trip.

An experience our young Shettis and us, team, would never forget.

Some extraordinary stories to tell about their Norskie life chapters, as well as to share with their families & friends back home. Our journey back to our islands’ shore proved as epic as the inbound adventure, as we had to overnight in Aberdeen because of flight and boat timings… But we made it, and now we are resettling into our Shetland lives, we are barely beginning to share our tales.

 

Thank you, Graham, Per Kåre, Valerie, Mandy, Peter and Lewie, for all your support along the way – Marina, for accompanying such pioneering trip, Tanya, Kåre and everyone at the Vågsøy ungdomskule for all help and friendliness, Anne-Mabel, Arve and Jarl Eirik, for having me at home – as well as all our host families and friends. But foremost, to you all, dear Shetland Gang. You were awesome 🙂

maelstrom (or not)

I am water, not the rock – I am able to flow instead of being eroded.

Powerful affirmation in a world that never teaches us to fall, but our ability to rise again and adapt, mend our bruises and scars, with time and sheer resilience, remains a strength in many of us. Life takes us to amazing places, a thought I very recently shared with a close friend – sometimes, totally unexpected, with their areas of “shimmering” and “dark” areas… The fear of the unknown, the dark lands with its own pitfalls and question marks – paths littered with both flowers and pot holes, sometimes deep. Irrespective of all this, we make our own choices, and, when trusting our own decisions, select the path ahead. Because we dare to take a risk and our eagerness to see the light will act as a magnet. We, journey folk through our lives, will use our boots and hearts well. To adapt in a world in perpetual motion, with its own sudden twists and turns, sometimes out of our own jurisdiction, is key to survival, living. We can at times lose track of the compass – our own sense of direction – however, it is our own ability to steer our own boat and free that sail – be resourceful, innovative in our own sense of self and trustfulness.

At different stages in our lives, we shall reach crossroads; a change of wind that may define a change of current. That’s when our compass tell us of change to come. We are living in extraordinary times, with others taking all kinds of decisions on our behalf. Again, our survival senses that need to re-assess our current position and, with wisdom and trust in the water, will help us find and write a course in life that will take us away from a maelstrom that can feel dangerous or too dark to our taste. This journey may feel treacherous, it is however necessary to find ourselves in calmer waters, because we simply need it.

And yet, I need headlands, and lighthouses.

In the kingdom named Animalia, we are, by definition, land mammals. This may make many of you smile… But is it a fact. And I am with a passionate sense of place, solid, with a beacon that reminds my being and spirit where “home” is. Because we make it where it is. Home, that concept – feeling more than a place when one comes to think of it – can be reached, eventually. For nearly two decades, I have experienced the joy of such feeling, and rooting up like thrift, or sea rocket, by the edge of the water. A poet friend once confessed to me how “fortunate” I was to reach such el dorado, feeling of home, for she was still searching for it. Being born in one place on Earth does not necessarily defines it automatically as home. Far from it, as we have neither chose it in the first nor do we have necessarily have to simply “get on with it” and die where were once born. Some of us will feel a pull from a far away land… Yes we turn back into what our ancestors were, nomadic in our minds and hearts. We were made sedentary by politics imposed by some elite in pursuit no other than materialistic, or sheer wish to control us – where we are, what we do, what is expected of us as contributors to their world (not ours).

I believe in bettering myself whilst contributing to the community in which I have settled. Important as it will define my sense of assimilation within such community, hence, feeling home. I am the water, not the rock, and adapting to where I anchor my mind and heart feels paramount. Enriching the self whilst enriching others with a different culture. A two-way process in a multi-cultural world, or island. My own island where I live has been subjected to this throughout history, as it is bathing in both a sea and an ocean. Nomads in search of their own treasure island mingling, blending with natives to contribute to the fabric of a much more open society. A blessing and a powerful feeling.

My own beacon still shines very bright on top of that headland. However, I have reached others that feel equally powerful in their luminosity, hence defining and accepting in my head the notions of hame, Heim, home in an effort to avoid losing either partial or complete track of the compass. From the moment I chose to leap out and make my life an adventure, as encouraged by my grandmother (who always believed in me) I have begun to believe much more deeply this is a wonderful privilege to be able to have more than one beacon. I have felt and found myself in a couple of treacherous types of maelstrom in the past half decade, but, with the love of support of what I consider my kinsfolk, soul family, as well as all those who deeply embrace me as a human being, have helped me to flow again as I naturally do it.

After all, I am the water, not the rock. 

Hiroshima

No siren or red flag,

high from blue sky without warning.

I should have read each 

little sign, but

June began

bright, so

hazy – 

bluebells 

untouched in the garden,

air filled with 

     song from summer birds –

curlews, skylarks and

                        bold blackbirds.

In between Lino and floorboards,

our frantic feet would

slide through time;

and imagined 

                yours on tarmac about to

                       to leap out through

             thick clouds.

High from

blue sky without 

warning,

one 

     single ring,

                your frantic voice,

                      shaped one single cloud

champignon,

          and felt that bright light,

                       blasted heart –

one final blow without 

warning. 

Nat Hall 2017

storm

Provençal Sakura

I always associate the coming of cherry blossoms at the foot of the Luberon with my grand mother’s change of world. To me, she flourishes every spring, and this year, I arrived just in time, for the season is precocious.

Already most fruit trees had shed most blossoms… Only a few quince and cherry trees gave me that joy. The kitchen garden well ahead for April. I landed back at Marseille-Provence in soaring temperatures, thanks to a twist of luck that allowed me to to fly direct from Edinburgh the very morning I left my northern roost.

And what a trek across the sky 🙂

My favourite mountain, Luberon, so majestic, as we descended into Marseille… Giono’s blue whale so bright and clear by afternoon.

Marseille, gate to the East and Africa, Massilia-Massalia, founded by Greeks, grown by Romans, with les îles du Frioul and If in the foreground, minutes before landing. La Grande Bleue, plain and magic.

 

I shan’t forget such moments. Always a thrill from my humble seat inside the fuselage. This year, I reconvened with JJ and Monique, whom I had such pleasure sharing with again. JJ fell in love with my poetics and he is very sensitive to artists and poets. As a matter of fact, he invests in art as a benefactor. We shared beautiful conversations and he is becoming to know me much better now. Let’s see what is going to heave out of those moments of sharing. 🙂

Ten days inside blue could be called a fantastic symphony. I reconvened with Les Huguenots, where life turns out immoveable, but also with relatives and my close friends from Pertuis, Isa and Michel, who hosted me for two days – sheer moments of pleasure.

Two days with my lifelong friend and her clan, including her grand children. We had lots of fun jam-packed in and around their home. Moments of pleasure.

 

L’orage

Out of ten days, an afternoon tainted by grey and rain, as April strikes in any form. That heat heaved thunder and lightning in one afternoon.  Not surprising as the thermometer had soared a bit too quickly to my taste.

The air turned more breathable, colours vanished and the whole of the sky blackened to unleash its madness. That palm tree and flowers suddenly yielded to its wrath and felt the weight of freak clocking rain.

It prompted a poem, entitled l’orage / the storm.

 

L’orage

 

En un éclair,

le ciel est devenu métal, nuages de

charbon et d’acier.

Fort de ton flash, ciel

photographe,

tous les oiseaux se sont cachés, entre les fleurs du cognassier.

Sous les tuiles je t’entends gronder,

glisser les gouttes de ta colère sur toutes

les feuilles de l’olivier.

Et sous le poids de ton humeur,

toutes les tulipes se sont courbées – robes d’or et

de rouge, leurs pétals protègent

le trésor…

Le vent fait frétiller les palmes toutes luisantes de la pluie;

nettoie ce ciel chargé de cendres,

décharne un peu plus le vieux chêne.

Tu montes le ton et vide

ton sac…

Et maintenant tu t’envenimes et te déchaînes!

Son et lumières, tes perles tombent

drues, s’écrasent sur tout

ce qu’elles touchent;

sacageur de bleu provençal, dans la maison

je trouve refuge, et me souviens

du mot  frisqué.

 

The Storm

 

This sky

turned metallic in a flash, with clouds tainted

charcoal and steel.

Fully charged

blitz,

photographer,

all the birds hid between the flowers of the quince.

Under that roof, Provençal tiles,

I hear rebuke land & heat;

let slide raindrops

from your own

wrath on

the

leaves of the olive tree.

Under the weight of your temper,

all tulips bowed to protect

the treasure clad inside gold and red petals.

The wind animates every palm of

the date tree

drumming snipe

style…

And wipes a sky

charged up with ash,

unloads the old oak of dead leaves.

Now, you raise your voice, spill the beans…

Unleash your wrath, torrential

style!

It felt epic, equatorial.

You, Provençal

blue

saboteur,

against my will, I seek shelter, and

remember that word,

frisqué*.

 

© Nat Hall 2017

 

Note:

frisqué (Provençal) meaning “chilly”/ “cold”)

 

 

All in all, nine and half blue days, moments of pleasure, and every time, that same feeling about where I really belong.

My trek back home – to my northern roost – proved even more epic. A story of mechanical failure miraculously took me home A LATER than scheduled, but am back hame, and am happy.