Bressay

It takes a day to meet and share an adventure.

In anticipation to meeting a kindred spirit at the Bressay Ferry Terminal – en route to the most westerly point of the island – came that invisible bridge between two harbours, tied by one stretch of water, our very Bressay Sound. From April to September, many seaworthy crafts come to anchor or to moor in our waters… And Leirna criss-crosses like a spider.

Bressay, the great sheltering whale-shaped island just opposite our only town, stands between two worlds I love.

My visiting friend, who  emerged from the ferry with two Bressay residents I know so well, had freshly arrived from this other side of the North Sea, via Bergen. She too was ready for a great adventure, in the hope to see an otter among our many local wild treasures. As I waited for her on the Lerwick side, came a poem.

 

 

Alexandra Wharf on a Sunday afternoon, where

feet wander between islands, and

boats are tied to

known

bollards;

I look at you from

my town side, between

the Knab & Kebister.

You, inside

waves,

in

between Hay’s Dock and Bryggen, where

clouds fly past, white,

oblivious; where

fishermen anchored in hords to

fill barrels with

scales and

salt,

silver darlings –

we share the sea, wharves,

dark box beds, cracks in floorboards,

lead diamond shapes from old windows, as two towns rose,

rust, labyrinth of wood and salt,

two stories tied where

folk wander off

a ferry and

imprint their lives on tarmac… And still

remember old cobbles.

I’m still counting

ripples and

tides,

ink and blotches from well-kept books somebody wrote on

Bergen side –

countless columns,

whole salesman’s world.

But you stand firm against each gale,

shelter my side of the

harbour,

and

when

I look at your

portside, I see the meadows of summer,

the great white whale

clad inside

snow.

NH, 2017

 

Oh, we saw that otter in Sandness, and savoured cake, as we sat on the edge of the pier.

 

 

redcurrants

 Monsieur Proust had his madeleine, I have my summer berries…

Loved my Sunday yesterday. Ingirid invited a small paty of us to play with her in her garden. She is at the helm of a magical eden where everything seems to grow in both open air and in polytunnels… Just magic. A list of tasks were clearly scribbled on postcards. Ingirid pointed out two areas: peaches to be harvested from well established trees in one polycrub, and, that secluded corner where gooseberries, black and redcurrants ripen in the sun. So much flew back inside my poet’s mind. Whilst the first task was achieved at lightning speed, that latter harvest heaved a bowlful of those tiny summer gems, as well as poetics.

As in micropoetry form at first…

 

Les groseilles

petits fruits rouges, en grapes, en vrac,

entre martinets et sourires,

là où le temps

tournait

en

rond.

Redcurrants

Peerie red fruits clinging like grapes

in between swifts & smiles,

there, when time

locked in a

circle.

and then, as a poem,

 

Redcurrants

 

You, scarlet gems so well hidden.

So delicate, in

one corner of a garden, where my hands search in between

leaves, guardians of time – where

time writes fate in

chlorophyll…

I still

remember when

I first found you as a child,

crouched against earth and loneliness,

that thin mesh, invisible cage to let the sun work

miracles after each battering of rain.

You, tiny gems so well

hidden, you

are

precious stones of summer.

 

NH 2017

 

Later, a feast awaited us as we gathered in the garden to share a marvellous Sunday afternoon. I love gardening parties. So much to enjoy from such capsules of time.

Thank you, Ingirid 🙂 

treasure islands

Love my homeworld, and shared it with five intrepid explorers.

Here it is, in a poetic form.

A Day among Birds

I felt the sea today,

harnessed my

heart to

wave

level.

Gannets,

gannets, gannets filled

my sky – solan,

havsule,

a sea of wings in island blue above

my eyes, like a painting or

magic swarm

morning had flushed off in

a dream…

My memory now

filled with salt they call

spindrift – today I felt

treasure islands.

NH 2017

Photos at my Instagram (@nordicblackbird)

swallows

 

 

 

 

 

On the topic of migration, hirundines – the embodiment of summer – and swallows in particular have always captivated my heart. I remember them nesting under the roof in rue de la Libération in Gisors as a child; and their return every year throughout life – wherever I have settled – remains magical.

Today I watch them return on the island, so far away from my grandmother’s home, and every time they rekindle that moment of discovery as a child… They fly from West Africa to reach us. Their journey feels incredible – travellers without papers across our northern hemisphere. They come to create the next generation – they have two homes, they are the product of two worlds, and they embody with so much grace many of us, humans, who have been blessed with more than one home…

A powerful allegory.

 

Here, to celebrate those amazing avian wanderers, a string of micropoetry, first written in French, then, translated in mirror.

 

Les hirondelles

1.

Furtives,

des anges habillés bleu et noir,

avec dans leurs yeux, du courage;

l’iris riveté au soleil, avides d’amour hors des nuages, sous

les génoises, elles font un voeu.

1.

Furtive,

they, angels clad in black & blue,

with courage in their eyes;

iris riveted to the sun, avid to love in cloudless skies, under

a roof they make a wish.

2.

Intrépides,

elles traversent déserts, champs et mers,

se confient aux cours d’eau, les chansons de la terre

pour retrouver enfin une once du berceau.

2.

Intrepid,

they fly across deserts, meadows and seas;

confide to waterways, the many earthly songs, to

find at last an ounce from home.

3.

Je les entends venir enfin,

leurs longues plumes dans mon ciel,

s’arrêter  sur un fil de fer, entre iris et mur de pierres,

un rebord de gouttière,

la latitude de leurs ancêtres.

3.

At last I hear them come,

their long feathers inside my sky,

to perch on a wire, in between iris and stone walls,

the edge of a gutter –

their ancestors’ latitude.

 

 

 

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

outcry

It’s all about adding and substracting… In the artist’s own words.

Paul Bloomer’s latest exhibition ar the Shetland Museum & Archives in Lerwick, Scotland, UK, feels an epic saga in charcoal, cladding the whitest of walls inside da Gadderie, that non-static space devoted to the muable world.

The huge pictures felt they had been tailored to perfection. Paul needs to create his own creative time at his Bigton studio when he is not lecturing at the Shetland College at Gremista, or travelling to Europe with (or without) his students. 

My top favourite picture – swans’ flight –  was inspired by a recent trip to Vienna…  A regular visitor to Spiggie Loch as a visual artist or devoted angler, I was both surprised and amused to hear it on Sunday as Paul spoke of each charcoal on paper gigantic pictorial metaphors. 

Originally from the Black Country, Paul anchored his heart &  art  on this symbolic latitude where time and space are regulated by light and darkness in that perpetual dance of seasons.

However, as an islander, he too looks at the world in a unique perspective. 

And he works like a poet or a writer, with a pocket size sketchbook, to capture moments he will later reproduce on a gargantuan scale… 

Paul makes parallels between people and avian migration. His dreams transcend through circles… Black versus white.  

He constantly reminds us how mankind generates that poisoning world, itself pictured as a leitmotive throughout and in various ways, metaphors, as Paul reflects on each throughout that Sunday afternoon stroll in his presence.

Paul the environmentalist – politically engaged… Raged by a poisoning world, in which political disciples hide, such as those deduced by populism. His charcoal stick does not fail to challenge the viewer…

He nonetheless searches for lightness through nature, to find love and sensuality among geese, swans or starlings, Shetland’s commonest and yet captivating birds.

Sensuality expressed though the oneness of entangling whooper swans.

Paul very aptly entitled his exhibition a prayer for the healing of nations.

A must see. 🙂