Thrilled, humbled and honoured to join in a trio of fine Shetland writers (prose & poetry) to an evening of the spoken word & stories bound by the centenary of George McKay Brown at WordPlay, Scotland’s most northerly book festival.
The writing of the great Stromness man of letters has fashioned and influenced island writing as it has influenced the way we speak and celebrate our Northern Isles and beyond.
Each one of us nestled our work among the celebration of the word through the announcement of winners from the 2021 Young Writers of the Year Awards, the very cradle of Shetland’s future writers.
In such extraordinary and industrious comes a first fruit, which has ripened well.
Now official :
I am very honoured and privileged to map Shetland at COP26 Glasgow through The Great Scottish Canvas this September with the publication for the great event later this autumn, and live reading of my selected poem to our Scottish MSPs as part of Climate Fringe, which will go live in due time.
I am very humbled this poem, very close to my heart, is journeying in so many directions so far. Shortlisting it at such level was so unexpected. Tis also voice recorded for the purpose of the exhibition. Happy poet. 🙂
April not a fool, just a joker … This is hame clawed in icicles since April’s first weekend.
April feels a brigant, with its hoards of dark clouds filling our springtime skies with their trillions of icicles, haily puckles, sleet, snowflakes… As if wir voar (our Nordic spring season) was trapped and confined to each afternoon.
Yet, tis not about our abominable moorie caavie (violent blizzard) this blog post is devoted, but to a book review I had longed to complete.
Long awaited.
Time is both a blessing and a curse.
In Brigantia
A.J. Murray’s second collection of poetry opens with the gentle and yet vibrant title poem, in which he begins his imaginary journey by the river, setting a vivid scene and a strong sense of place, inviting us, each reader, to ready for this journey,
“sitting by the river, / rounded aesthetics / rolling down a verdigris valley”
taking us back deep into times where Caesar’s legions clashed with a queen he names later,
“Coins, unearthed in soil / Roman – no hoard”
…That sense of place, geographical as well as in time.
Murray’s strong sense of place is echoed in the second poem, Valley. The poet brushes a very dark and mystical nano-universe by addressing a queen:
“Cartimandua, / history has not been kind to you” (…) this glade holds the bodies of ancient warriors, / fallen in forgotten battles”.
Murray the Mancunian feels eager to transcend time itself when he feels that urge to step into Brigantia, his Narnia:
“I need to come here / I’m urbanized”…
A feeling he develops through the subsequent poems Moor, Hillfort, The Way Trees Speak, Hinged Moments or Motorway, in which Murray also flirts with a certain sense of entrapment:
“Our country is too small for road trips.”
A powerful statement.
His own modern version of Brigantia emerges from sprinkled poems throughout the book, Something Urban, Stone Shale Earth, Rainy Day Blues, Nocturnes, and the beautiful Kittiwakes,
“Kittiwakes on iron girders, / man-made cliff edges / to which they return to breed, / away from the tumult / of the North Sea”.
So evocative of my own Nordic world.
Murray the poet wishes us to travel with him through his dreamy Brigantia whilst bumping into iconic or notorious personalities, Marylyn Monroe, Hitler or Elvis (!) notably through Salted, Routes, Journey, Night Poem, Eddie or Mytholmroyd, to close with Cranes,
“Cranes in the sky / and I wonder why (…) embroidered words / on an unraveling sky.”
Well chiselled, dark, poignant with a pinch of Mancunian humour itself descendent from a brigant, A.J. Murray’s second collection transports us in his Brigantia.
My question is, where next? Orkney Birds seem to point the way.
In Brigantia is available on Amazon, ISBN 9781731271365.
In this world silenced by a terrorist disease, skylarks still sing above an early April hissing gale.
In this part of the main island, where Sandness looks lost inside haze, tussock grass yields, yet those birds we call laverick have returned as lairds o’da braes – elevated above da tun an da scattald (human dwellings and open fields where grazing’s shared among crofters…).
Deserted world except for birds…
They will defy the harshest gust, ignore that brutal tongue from gales to sing to blueness and the sun.
To each passing of cirrus clouds, they do not know the world’s locked down, as they ascend among ravens, oblivious to material us.
They have returned in their hundreds to the daresay of each hillside.
On this Monday lost in April, this sky has turned cacophonous, as hillsides home song of skylarks, that dare to ignore gusts from gales…
There is a time when poetics demands music and words to whirl in a shared space. It has happened before and is happening again. Collaboration with Carol Jamieson fae Tresta is flourishing with flair and grace. Already, we have united to offer verse with piano during chosen sessions at Fjara Café-Bar just off Breiwick at Sea Road.
Now, we have taken it a step further. Carol is composing and recording her own music, mixing it to my recorded spoken verse. A first piece, entitled Light in Darknesshas emerged. It is beautiful. More will be following. Already, the Poet is thrilled with the Pianist’s work.
I toy with the thought of
touching the Moon that
hangs out in
this dark blue sky;
and as
tide turns in
your favour, on that last weekend of
July,
I feel its pull, rolled up in
clouds.
I lit a tea light in your name, and
let the lantern on the deck, for
you to find me in
the dark,
mørke, mørkin, in murky night, where
the Moon shies here in
thin clouds, between my world and
summer tides – where Angle shades fly to the flame, where your voice vanishes with
night.
When it comes to Irishness, the world is our oyster. So many magical voices, celebrated throughout the world. The ones you know are household names… And the list is by no means exhaustive. I could have selected a few that have really struck chords in my heart; but, there is one, one, anonymous, living and breathing by River Lagan, who devotes her time and care to vulnerable people, hence double-touched my heart.
Don’t ask me for a photograph, as I have yet to immortalise her smile, and, light in her eyes. Her name too remains anonymous, for it is wished this way.
I toy with the thought of
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