Cryptic

The geopoetician who animates my heart, hand and pen never ceases to realise moments in time are held in snowflakes or in dew…

I am continuing to network with kindred spirits whilst the spirit of Ms Crusoe wanders along on an island that sings life through seasons.

April rhymes with freedom, this enchanting earth song elevated through the cacophony of birds – curlews, blackbirds, wrens, starlings (the greatest feathery imitators at 60N!) golden plovers… Skylarks and our everlasting chattering sparrows. 

April is the return of the mind-blowing light that overrides wir mørkin (darkness) now we are back in BST.  I noticed dusk and twilight are flirting later to my great delight. To the poet, it colours my sense of bliss. And I can only pray Father Sky’s clemency increases as we now walk more confidently towards Beltane.

April allows my child within to reconnect with the now and here.

Today again, I experienced stillness capsules that are tattooed in my heart forever. I watched raingjus glide on water, a pied wagtail tiptoeing on the edge of a burn… I listened to whistling swallows and wigeons. Spring in its glory as daffodils bowed to the fresh South Westerlies…

There is no doubt we are swinging towards summer.

And yet, Father Sky seems to lose sight of the moment. As if he was blending winter and spring a little longer…

On the night of the great eclipse on the other side of the Atlantic, I watched a sky blending colours as I had not seen in moons… A real sunset (pictured above) and prayed we might marvel once more at wir Mirrie Dancers (Aurora Borealis) before May steals them till August.

There are still a few days left till I return to the indoors world…

Mind you, when the last bell rings, I will not linger much inside. 😊

However, let’s keep our bubble of now the most important one, as tomorrow does NOT exist!

Poetics never leaves my heart.

Celebration

Happy World 🌍 Poetry Day!

Here comes my quill to this great celebration:

FEATHER-HUNTER

She walks, she walks,
she
talks and
chases
a feather,

twist from the wind,
tale from Tarmac;

she talks and
tackles a
feather,
life’s
filaments,
keratin white –
she runs and
curses a
feather,
hands in the air,
her hair’s gone wild, imploring the whole of the sky…

She stops and stamps that lone
feather,
she holds the world inside her hand.

NH 2021.

Iced (1)

The world from my shore.

Days, hours from Imbolc, and the island (as well as the rest of the archipelago for that respect) firmly in prey to ice and icicles.

In such sub-arctic conditions, everything feels dormant. Our boreal sun has graced winter’s whiteness in an attempt to warm our hearts and souls. Even foreshore rocks and boulders turn blue… And yet it has brought us joy through the classic winter light. Tis so healing.

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A daily walk at around noon when our star reaches its zenith might feel best, and yet the eye favours the Golden Hour, a sheer moment when the wild world looks more industrious in its quest for survival. Tis the critical moment when life could flirt with death so scarce food is scarce, hidden under ice.

Whereas local crofters, our small holding farmers, feed their sheep at the manger, and storms uprooted kelp from the nearby bays, the bounty of summer feels a mirage.

Ice is everywhere.

In every book & crannies of our world where it can sneak, ice has petrified grass, water, heather … For the first time, the birds’ water holes, pots and lochs have reached a point of polar scapes…

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….As if giants and gods from Jotunheim descended straight on us!

And yet the island holds fast. We feast from the sun’s kindness; walk through the land in search of signs of more green-ness. With the gradual return of the light, we may feel clawed inside winter, yet Mother Earth has already begun to wake…

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Life signs.

Like you, I am looking forward to the rebirth and the promise of spring, da voar, as it is known here locally.

Meantime, I am counting the hours to Imbolc, the very first murmuration of our waking home world, as a prelude to our very own chant du monde.

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renouveau

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Spring has multiplied signs throught that long and still ice-bladed month of March. If light has reached parity with darkness on the 20th day, and our migrating visitors called at night and settled back in our fields and meadows whilst others pursued their incredible journey north, the island still needs to wake to the promises of the season.

April, April… Life rekindles

March now behind us. Tonight I heard eight puffin scouts have been located west of my favourite headland in our inshore waters. Earlier, friends reported the magical ascending song of a skylark as they wandered by abandoned crofts… Common Eider drakes already sit by their concubines… On inspection of the ground, daisies and bluebells have long braved snow, ice and thaws, re-icing and equinox gales. Even within the perimeter of my sanctuary, the grass has grown and would deserve a serious cut. Spring, voar, so precocious.

Eider drake and its concubine reunited at Aith Voe.

Light reappears on the 60th North Parallel. I read somewhere that between the two solstices – and more precisely as we approached the Vernal Equinox – we were gaining up to two hours of light every month… Now, as April has entered in the great cosmic ballroom, my sunrises and sunsets are becoming more epic.

Turnstones by the edge of water…

Strangely enough, fog has already been rolling on from our local hills. “Exotic” and “curious”, for fog remains an oddity before April… February and March both felt odd in places.

Peculiar episodes of fog we, islanders, usually experience from mid-April…

Yet April promises (or do I really take this for granted?) liberation from many claws – storms, gales, and other signatures from the icy months. And if I have yet to listen to my first skylark, I know it will not be long. The sky just needs to quieten a little more and our star to warm up those acres of storm-bent grass around our meadows… Wake, wake, wake, wake!

April is when you return to me.

The magic of walking to my favourite headland.

As I am typing you are gradually falling asleep. Your case is packed. Your passport lies in a pocket of your handbag… Tomorrow, you too will begin your migration north – north by NE, as you will cross that stretch of your Irish Sea to find your way back in Glasgow before making your way to my North Sea from the mouth of a sheltered harbour. We can travel the world like swallows… or Storm Petrels. But to journey, we need a boat. I may not wait for you from my favourite headland on Saturday, But I will gladly watch that great blue Viking efigee on the white hull we call da boat approach my favourite offshore island of Mousa at about 6.30 in the morning and drive parallel to you, as the bow kisses each wave from our sheltered waters. If we are lucky enough, Mother Sea will let you enter the Bressay Sound with grace.

Happy common seal in the surf. Selkie life…

It will be your first time. Selkies and seagulls will salute you on your passage. You are about to return to me as seabirds find their way across miles of oceanic deserts, da Roost to reconvene with my headlands, bays and meadows. Now, my turn to find sleep from my northern latitude, as I will be by your side tomorrow, in voice and spirit. I have prepared home to welcome you on my northern island. In anticipation to your arrival, I wrote a piece entitled North Voyager. It sounds and reads like a leitmotive… And yet it does epitomise that promise from Spring.

North Voyager

There is a time when you will see edge of
my land,
          the rounded head shaped by
                                that kiss of Atlantic and
cold North Sea; where
solans glide above Spring's crests,
follow the furrow from
                                  the ship,
blue man on white,
head-dressed to defy every tide and
                                 moder dy...
No castle perched, but 
a lighthouse that defines hame, wir tun an 
                                      hearth;
and if you stand out on
the deck, that gentle breeze fae 60N will
whisper words in northern tongue,
roll every "r" in every breath,
                            sea spray, spindrift -
touch you with salt glued on its lips.
Now,
you're parallel to my world, birds and 
                                             sandstone -
maalies join solans in the wind,
              Mousa appears left to your eyes,
   inshore waters will guide you to
da Horse's Heid, as Bressay grows 
closer to heart, and
        mine will beat as fast as dyne,
now you're safe in the Bressay Sound.

Only minutes and a pressgang separate us.

                                         Welcome to 
                      my northern island.

 
© Nat Hall 2019 

Dialect word glossary:

solans: Gannets
moder dy: the underlying of the swell used by ancient firshermen as a guide.
hame: home
wir tun: our toonship (human settlements)
Spindrift: sea spray, balls of salt created by gales
maalies: Fulmar Petrels
da Horse's Heid: [place name] the Knab (headland in S Lerwick)
dyne: yours

Solan (Gannet)

Bon voyage!

je me souviens #14-18now

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  14-18 Now

One hundred years ago, a small party of men gathered in a wagon inside a French forest somewhere in Picardy to stop madness and attrition, a futile butchery, unparalleled till then, agree to terms for an Armistice. Humanity defaced, filled with hurt, on its knees.

To those millions of innocents, victims who fell and died, I wrote a short poem four years ago, entitled

Of Flowers and Men

Little lead men

fell one by

 one

inside a field other than theirs, 
 where

 red flowers now flourish high -

scarlet to colour

a river to remind us

 there is 

danger

inside our walls.

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Four years later, on that same month of November, I penned a string of verse to remember you all – irrespective of alliance, skin colour or religious denomination – because you were all human beings turned inhumane inside a theatre of death. You fell or you were shot, because you had beliefs.

On this occasion, the following verse is in your honour.

In memoriam, 14-18 Now

War Flowers

Time belongs to lush poppy fields. 

They walked by their millions in wet mud, 

France or Flanders, 

leather laces in No Man's Land, along with 

shells and barbwrire. 

Canary girls back in Clydebank or in Gretna 

manufactured what was to kill 

somebody's boy in a cornfield, or 

their own genes here on homeground... 

An assemblage of sacrifice in 

the name of an empire, country or king. 

They fell by millions in cold mud, 

furrow or field they never sowed - 

through earth layers, 

chromatic world recorded shell shock and their fears, 

humanity's blood in a flood. 

They rest by millions as poppies, 

pinned on thick tweed on some jacket - on 

photographs and cenotaphs, 

a sea of names on 

monuments, 

lost inside waves, 

crosses, headstones,

inside the flame from a candle, in 

every heart and every 

home.

© Nat Hall 2018    

Within an hour, I will join all those who remember them at my local beach – St Ninian’s Sands – and read poetry to those clad in a uniform as part of this project  #pagesfromthesea because I don’t forget. Later tonight, as part of this year’s edition of #shetlandwordplay (the annualbook festival in Lerwick), I will join in for the last event, the Open Mic and read both aloud, as part of a sequence dedicated to #14-18now.

Je ne vous oublie pas.   

Mørkin (2)

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.

© Nat Hall

Sandwick, 26 July 2018.

 

Note: Mørkin, from the Norwegian, mørke, dark(ness)

go hálainn (#wearewoman 5)

We are woman, we are beautiful

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.

So, for you, beautiful Irish one,

a first poem.

 

Homebird

 

Every rose hip has a meaning.

 

Of all the dreamers in

the world,

your

walled garden

has always been your sanctuary,

fog lit at night,

the orange

glow

I sometimes see here

inside mine…

The firecrest deep in your eyes.

In between lush and

Irish sky,

every

morning has a meaning, like

a tattoo on shoulder

blades; and

you wander between feeders;

behind the back of every leaf, there is a heart

ready to pounce, between

the rose and the

fuschia.

 

NH 2017

wunderhübsch (#wearewoman #4)

Photo by Diana L.-N https://www.instagram.com/northwhile/

 We are woman, we are beautiful.

When it comes to the Nordic connection, the web widens as we network. This is exactly what happened with a kindred spirit from Hamburg, as we began to mingle via Instagram, followed by Facebook. Northwhile, alias Diana Lukas-Nülle, is a lover of all things north, wild, sheepish, travel, design, hearts carved by nature and write. I love the way she speaks about the light, north, snow, Norway or Fair Isle…  Whilst she insists how I would love Iceland. Funny how we eventually met in Shetland on her way to the Hebrides.

Photo by Nordicblackbird

This intrepid north wanderer returned to an island she loves and has a pied-à-terre, as she had a contract with a knitting designer and Misa Hay to design this year’s WoolWeek Magazine.  On two occasions, we met and shared by the water – in Melby, where we watched an otter playing in the bay whilst we savoured some homemade cake we found and bought from a local box; and at Ninian Sands, where we marvelled at the magic of the Atlantic, a wondrous sky, changing light and the shape of clouds… We spoke deep words, found some hearts fashioned in stone and felt the wings of the maalie, my favourite seabird the Fulmar (Petrel) I love to nickname “Jonathan”, for this long distant relative of the albatross seems to fly for fun – and sometimes at very close quarter!

Some enchanting evening we pursued at my humble hut for a splash of homemade lamb curry and a hope to see Northern Lights after twilight. Of all those moments shared, the one that prompted a poem was triggered as we walked along da shoormal  (that area in the shallows…) on that bridge of shell and sand. Diana was combing in search of something specific, whilst I was gathering my own pocketful of treasures.

This prompted the following poem.

For you, D. L-N.,

for your friendship & cunning eye.

 

Heart Hunter

 

On the great bridge of sand and shell,

she untied her shoes and

walked free to

feel the pulse of each sandgrain,

blue of evening and

Atlantic;

by the shoormal where dark sand shifts,

she imprinted her higher self,

eyed washed off

stones

spewed by

vile tides, hunting for

hearts molten in

rock,

hearts in shingle, or tidal shaped, among

plovers and sugar kelp –

what the Moon pulls in between

stars, thin waterline,

polished

nacre.

She came to walk to an island,

she entangled time in

rollers,

smiled at the world’s greatest tiara,

gifted my hearth with two

new stones,

her heart and mind still in

sandgrains.

 

NH, 2017

She said one day she will own sheep… She’s still to find her home island. In the meantime we share that passion for the Nordic realm – Norway, Norge – island life, light, wild & remote, hearts molten in anything natural and photography.

 

Krásná (#wearewoman #3)

 I owe her the back cover photograph of my book, a lifetime friendship on a plate, a well of laughters and shared moments of emotions…

 

We are woman, beautiful.

 

 I met Aneta Lukzikova through Anita Orheim (see blog post “Vakker #wearewoman [3]“) over a decade ago. Like Anita, Aneta was then in academic transit and decided to establish her own “hame” on this latitude. Our friendship blossomed through time and shared slices of life. We earned each other’s trust and respect gracefully, travelled the length and breadth of our islands, and even crossed the sea last summer to reconvene with Anita on her homeground for a weekend of sheer happiness in and around Fana. I had promised Aneta a beer in Bergen, we did just that. Today, we know ourselves pretty much inside out.

Of this, I’m very proud. Forever grateful to have her friendship, her love and trust as a woman and a close friend, so close I can call her my Czech sister.

 

For you, dear Aneta, I am going to improvise you a poem as I’m typing,

 

We have travelled so many roads,

crossed many bridges,

sea, earth marks.

You have

listened and dried

so many blueprints from cold rain;

laughed at my face by

the White Wife,

helped me to

rise from

earth

and

mud…

We crossed the sea to

share a pint,

taste simple pleasures in Bryggen to reconvene with

our own clan made in Norge.

And every time

I needed

you,

dear Czech sister,

you offered me a hearth and smiles.

I am in awe of your pure

heart.

 

© Nat Hall 2017

 

 

visitors – little did I know it would mean “home”

 “Nat, I challenge you to a short poem…” I still remember Chris’ words one fine evening at the Mareel Café in Lerwick during one memorable Open Mic’ Night in 2016.

At the time, little did I know those words would generate such a fabulous collaboration with Visitors – a trio of very talented singer/songwriters based in Shetland (till band member Chris Grant left last autumn for his Glasgow homeground with a mix bag of excitement and sadness…).

To the poet, writing for a band feels playful and self-indulgent.

Whilst band member Chris Grant has known my writing from 2012 through the National Theatre of Scotland’s Ignition project, fellow members Cha Johnson and Andy Kinnear have been exposed to my poetical world from the Shetland Open Mic Night sessions. When it came to their project as a band, they had some of my spoken words in mind for the purpose of one song when the opportunity arose. Whilst they were assembling an EP later named after the final lines of my short poem, I quickly scribbled a very short piece recollecting my “first time” as a then visitor to 60N. This recollection never left my heart and mind, so magical and powerful this very first experience felt, and became imprinted in my heart forever.

This I translated into words,

submitted to Chris, who immediately related to the piece. Perfect was his response. And left it like this, until he recorded me in a tiny office on his last day at work.

Although I had no idea of what was really happening, I later received words from Chris explaining me about Visitors’ plans and project. A bigger picture began to shape in my head. With Chris in Glasgow, I left the spoken word in good hands. Meanwhile, Shetland Times journalist and singer/songwriter Adam Guest penned an article in the islands’ weekly. More light on Visitors‘ work!

An EP to be launched in Shetland

So little did I know Visitors would launch their work at this year’s Shetland Folk Festival in South Nesting. News filtered gradually via all three members earlier this spring. I still remember Cha’s lovely words- both at Gutters’ Gaet and Andy’s… We all turned more excited about such launch! From Cha’s messages to the rehearsals at Islesburgh and Clairmont Place, I discovered the entire EP, tasted fabulous slices of life (as well as Andy’s newly improved home made chilli con carne!) in fabulous company; a wild ride in Andy’s car to listen to the CD newly arrived in his lair, and reconvened with Chris and Roo.  

On the night, 29 April 2017

Whilst Visitors had already invested the South Nesting Public Hall for the indispensable sound check, I joined in with the audience. Familiar and other faces lined up against the wall, ticket in hand. The air was crisp in a dry though overcast world… I left the comfort of my peerie buggy as soon as I saw my trio of artistes emerging from the building. Reunited on the night for the gig! Hugs, smiles and kind words filled our hearts.

Little did I realise the concert would be performed in a jam packed hall with other great bands following in our footsteps…

Visitors live on stage, 29 April 2017 at the South Nesting Hall for the launch of the EP at the Shetland Folk Festival 2017.

And Chris invited me on stage to close the act, whilst reading those words I once scribbled about “little did I know this would mean home”. The act well, very well received by the audience on this fun night of performance. Maggie already released in iTunes. The rest of the EP to follow in the great digital constellation of the apple.

 Happy poet, humble and thanking you, dear Visitors for such an epic adventure 🙂 

Tattooed in my heart forever.