celebrating… Life on Earth

Tis September, and autumn marks time for harvest…

Harvesting fruits out of projects – to the poet, tis the moment to celebrate words ripe enough to shine and echo through folk’s hearts…

Months turned in weeks, as Mother Earth waltzes in grace amid the void and songs from stars, light from our Sun reminds of life – from the vegetal to birdsong, September shines and celebrates.

Fleurs de saison, like seeds of life from a planet en route to changes of her own… Let’s reel seasons, as the island sings and flowers – where life as free as flocks of birds comes to da loch to drink or bathe.

Tis that moment I celebrate.

Clumlie Loch shared at WordPlay 2021.

Tis the same that has journeyed from hills and burn (stream) down to the sea to settle among other greats and less known voices in two towns, Lerwick and Edinburgh, through the summer.

Clumlie Loch celebrates wild life – tis where we witness wilderness as important as rainforests or melting ice at either poles… Because it homes essence of life.

Clumlie Loch at the Virtual Exhibition by the the WWF Scotland’s Great Scottish Canvas Initiative, 18-26 Sep ’21 during Climate Fringe.

Today, The Great Scottish Canvas has begun to display it in a virtual exhibition. Such an honour to map Shetland to the greatest of Earth Summits.

It will feature in November among others and other art forms – 45 in total , from 45 Scottish voices, poets, writers, visual artists and sculptors… 45 voices to trigger a beam of hope for life on Earth… Our survival as a species and for our homeworld, natural.

Teeming life at Clumlie Loch, 2021.

Nature, so inspiring, our garden of Eden, we ought to protect at all costs.

Let’s hope and pray, our words and works speak to all world leaders in Glasgow. Like Jackie Kay, Scottish icon as a poet & former Makar – she, the insatiable optimist – I believe in wisdom and future in which children will bloom and grow in a rich world where animals and plant can live.

I feel humbled, honoured and chuffed for Clumlie Loch to feature among Jackie’s and others’ works, blown up on walls to they eyes and hearts of all COP26 participants.

Let’s enjoy Hairst and life on Earth, where our hearts beat.

Ian’s world at Troswick, Sep 2021.

Thank you for life. 🙂

Announcement 3

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.

Writers’ Night is announced as a very special celebration https://tickets.shetlandarts.org/sales/categories/festivals/wordplay-2021/wp21-writers-night

I am very much looking forward to add my humble stone to the edifice .

goosebumps

We, at the WestsideWriters’ Group, were challenged to come up with something on the topic of goosebumps for tonight’s gathering via Zoom.

Here is where it took me…

As inspired by a movie…

The duality of language in the creative process.

Different!

je me souviens #14-18now

• 

  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.

• 

• 

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.   

Vagvísir

Now, to a darker one…

Have you chosen your place of death?

Is it in the shade of blossoms, 

where the 

wind 

blows to carry words

no 

one will 

know? Or 

is it outside a

lighthouse – where 

whiteness stands so 

close to

gold,

where

maalies* glide,

the great wild bairn* 

free and 

shameless?

Now, in

the 

eye of

the compass,

you see the meaning of

your birth –

your talisman 

in between breasts,

the 

tattoo of

staves in circles;

what’s left of

It lives inside you,

deep inside

the womb of the dead, and 

yet you need me

as a

guide – as

no one points to

their last 

breath.
Notes:

(From Shetland dialect)

maalies: fulmar petrels 

bairn: child 
© Nat Hall 2016 

Valentine inside Ice

  
On the fourteenth morning of the second month, my latitude sprinkled with ice.

As I watched snow fly, each flake reminded me of winter, and then, one shrieking call of the blackbird, which, in turn, inspired this poem.

Valentine inside Ice

That thin layer of icicles on

every inch of your garden has petrified

water & song of the blackbird.

Those arpeggios 

they hold so deep inside their heart

still fear raw sharpness of winter,

blunt edge of mid-February,

lace,

epic layer of crystals on

every branch of your pine trees,

fur cone, needle…

Still far too shy to set them free.

That elusive outburst of

love, primal 

showcase of desire 

in between blue & icicles

still needs the sun.

It is the song I want to hear.

And if you too 

could let notes fly,

reveal true meaning in your

smiles, and find your

way out of winter,

and leave your

prints on

my 

stone wall,

I would sing back in unison.

© Nat Hall 2016 

Armistice Week 2014

One hundred years on,
10 million dead,
another 10 million crippled, too many headstones… Vanished hearts – brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins… My great grand father, Pépé Duval, was a stretcher-bearer on his country’s battlefields, lunar landscapes… He, like millions of men, was thrown into a carnage, brain-washed by a propaganda led by warmongers. He was lucky enough to return home, twice gassed and deeply scarred for the rest of his life, shell-shocked…

One hundred years on,
How can we forget?

Some politicians (at least in France) attempted to “turn the page” by declaring we should drop the bucket… Sorry, we have a duty to honour those who were sacrificed against their full will. Nobody wishes to endure what so many million men endured in horrid conditions… I recently read that, in some cases, 1 1/2 mile recovered in No Man’s Land cost well over 200,000 lives. That is more than sacrifice, this is a crime against humanity.

Over the course of such week, leading to Remembrance Day on 9 November around the UK, the Anderson High School, my school, has honoured all those fallen in and around Western Europe.

1200 North Islanders on the Orkney & Shetland respective Rolls of Honour…

One hundred years on.

No one wants a return to hatred & carnage, deep bleeding of nations.
My recent visit to Northern Germany with 22 pupils from the AHS reconnects ties between peoples, hence breaking down barriers, ignorance, fears.
We are all connected through various ways – sea, fish, herring, history, heritage. Our own language alone has been forged inside an incredible melting pot – metamorphic, enriched by words that included old German ones, brought over by the people who came to settle and trade on the land in the first place. We must not forget that either.

We commemorate our own, however, with one hundred years on, my heart also feels for all those who perished in blind madness (war of attrition).
Military, civilians, irrespective of colour, religion, gender, or island -ethnic origin, continent, nationality.

On such occasion, I was invited to contribute to two events – a creative writing project within a collective, and, reading my own work from such project on the school tannoy.
And so I did.
I therefore let Wildred Owen’s Dulce ET Decorum Est for my own piece entitled Ricochets, a poem which sits within a suite of verse & flash fiction created during this autumn thanks to a project called “1914 and all that”, a joint partnership between the Shetland Museum & Archives and Shetland Arts.

Ricochets resonated in the hearts of many 21st century AHS pupils, who shared their reactions throughout the day.

Touched & happy they could reach out to one another, pupils & words.
One hundred years on,
let us all remember.

So, in honour of all victims of the conflict, as well as a “taster” to the event at Wordplay 2014, here is the piece I shared a hundred years later.

Ricochets

Devil’s in the trench,
scavenging round the Earth –
against sandbags,
school, chapel walls or parapets, through cloth of brand new uniforms, grey, khaki, blue –
across cornfields
somebody ploughed in hope for bread,
where boys ventured to kill
boredom away from home in
a bull-ring*,
they remind me of
skimming stones,
light on the loch,
summer, crane flies…
Sleek impromptu or
intruder,
hum-buzz-quick hiss,
whizz, woosh and plop,
to find their way deep inside mud or
in between innocent eyes,
an unknown name
turned animal inside a trench,
who dreamt of blackbirds and angels…

© Nat Hall 2014

Notes: Bull-ring: the famous infamous Bull-ring, training camp in Étaples, where harsh conditions were common place. (Source: Robert M Creig, Doing His Bit, Shetland Times, 1999-2003)

I think my great grand father would approve of not only my verse, but my thoughts as a whole.

Thank you,
Donald, Brian & Jon.

update for a creative date

 presents Wordplay 2014 

Bookmark it,

make a date:

Tuesday 11 November 2014,

a venue: 2nd Floor Meeting Room, Mareel, Lerwick, and a time: 1900-2100 GMT

Book your ticket at The Lerwick Box Office… Come along and enjoy 🙂

out

Transformations

ArtiPeeps’ 15 month collaboration between world poets & artists – celebrated on 12-14 September at Hanse House in King’s Lynn, Norfok, England, edited by the Project’s Curator, now comes to you in its printed form.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses revisited and fit for our 21st Century world.

Just click on the link and order your copy.
It will transform you!

From Shore to Shoormal at Wordplay 2013

 Peerie (short) visual momento “de taille” for a trans-Atlantic adventure at the Shetland Book Festival 2013. Poet & Publisher made this festival “international” 🙂 FESTIVAL PROMOTIONAL VIDEO 2013 Really treasuring that moment.