Here is a poem by Lindsay Macgregor from her new collection, Desperate Fishwives, published by Molecular Press. You can read more about Lindsay’s work on the Molecular Press website: https://molecularpress.com/on-paper/
If you’d like to buy a copy of Desperate Fishwives - which I’d strongly encourage you to do - you can contact Lindsay directly: 7lindsay12@gmail.com
Portrait of a Poet
(after Ezra Pound, Portrait d’une Femme)
Your mind is your line. The sense in which you
think you own the whole expansive floating
sea though not your unfathomable fear
of doldrums mantling night’s brightest reefs. Down
goes the boat with everything in your hold –
myths made visible, bilge, beeswax to stop
the sounds you will not hear – yourself as glass
eel, jerking into London unaware
of what you’ve given up to get here – blue
marlins untangling the cobalt ocean’s
netted gyres, porbeagle fins discarded
on olive-brown sargassum mats. Nothing
that surfaces can be anchored by you
or your tragic mariners still reaping
the windrows for trophies and curios
a sea-hoard of aphrodisiacs - lumps
of ambergris, rotten mandrake roots. You
blame the gravid waves that led you nowhere
on your shipwrecked quest for mock goddesses
of utility or anything else
you could fit into a corner of your
cracked tank – carapaces of loggerheads
dredged from their lost years, wet dreams of humpbacks
in the Bermuda Triangle. Trapped. Those
are your riches, your salvaged delicious
things, strange bubble nests of flying fish and
other almost-defunct stuff as flotsam
in the afterglow on your migration
route. All of this you own and all you don’t
comes down to that wide wide
Sargasso Sea.
And here is the first of a series of modern pastorals by Vahid Davar, a short selection of whose poems was published last year by Matecznik Press. His pamphlet, Something the Colour of Pines on Fire, can be purchased from the website shop.
Pastoral 1
Imagine date palms could grow on this cold isle. Imagine
the fairies now on their way to the office
still roamed in woods with lanterns and long white dresses.
Imagine in this belly of darkness
cars were cottages
where ewe milk could be bought all fresh from shepherds.
Imagine your mother could cross the border
with a suitcase and a sewing machine
and come to your house to stay forever. Imagine
the border guards knew
what it is to trek across mountains and plains.
Imagine a rainy night and your hat-stand
snowed under with scarves and wet umbrellas. Imagine
the Smithdown cemetery held your blood relatives.
Imagine in dawn’s sleep
the clinking of coffee pot and cups from the kitchen
and you were not dreaming.
This is my version of a short poem by French poet Jules Supervielle (1884-1960). It appears in my pamphlet, Heart of Green, also available from the online shop.
Planet
After Jules Supervielle
The sun rises over Venus;
on the planet a tiny murmur.
Is it a boat crossing
a sleep-bound lake without a rower?
Is it a memory of Earth
arriving awkwardly this far?
A flower turning on its stem
to where the sun’s rays shimmer
among the reeds empty of birds
pricking the inhuman atmosphere?
Here’s a poem from How Do We Talk About Knives, chosen in part because it so eloquently encapsulates many of the major themes of the anthology but also because the published version (alas!) contains a couple of misprints. Below is the text as originally composed by the poet, Ceitidh Campbell, followed by her own English translation:
Is mise…
Lean mi seachadas mo theaghlaich
le ainm gun chleachdadh,
air a sgrìobhadh air teisteanas:
naoi litrichean nach aithne dhomh.
Mar phlàigh, mar chù nam chòis
ann am puist-d is air cunntasan banca,
aig coinneamhan dotair is air cìsean
a’ dearbhadh nàire chànain.
'S truagh gun deach galar am bilean
a sgaoileadh cho fada feadh cho-inntinn
gus tàinig ath-ainmeachadh oirnn,
mas fhìor, an ainm adhartais.
Gu h-oifigeil, tha saoghal na Gàidhlig làn dhiubh:
Margaret, Alexander, Joan is Malcolm,
seach Mairead, Alasdair, Seonag is Calum –
ainmean na Sàbainn a dhiùltas dualchas.
Tha mi eòlach air an ainm a th’ orm
ga litreachadh san dòigh a thagh mi,
a’ slànadh linntean goirteas nan clàraichean
le urram do m’ fhèin-aithne.
My name is…
I follow the family tradition
with a name I don’t use,
written on a certificate:
nine letters I don’t recognise.
Like the plague it follows me
in emails and bank accounts,
doctors’ appointments and taxes
evidencing language’s shame.
It’s a pity that this disease
spread so far into our psyche
we were renamed,
allegedly, in the name of progress.
Officially, the Gaelic world is full of them:
Margarets, Alexanders, Joans and Malcolms,
not Maireads, Alasdairs, Seonags and Calums -
Sunday names shunning heritage.
I know my name
spelt the way I chose,
healing centuries of registrars’ wounds
with respect for my own identity.
