(This second note, happily, is on the idea of secondariness – again an idea mentioned in passing in relation to MacCaig. As mentioned by Richard Watt back on good ol’ Facebook, this certainly owes something to Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of ‘minor literatures’, but, as applied to Scottish writing, contravenes their dictum that the minor literature is written in the language of the dominant culture – the doubling of English into Scots and Scots English, and the making secondary of Gaelic already alters the premisses too much.

Again, this is a topic I started writing about a couple of years ago – which presumably actually means about five years ago in human years – but never quite finished with. The earlier articulations are somewhere on my laptop which is somewhere in Dundee, and I’ll retrieve it this weekend. But, as I’m unlikely to put the whole essay together in the…

Beyond Wings by Alison Lock
(Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015)

In Beyond Wings, Alison Lock doesn’t merely reveal her versions of the world, she walks us through them. Indeed, with each poem I read, I was conscious of her steps and via the immediacy of tone and image she employs, at times I felt I was accompanying her on her journeys. This is quite a feat to pull off for any poet, and, with one so adept at bringing landscapes and wildlife to life so vividly, it’s a joy to walk beside her.

Lock is not afraid to experiment, with striking fixed forms and concrete poems popping up here and there in the collection. When she uses Japanese forms, it also allows the reader a glimpse of her prose style which is as equally rich in tone, touch and language.

But what I find most enjoyable in ‘Beyond Wings’ is…

Copenhagen Christmas

The walking lanes, the city’s veins,
are strung with red and white hearts.

Yule Nisse in aprons and gloves,
carry silverware from Georg Jensen,

Bodum coffee cups, boxes of pastries,
wrapped bunches of Marguerites.

The Little Mermaid waits, as temporal
as sea foam, for the miracle of renewal,

while Tivoli whirls, a carousel of lights,
and Hans Christian Andersen,

a relation, on my mother’s side,
by imagination only,

sings Wonderful Copenhagen,
in a voice like Danny Kaye’s.

I sailed up the Skagerrak,
And sailed down the Kattergat
Through the harbour and up to the quay
And there she stands waiting for me.

Lisa Kelly is a half Danish, half deaf freelance journalist specialising in technology. Her pamphlet Bloodhound is published by Hearing Eye. She is a regular host of poetry events at the Torriano Meeting House in London and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at…

Child Resources

Child, aged six, plays
`let’s pretend’ ‒
whitens his face;
tries to blend.

gels his hair
does his best,
to appear
of the West.

Learns to play
with identity ‒
fears new status
as refugee:

Fleeing bombs,
running scared;
praying
that his life be spared.

In vest and shorts
he makes his way
for the border
of Calais.

One, small rucksack,
for all of his things:
Bandages, marshmallows ‒
no apron strings.

1) For Peta Tucker, my Mum

Spider wanted
a traditional Christmas.
However, his sausages
made Hippopotamus bashful.

Hippo was embarrassed
when spider performed
a spontaneous salsa,
especially as they were in the butchers.

Words from Peta: spider, hippopotamus, bashful, spontaneous, butch, sausages.

A few many syllable words – tricky to fit in and make scan.

Poem 2) for Mary Norton Gilonne

I knew about the affair
before she told me.
It was in the way
she chewed around plum-stones.

In the way she drained oranges,
knees clasped with one arm,
childlike,
as the flesh slithered down her sleeve
and peel was sucked clean.

It was in the way
she sang Prince loudly
as she prepared
my cyanide risotto.

Words from Mary: Affair, stones, oranges, slither, loud, risotto.

Poem 3) For Reuben Woolley

It created a silent frontier,
the snow, plain and deep,
meant no travel was possible.

The river looked…

“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.” Sylvia Plath, “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”

Distressed Fairy

I admit to being a touch smug. When the assistant reached for the carrier bag and whispered to her colleague that my purchaser was ‘that world famous artist, you know the one, always in the papers’ I began to feel that the weeks of cardboard cartons and stockrooms and shelving displays had been worth it after all.
Expectation is an interesting thing, don’t you think? Christmas is always a time for anticipation, for children and adults alike to speculate what might be in those brightly wrapped and beribboned packages. Who of you can resist the temptation to pick up a gift from under the tree, to squeeze it or shake it in some attempt to guess its contents? For most of us it’s the reverse, of course. Every gift is wondering what it’s like on the outside of the paper: who will unwrap us and whether we’ll be…