(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…

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”