From my Journal, March 28th, 1998; George Mackay Brown and other poets.

Totnes, Saturday, March 28th, 1998

     Very late last night I finished reading George Mackay Brown’s memoir, For the Islands I Sing.  The book captured me. I completed reading it in one session. It also brought to mind a memory I have of the early 1970s when I lived in Johnshaven, a fishing village on the east coast of Scotland some miles north of Montrose. One summer a young Irish carpenter came to work in the village. We met on a few occasions in the bar of the Ship Hotel which was conveniently situated next to Kirk Cottage where I lived. One evening he told me he had plied his trade on Orkney the previous summer and while there he had become acquainted with the poet, George Mackay Brown and on a number of occasions they had enjoyed a game of chess together over a pint of beer. The young carpenter clearly admired the poet, telling me Mackay Brown was a sincere and modest man, of quietly ironic humour.  

From a painting by Ian MacInnes held at the Orkney Library and  Archive, Kirkwall

     These qualities are evident in the poet’s memoir  but it is in many ways a private if not evasive record. He mentions fellow poets, such as Hugh McDiarmid and Norman McCaig but he gives little away about them. He seems a man who is more rooted to where he comes from, (and there are good reasons for this) than one who engages passionately with others.  His book brings out the timelessness of Orkney and its culture, and the grandeur of its nordic history.  The following poem though not from his memoir epitomises  for me the spirit of this book. 

Beachcomber

by George Mackay Brown

Monday I found a boot –

Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in

Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.

Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.

I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.

Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.

Friday I held a seaman’s skull,

Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.

Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.

Sunday, for fear of the elders,

I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins. 

     In For the Islands I Sing Mackay Brown also mentions that while he was struggling to become recognised as a poet, (not that he was overpowerfully determined on this), he received advice from Cecil Day Lewis. Reading this directed my thoughts back to the mid-1960s and Trent Park College where I trained to be a teacher. The English born Canadian poet, Patrick Anderson, was the principal lecturer in English Literature at the college. He introduced me and some other students to Cecil Day Lewis and John Heath Stubbs. All three encouraged me in my poetry but I later came to a view that their motives may not have been altruistic and my meagre poetic talents were not their central interest in me. Still, I suppose we should not separate life from poetry or poetry from life.

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Sources

For the Islands I Sing George Mackay Brown (John Murray, 1996)

"The Beachcomber" from Fishermen with Ploughs George Mackay Brown; (Hogarth Press, 1971) 

"A drunk man looks at the rose"* : the Scottish referendum in Totnes, Devon

Afore I tell ye this wee story, I need tae clear up some local business first. I hae twa principal watering holes in Totnes, the toon in Devon whaur ma hame is. They're the Bull Inn and the Bay Horse Inn both of which are hunders o' years auld.  The action in the day’s anecdote took place in the Bay Horse but since I dinna wish tae upset the landlords of either of these twa pubs by seeming to favour  ane  o'er t'other I thocht I’d pit ma neutrality oot in the open. Tae be honest I perhaps use the Bull mair often since it is nearer tae ma hame which with ma ageing limbs gi'es it an advantage. Baith are excellent but very different establishments and each in its ain way serves an important social purpose in the toon.

From the corner of the Rotherfold : The Bull Inn and the Albatross Fish n' Chip Shop

In the last few days I am discovering how much the continuing news of the Scottish referendum  has been meaning tae people in England. Until noo I've thocht they've kept it under wraps or hae thocht it a distant prospect and when the event took place the Scots wid see sense and vote tae bide in the union. Recent dispatches frae the north have begun tae deliver a contrary message. They suggest the campaign for independence is building up steam. 
Consternation doon sooth is rising and could it be that deeply held resentment is surfacing with it ?

From the Old Market : The Bay Horse Inn with white van

The ither day in the Bay Horse a young loon  - I mean a man in his 30s, which is young by my terms  -  on discovering I was Scottish scolded me. "All you Jocks are the same. You spend all the money and we Britishers have to earn it all so you can spend it again."  

I said, " I think constitutionally I am still a Britisher and given that I am domiciled in England and intend to remain here  then I would, should Scotland become independent,  still technically be a Britisher." He was quite upset aboot it a' and didna' tak ma point and I felt I had tried tae be too much o' a smart alec and wished I hadna' been sae pedantic. Like maist pedants I'd got ma facts wrong since I dinna' think the United Kingdom has a constitution.  

Anyway in the end it turned oot he wisna' sae bothered aboot the Scots wanting tae go it alane, or indeed  that we micht be spending his money willy nilly.  What worried him maist wis that if Scotland did become independent then England could be stuck with a Tory government forever !  I thocht it best no' tae say, "And whit aboot Wales and Northern Ireland." We parted pals. It showed tae me that this Scottish referendum lark is exercising people's thochts doon here mair than they let on.

What a time for Scotland and the United Kingdom !



*With humility, my respects to the late, mainly lamented Hugh McDiarmid and his great poem "A drunk man looks at the thistle".