The judging poem

Having just finished judging a competition, and subsequently blogging about my judgely process over at the Sunny Dunny blog, I thought I'd post this whimsical poem from The floorshow at the Mad Yak Café, published by Red Squirrel Press in 2010.

Judging nature poetry

Typescript poems festoon the branches.

I walk through the grove,

letting blackbird’s alarm

alert me to today’s winner.

The whale’s verse boomed and chirruped

on the constancy of krill and swimming;

why life is a fluke

and so hard to fathom.

To the beaver, all was willow,

and how sweet the bark of birch

in the deep clay dam of winter.

Doves sprang to the defence of wars,

for the multiple freedoms

loosed each successive armistice

from the pious hopes of peace.

A neighbour’s cat praised

the stupidity of sparrows,

the playfulness of fieldmice,

and other victims.

The prize was reserved

for the eloquent silence of vegetables,

in which the wisdom of artichokes

brought forth a flowering

of edible metaphors.

Copyright  © Colin Will, 2010

A personal poem

This one's a very personal poem, about the illness and death of my middle brother Graeme in 1991. I wrote it a few months after his death, and it was first published in Cencrastus in 1993, and collected in Seven Senses (2000). Graeme had been admitted to hospital on a New Year's Eve, with severe pain, which his GP thought might be renal colic. It turned out to be testicular cancer. I will never forget that New Year, and it's one of the reasons I don't celebrate Hogmanay. Initially the doctors didn't hold out much hope, but he pulled through the first treatments. Secondaries - metastases - popped up in various tissues, and mostly responded to treatment, but an inoperable tumour in the pancreas was the one which finally killed him. 

My parents had gone to visit my other brother in New York, but when I saw how bad Graeme was I called them, and they flew home. I met them at the airport and drove them through to Edinburgh. My mother stayed with Graeme, but my father wanted to get home to Comrie, to pick up his car so he could do any necessary driving for the family. So he and I left Edinburgh. When we got to Comrie his neighbour came out to tell us Graeme had died while we were on the road. That was undoubtedly one of the saddest days of my life.

Then, over the weeks that followed, I started to reflect on it, and I wrote the poem. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should publish it, because it is so personal, but I decided to send it to Cencrastus, and it was accepted immediately. So it's a memento, a memorial, a catharsis, a cry of pain, a reflection on mortality - all of these things.

On saying goodbye to a brother

Seven years ago I first thought

to say goodbye.

Your first illness,

your crippling pain,

frightened me.

I wanted it to end,

as they said it would,

in a few short weeks.

Seeing your pain

I imagined my own.

The treatments were terrible;

days dripping precious metals

and plant juices

into your cells;

always putting stuff into you

and taking pieces out.

I learned all the names -

Vinblastin, Cisplatin, Methotrexate -

and what they did.

(They turned down your flame.)

We were close in age

and yet apart in spirit.

You accepted much in silence

while I rebelled, nervously.

You let life lead you

and I tried to cut new paths.

We had moved away without farewells.

I was impatient with your

fecklessness, and other failings,

my own of course not so self-evident.

Before that New Year,

you'd hidden discomfort

but it wouldn't go away.

Later you couldn't,

and we all saw

the hollow fear behind the face.

Time elapsed,

as it does if unconsidered,

and treatment sessions

seemed to postpone concern.

Two years on I cried

when they said you were clear.

But little clumps of madness

lurked in your body's byways

and had to have their say.

You nearly died so many times

that when you did

I almost didn't know

how much I'd miss you.

Copyright © Colin Will, 1993, 2000

The archaeology poem

I'm saying this is the archaeology poem, but in fact I've written several poems on archaeology over the years. I'm interested in the subject. I suppose it's related to my major and abiding interest in palaeoanthropology, the study of human origins and development. And of course there's a connection to geology, which I studied formally, and in which field I worked for 15 years.

This poem, written in 2004 and published in my collection 'Mementoliths' (available on Kindle) had two inspirations. The first was seeing a local dig at Knowes Farm on an East Lothian Archaeology Week Open Day. The second was seeing a painting by my friend Carmen Ambrozevich. Unknown to me, she had also visited the dig that day, and her lovely painting was inspired by it, as it later inspired me to remember what I'd seen. I love these kinds of connections.

Knowes Dig
(for Carmen Ambrozevich)


Traprain, in a neutral lozenge,
sits on a field of brown velvet
soil wrapped round the sides

of the painting. A Roman ring –
smoky blue glass – and other
archaeological trinkets

share space with a buried cow.
Yellow bone bisects the ditch.
Long spine, top of the skull,

horn cores and silent sockets,
testify to tough husbandry
or bellowing sacrifice.

Hearths of flat stones circle
within circles of fallen walls,
Venn diagrams for settlements,

the symbolic logic of life
on an Iron Age farm.
Surveyors level the site,

providing datum lines
to link the Votadini
to the expressway

between Dunedin
and Dunbar, an alignment
skirting the old hill’s

quarry-socketed gaze. Down here,
the intersection between Bass,
Pencraig, the Law and Traprain,

the perfect site for bone ash beaker,
stone-slab cist, time capsule
without starting date or finish.


Copyright © Colin Will 2005

A 'retreat' poem

Back in the 1990s I went on a couple of Arvon courses at Moniack Mhor, near Beauly. (The name, incidentally, is from the French for 'beautiful place', possibly from its association with the old priory. The Gaelic name, which resonates with me, is A' Mhanachainn). Anyway, I found the courses very productive, and I learned a lot about writing poetry - bear in mind that my career until then had been mostly to do with librarianship and science. But they told me the cottage was also going to be used for writing retreats, under similar terms - DIY cooking, with supplied food, and BYO wine. I went on two of them, both with specific writing in mind. The first, in 1994, was the sequence which became the title sequence in my first collection - Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands. The second, in the following year, was to write a long poem on Scottish botany, which resulted in the Poem card - The Flowers of Scotland - presented to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh as a celebration of their 160th birthday in 1996.

I know that when I arrived for the first week-long retreat I was struck by a catastrophic migraine attack. I had no option but to take to my bed for 36 hours. However, when I came out the other side I felt a burst of energy, and I completed the poem - 13 verses, a prologue and an epilogue - in the remaining time.

The second retreat was fine. I had no clear ideas about the poem beforehand, no structure, as I had for Thirteen Ways, and I was very relaxed. The writing went well, and I remember waking early on the Wednesday morning, opening the curtains in my room and looking out onto a sea of mist - something that happens often there. I watched as the mist burned off in the sun, revealing the stunning surroundings, and I wrote the following poem, later published in my second book, Seven Senses (Diehard). It has a freshness about it that I still like. See what you think.

Wednesday morning

Solid mist fills the valley,

opaquing all distances

from near to nearly.

Sharp-edged woods become

blotches of night

lingering on the fringes of day.

Dew prickles the face

with moist, cold explosions.

On some unseen signal

distinctness arrives, landscape-wide;

green blobs resolve to trees,

and deeper presences

announce their mountain-hood.

Long feathers of reluctant cloud

detach their bases from the heather

and manoeuvre for take-off.

Golden-green sun-spots appear,

pursuing the clouds’ tails.

The sky blues from gap-sites in the grey

until background becomes foreground

for this unpredicted day.

All this, for me? you ask.

All this, for this?

Copyright © Colin Will, 2015