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

Foxy poem

Red Runner is the second poem in my first book, Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands, published by Diehard in 1996. It's a nature poem, based around my observations of foxes. I used to see them regularly, in the Bathgate Hills and in the Calder Wood Country Park, when I lived in Bathgate and Mid Calder respectively. I think that with nature poems you have be true to the realities of the nature you're describing, but you also have to go beyond that, to bring in your personal reaction to the natural world, and maybe to make a general point from the particular. Nature poems should never be just about nature. I've gone on to write a lot more nature poems, mostly based on my own experience of creatures and their habitats, but I also think you can bring in your theoretical knowledge. I've never seen siamangs in the jungle, but I've written about them.

Red runner

Beautifully camouflaged, he thinks,

against the bright sprouting wheat,

the spring fox stalks two knowing rooks.

They wait, and lift, crop-forward

into the wind,

and he tailstreams over the field,

pretending indifference,

to the edging trees

in search of an unready vole.

Fail or kill, the habit hones the skill.

I've seen his relations often;

the dog-fox spinning and leaping

in Calder Wood's new snow,

or the vixen who notes and ignores me,

driven by the imperative

of her cubs' hunger.

I'm an irrelevance in a green jacket;

I unleash no terriers.

Or another, panting on a warm rock,

snapping at bluebottles,

guarding her smelly den among the gorse.

Eyes glow in the headlights

as they stand and look at you,

super-foxing towards them,

and too often they are dirty red scraps

flat on the road.

But see him run through the hill's rippling grass,

ears up and tongue out,

intent, fixed, on a swerving quest,

or hear a pair yip on a still November night,

and know you've met a light and lively being,

the essence of pursuit,

that pointed face where fear and fierceness fuse.

Copyright  © Colin Will 1996