IAN STEPHEN - Poet, Storyteller & Sailor in Transit

Ian Stephen frequently sails under his own steam round the islands of Scotland, gathering stories and writing poems as he goes and telling them to rapt audiences wherever he ties up his boat.

This Friday we are lucky enough to be on his route between Ullapool and Lewis - the long way round!

Ian will appear as part of the Orkney Library & Archives contribution to  Orkney Nature Festival's Maritime Day in the wood-lined ship's hold of the Upper Library at Stromness Academy, so he should feel at home.

Ian Stephen
Friday 17 May
7.00 pm
Upper Library
Stromness Academy

Entry FREE 
Wine, soft drinks & nibbles provided

Ian's poems reflect his island background and his passions for the big seas and skies round Scotland.

"A writer, artist and storyteller, Ian Stephen was born in Stornoway in 1955 and still lives on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He studied English, Drama and Education at Aberdeen University. After 15 years in the coastguard, he became a full-time writer of poetry, prose and drama in 1995. His poetry and short stories have been published in periodicals in many countries since 1979. 

Ian was awarded writing bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council in 1981 and 1995. He was also the inaugural winner of the Christian Salvesen/Robert Louis Stevenson award in 1995, and in 2004, he was the first artist in residence at StAnza, Scotland's annual poetry festival. He received a Creative Scotland Award, contributed to Zenomap (Venice Biennale 2003), and represented Scotland at ‘Poetry without Borders’ in the Czech Republic, 2004.

 

Among his publications are Malin, Hebrides, Minches, with photos by Sam Maynard (Dangaroo Press, Denmark, 1983), Varying States of Grace(Polygon, 1989), Mackerel & Cremola (pocketbooks, 2001), and It's about this (Nomad/ Survivors Press, 2004), from a poem-log of a voyage to Orkney, commissioned by StAnza. A bilingual edition of his poetry, Adrift / Napospas vlnám, was published in Czech in 2007." (from Scottish Poetry Library website)

Sanday Island

Expansive skies
as of Dutch-masters
but these are faster:
shifting light tones.

Sea colours assault
both shores and eyes.
A lot of angry white
breaking from brilliance.

Dry dykes could never
hold that water out
so grazings and furrows are
backspaced a field-fathom.

But lichened slabs,
cemented just high enough
to make muted roofs,
stay-put on built frames.

Gales ruffle skins
of sand and walls:
of cattle and dwellings
and pass over all.

Ian Stephen

from Varying States of Grace (Polygon, 1989)

Read more of Ian's poetry on the Scottish Poetry Library website

The Poem's the Thing

The second visits to The Poem's the Thing in Kirkwall and Stromness last week saw us looking at three poems about pigs Why? I hear you ask!

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. WN Herbert's latest book of poetry had just come in to the library. It's called Omnesia and as I was flicking through it a poem Facts About Pigs caught my eye. Aha, I thought, I know other poems about pigs. There's Ted Hughes's View of a Pig and Les Murray's Pigs. That'll do. 

WN Herbert

A very diverting discussion ensued. Which poet got under the crackling to view the pig from the pig's point of view? Which was distancing himself from the pig - and from something else - death, perhaps? What about the relationship between humans and pigs? Hard to say anything but, Awhh, to the picture above. My colleague Louise found it and posted it on the Orkney Library & Archive facebook page. But the poems we read were somewhat darker, though not without humour. 

Ted Hughes

But to go back to the original question, why pigs. Without really thinking it through, was I trying to demonstrate that poetry can be about ANYTHING? Possibly.

Les Murray

So what could we follow the pig poems with? Seagull, anyone? We read Edwin Morgan's Gull, a chilling, spine tingling poem about a gull landing on the poet's window sill.

... He eyed my furniture, my plants, an apple.

   Perhaps he was a mutation, a supergull.

   Perhaps he was, instead, a visitation

   which only used that tight firm forward body

   to bring the waste and dread of open waters,

   foundered voyages, matchless predators,

   into a dry room. I knew nothing ...

Edwin Morgan

A scary gull for sure and much admired in the group. A cousin perhaps of this bold thief?

We also read Kathleen Jamie's poem, The Longhouse. You can read it here. 

... This is what happens.
This is why we loosed our grip and fled

like the wind-driven smoke
from the single lum
in the crooked roof that covers
both women and beasts, a roof
low and broken like a cry

It was a sombre set of poems, I guess! But the discussion was far from sombre. 

Kathleen Jamie

  

In Stromness we ended our discussion 

of the pig poems with one member's reading

of DH Lawrence's poem Snake. 

A suitably intense end to an interesting and

engaging discussion. 

Check out the Scottish Poetry Library's excellent
website for information about Scottish poets and
poetry. 

Chasing the Merry Dancers

From BBC Radio Orkney's Facebook Page

This is the first for the last few mornings that I haven't woken to a flurry of facebook photos accompanying posts boasting of the AMAZING activity of the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, over Orkney the previous night. It seems they've been viewed in every part of the islands in recent days. Except in the sky above where I'm staying! I'm beginning to feel singled out, the only one around not to have been treated to the spectacular light show. My colleagues come in with dancing green lights in their eyes, laughing at my failure to be blessed like them. "Yes, the whole sky was green," they say, "celestial curtains waving in a heavenly breeze." 

From BBC Radio Orkney's Facebook Page

On Not Being Able to See for Looking

It's beginning to feel like the time I watched for weeks before seeing the kingfisher down at the River Kelvin near where I lived in Glasgow. Everyone I knew had seen it. I went every day to try and catch a glimpse. Once with my daughter I stood on the footbridge gazing at the brown water. A little old woman came past and engaged me in conversation about cormorants and eider ducks, common on the river. While my attention was thus taken up, my daughter said, "A kingfisher just flew by there." The little old woman went merrily on her way. I was convinced she had scales underneath her tweed coat!

Eventually I decided to stop looking. When I walked beside the river, I told myself, I would enjoy whatever I saw. I would feel blessed by the ducks and the cormorants, doubly blessed by the heron. And then one brilliant day in Autumn, with the reflections of the leaves turning the water gold, this 'little bit chipped off in brilliance' shot under the arc of the bridge, 'a flashing kingfisher that flew with soundless beauty'. 

So the Merry Dancers can dance unseen; they can mock me all they like. I will enjoy the stars instead. And the moon. And this morning, the sun rising sweet as an apricot over the Holm of Houton.



Yap & Yarn

Both the Yap & Yarn groups have got off to a clicking clacking start, with everything being cast on from socks to jumpers, cushion covers to arran throws, scarves to woolly hats. My efforts are growing sl-o-o-o-w-ly. Here's the new neck-warmer-in-progress. There are knitters of all levels of ability and those a bit further along help the ones for whom casting on is still a mystery. Karen and Heather kept me straight - or rather, wavy. And lacy. 

Scottish Poetry Library

Lilias Fraser of Scottish Poetry Library kindly sent us some postcards of Tom Leonard's poem In Hospital, which is a tribute to women knitting: 

the future, knitting the future
the present peaceful, quiet

Check out all the wonderful poems on their website. Click the link above to read Tom Leonard's poem in full.


Pride and Prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the all time favourite books among readers across the world. It is celebrating its bicentenary this year, so expect a flurry of tributes. One of my friends has just reread it for the umpteenth time because of the comfort to be derived from it in times of stress.

The year started with the BBC World Book Club discussing it with an audience from around the world. Click the link to listen again to the discussion. Among those taking part was PD James, whose book, Death Comes to Pemberley is the next title to be tackled by the Lunchtime Reading Group in  Kirkwall Library. Click on the link to the website for details of all the reading groups. 

Pride and Prejudice is on my list of favourite books too. How about you?