‘I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.’

– Pablo Neruda

I love these lines. They describe perfectly the creative connection between the landscape and us. Recently, I have been devoting my energy almost exclusively to novel-writing,

and I must admit I miss the process of creating a poem, the makings of which swirl around the brain in a totally different way to the plot of a novel; the words are liberated somehow. There are no rules, no expectations.

On National Poetry Day, perhaps we should all be taking a moment to write a few lines, as a way of connecting with what’s important to us, or simply to recapture the joy of writing for the sheer pleasure of it. I was delighted to find myself in the Angus edition of The Courier today alongside some proper poets! Feeling rather rusty, I decided to look out some of my poems inspired by the landscape. The first was written at Barry Mill, and the second is rather seasonal. Happy National Poetry Day! 

 

Ghost Mill

The wheel turns.

Dust falls from every wormhole;

every sandstone pore. Spores slacken

with the thump and thrum;

the din of timber.

The mill exhales, expands,

loosening old lives

like buttons on a waistcoat.

 

The wheel turns.

 

Shapes shift in the dark;

sparks blue as eyes;

the scent of old smoke.

The re-formed flour ghosts

of old men settle

beneath the faint silver of

their names.

The wheel turns.

 

The damsel in the machinery,

skirt dappled with

paw-prints, slack-jaws gossip

down through generations;

until the past

meshes with the present.

 

On and on.

And still…

the wheel turns.                                                  Sandra Ireland

 

                                         

 

     Signed by the artist

With gloomy brushstrokes

Guardi paints Venice. All

pale piazzas and falling skies;

lagoons breathing gunsmoke.

Adds a signature fleck of red.

All winter I wait, colourless,

under snow-bruised clouds;

breathing ice cobwebs on glass.

Until, at last, Nature adds

a bright splash

of robin.

 

Sandra Ireland