Makkin wi Wirds, with Fiddles attached, 2011

Jen Hadfield (third from left) leads Busta House Renga

This year, the highlight workshop was the communal Renga which we started at Busta House Hotel - a 16th c laird's house with a sad haunted past and now swish present. But the Renga is still in progress, via email, so I'll blog about that when it's finished.

Thanks to Creative Scotland (as the revamped Scottish Arts Council is called) who gave me another grant, the second one running, to attend Makkin wi Wirds (part of Fiddle Frenzy) poetry writing course, I am now amassing enough poems for a pamphlet...and building on my first collection.

But poetry workshops are not the only draw to Fiddle Frenzy (see previous two years' blogs)- there's the fiddle concerts every night with Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham returning as the mega stars. Trips round Shetland, some needed fresh air and more experiences which might result in poems - this year to Ollaberry and an exhibition inspired by 'Extreme Wave Theory' by 'foul weather artist' Janette Kerr in Bonhoga art gallery in Weisdale Mill - dramatic evocations of storms in black and white based on real experiences. It seems the artist has sailed in high seas with fishermen - rather like Turner who had himself tied to a mast to experience a storm. The charcoal sketch books interested me most, but then I always like artists' sketch books rather than finished works.
See http://visit.shetland.org/extreme-wave-theory-exhibition-at-bonhoga

A trip to the Cunningsburgh agricultural shows meant thousands of photos of Shetland ponies for me. I'll just post one to give you an idea of their size.



Shetland pony at Cunningburgh Show

If you like, there is the opportunity to attend taster workshops in the other subjects on offer: Shetland knitting or painting and sketching,apart from fiddling at all levels and guitar, of course.


Early morning rehearsal for last night student concert.

And it's not all work. Here's one of the ceildhes: note walking boots!



Ceildhe at Clickiminn Leisure Centre

You'd think I might be bored by Shetland on my third visit but no. I can see why some of the Frenzied (as in those on the Fiddle course) return year after year - some for 7 of the 8 years it's been running. There is still so much to discover on Shetland, Jen's workshops continue to be special, but this year there was the extra bonus of seeing familiar faces and now getting to know Shetland through the eyes of the locals, visiting some in their homes.

And an unexpected surprise: the apparition of a creature from another world in Aith harbour. S, fellow poet and I were chatting, getting some fresh air not in the least looking for it. A dog otter I'd say, (going by the stuffed one in Hay Dock museum)- big as a small dog- maybe four foot including the tail. His large head (almost as big as a seal's)surfaced and he regarded us curiously for several minutes - not long enough for me to get my camera out) before diving with a flourish, then he was gone. We stared all around for some time, knowing they can swim some way before popping up again, but no, that had been our moment. A gift from the pagan gods - or maybe a pagan god himself. And my second otter sighting this trip.

For my blog on last year's Makkin course, see http://stephaniegreensblog.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Unst, Ultima Thule, part 2

After St Kilda, I arrived in Shetland a week before Makkin wi Wirds, Jen Hadfield's poetry writing course,  to explore areas only touched on before on previous visits. After a helpful fine tuning of my MS in progress by Jen, in a pre-course mentoring session, I drove up to Unst, via road and island-hopping by two ferries, for a week's self-imposed writer's retreat, including writing up notes for poems, and maybe, new ones inspired by Unst: another Ultima Thule. It seems I can't get enough of them.

Unst is the most northerly of the inhabited islands of the UK - though the most northerly land is not Mukkle Flugga (Big Rock) and its lighthouse (built by one of RL Stevenson's relatives) as many people think, but a rock, a bit further on, called Out Stack. My aim was to take a boat trip round the two of them but on arrival in Shetland the fog descended. All I saw of the drive up and Unst for three days was fog. So I haunted the Heritage Museum and Boat Haven museum, both fascinating.





Boat Haven Museum

I also went swimming in the splendid Leisure Centre and warmed up with hot chocolate in the Chocolate Experience cafe which was packed. Every other tourist having had the same idea as me. Life in Unst is not so Ultima Thule as one might suppose.



The Chocolate experience.

Yes, that is a copy of Joanne Harris' 'Chocolat'. What luck for Joanne Harris as a marketing ploy. Perhaps I should give up writing poetry - or maybe write poetry about chocolate.

On the Thursday, a foggy start but there were rumours it might lift and so I drove out to the Herma Ness Bird Reserve and former lighthouse shore station for Mukkle Flugga, now containing a museum,(including delightful bird sketches). Below this is the wee harbour where the boat, if it went, would set off from.

The first boat trip was cancelled but I put my name down for a second mid-morning. By then the harbour was visible but further out to sea down the sea-loch all was fog. 'We'll set off,' said the skipper, 'and see what happens by the headland. If it's still foggy, we'll turn back and you have your money back. How's that?'

Fog, fog, drizzle:
the surprise of blue.

This is my contribution to a communal Renga which I was later to write on Jen's course. More of that later. The surprise blue was the miracle that occurred on this boat trip. By the time we reached the headland of Saxa Vord, its radar were visible (the former RAF station)and we were out in blue, blue seas and clear skies: Lighthouse shining in the sun. Thousands of comical puffins, dipping, shaking their heads, floundered on the surface trying to get airborne (their bones, like guillemots and other divers are heavier than other sea-birds, so that they can dive) and then up into the air in great swirls along the cliffs and down into the sea again. We were lucky. The puffins have usually left by end of July- and we were in the last week of July.



Puffin at Sumburgh Head.

Sad to learn (at a visit to the bird reserve on Sumburgh Head before setting off for Unst) that they did not breed this year - due to a shortage of sand-eels in April and May from the too cold sea then. It is thought that the changing climate due to global warming may be the cause. Now in July there were enough sand-eels for the adults. Let's hope things improve next year or puffins will be in danger of becoming extinct.

At Herma Ness the convoluted cliffs are far more interesting viewed from the sea and one can see caves not visible from above if walking along the top and this way we avoided being attacked on the boggy moors of Herma Ness by the nesting bonxies, (great skuas) or maybe the trolls, lying in wait under bridges, like in the Billy Goat Gruff tale.



Moors of Herma Ness Bird Reserve: is that a troll?

But the bonxies, brown menaces, can be seen hunting in pairs, one harrying and driving a beautiful gannet into the path of a waiting bonxie. Bonxies are known to drag gannets by their wing tips down into the sea to drown them. I am beginning to hate them.

Thousands and thousands of gannets with their six-foot wing span, rather like swans or geese, but with yellow necks, and black tips to their wings, glide above. It is a much better view of the bird life than I had on my St Kildan trip, to be honest. There I let the two teenage lads monopolize the binoculars, and I didn't have a pair myself. Also, I realize, the mast and sail, obscured some of our view of the birds. But I wouldn't have missed that trip for the world (q.v. earlier blog).



Gannets near Mukkle Flugga



Mukkle Flugga, Unst

The wind was southerly. The next day a northerly was due, the skipper said, and it would be too dangerous to round Mukkle Flugga and Out Stack with the great swells that would occur. That must be quite something. They were pretty rough on our trip as we headed north of MF and round Out Stack. But we did it!

After the trip the boatmen invited us to a hut on shore for a cup of tea - most welcome. But when most of the day-trippers had left, the boatmen opened a cupboard in a corner for their 'stress relief'. No prizes for guessing what the cupboard contained.



Another must I was determined to see was an otter. But these are elusive beasts. On previous visits to Shetland, I'd had no luck. On Unst, the remote landscape and continual news of sightings, must surely be the place I would have an encounter. One of the boatmen on the MF trip recommended a certain bay. There was a pool just inland from the shore. I'd been told the otters need to rinse the salt out of their fur and come ashore to bathe in fresh water every evening. I chose early evening and sat for an hour or so, keeping still, writing with occasional glances up. No luck.

'Oh, yes' said a girl I chatted to on another beach as she walked her dog,' I see them almost every evening about 5pm crossing the road here.' Again, nothing.

Finally whilst chatting to the lady (dressed up as a Viking matron)who was showing me round the replica 9th c Viking ship, I asked her advice. I had heard that the loch where the boat is, was a good spot. 'Yes,' she said and pointed out at the loch:'Look'.
And there they were, two bodies, entwining with eachother, over and under, one smaller than the other. The males can attack the young, the woman said knowledgeably, so it had to be mother and baby. One swam to the shore and I even managed a photo - though only of the adult - not a high standard of photography. Still, a memory for me.



Otter sighting

Then down to Lerwick for the start of the Makkin/Fiddle Frenzy course.

StAnza 2011: Artist's Books, Roncadoro Press

One of the highlights of the StAnza festival this year for me was discovering the wonderful Roncadoro Press. Initially I was attracted to their stall at the pamphlet fair, as I wanted to buy my friend, Jean Atkin's latest book. And what a find! This is a lovely book, with moving poems, full of the sound of the wind and sea, by Jean, inspired by her Shetlandic ancestry, of sailors and shipwrecks, hardship and emigration, with evocative, atmospheric illustrations by Hugh Bryden, who runs Roncadoro Press.



Jean's book, 'Lost at Sea', is available in three editions: a paperback printed version, a hard-back printed version and a case-bound edition, of the original artwork, a collage with Japanese hand-made paper scrunched to suggest the wild Shetland seas. Above is a single, framed page from this book, part of an exhibition of the Press's other Artist's Books in the Preservation Trust Museum.

As you'll see, each book is different but Hugh's interest is in graphic design, whether woodcuts (reminiscent of Masreel) or fine pencil. All 'Black and White', as the exhibition was called. Not all are 'books'. Some are fold-out one poem paper concertinas.

So far, the poets in his 'stable' are Andrew Forster, Hugh McMillan, Rab Wilson, as well as Jean Atkin.








For further info on Roncadora Press, see www.hughbryden.com