Bard in the Bog

Photo from Shetland Islands Council

What an honour. I'm delighted to learn I will be a Bard in the Bog!

One step up from poems displayed in a window pane maybe.

Now I shall have to return to Shetland to see it in situ/in sitting. Yes, it is what you're thinking: a poem displayed in a public toilet. A competition judged by Jen Hadfield and library staff. The first time this competition was run in 2009 the poems were published in a book which raised over £1200 for a water sanitation charity. How great is that? Not just a project for fun.

Mine will appear in April. Others before that. All 12 selected poems will be up on the website of Shetland Islands Council before long. Posters available too. I'll post the poem on my website when it's up in a bog - which precise one I don't yet know.

Now there's another reason you have to go to Shetland.

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.

Makkin wi Wirds, Shetland and Fair Isle

Jen Hadfield 'makkin' at the St Magnus Hotel, Hillswick.


This is the second year running I have attended 'Makkin wi Wirds' the poetry writing course tutored by Jen Hadfield up in Shetland in August. As well as being a wonderful poet, Jen is an inspiring tutor and not only that, the week combined an experience of Shetland that I would never have managed by myself and provided subject-matter for more poems. Enough to blow you away (and it's windy up there). I can't recommend it highly enough. This year a special long weekend on Fair Isle staying at the world-famous Bird Observatory was added on for the poets.
Wow. Not that I am a bird-watcher sort of person with binoculars and passion for ticking off rarities but if a bonxie happened by, well.


I was particularly lucky in that the Scottish Arts Council gave me a grant to cover my trip and the course towards developing my poetry for my collection in progress. And having just had a hip operation a few months ago, it gave me the incentive to do my physio exercizes to ensure I would be strong enough to cope with it. Without that carrot, I don't think I would have been so disciplined.


It was an amazing week. It is part of the 'Fiddle Frenzy' run by Shetland Arts which runs classes in traditional fiddle-playing but also includes a course for painters and in Shetland knitting. Everyone has their separate classes in the enormous, baronial castle-like Isleburgh Centre in Lerwick but on two mornings the workshops are held in different parts of Shetland, involving an early start for a coach and/or ferry trip to various islands or remote areas of Shetland where the workshops are held on arrival. Village halls, kirks, primary schools etc are commandeered for the workshops.





But the week is not just workshops. Afternoons are free to dabble in one of the other subjects on offer if you want or go on coach trips with story-tellers as guides to places of historical, geological or other interest in the areas (a croft house museum, a water-mill, a seal sanctury, a mussel farm, lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson's relatives, and Shetland ponies of course).

Evenings are spent listening to concerts by the fiddlers, both students, locals and professional groups. Last year I heard the incomparable Aly Bain. There are also ceilidhes, all ages dancing together from 4 to 90 year olds. There's a late night Club for more fiddle-playing, a wee dram or two and a quiet room for more story-telling: Davy Cooper, Lawrence Tulloch and Elma Johnson are the residents, hotly contested in late-night competitive sessions by visitors from New York to Penicuik.

Interior of Sodom, McDiarmid's cottage, Whalsay

Last year we went to Whalsay (which the locals pronounce Whalsaa) and visited Christopher Grieve, (better known as the poet Hugh Mc Diarmid)'s basic cottage where he lived in dire poverty with his wife and small son for 7 years before WWI ; it is now let as a rather basic hostel and the current occupants let us in to have a look round.

On another trip last year, involving two ferry trips, we visited remote Fetlar, the second northernmost island (after Unst). This year it was to Yell and Hillswick, workshops at the atmospheric wood-pannelled rooms of the St Magnus Hotel (a wooden structure brought over from Norway). Both years incorporated visits to the dramatic wild cliffs with their blow-holes and geos of North Mavine at Eshness. A must.

It is a great way to experience the varied landscapes of Shetland and also frustrating, as it is just a taster and made me long to go back and experience it for longer - or to see yet more areas we
did not cover.



View from Yell in the early morning haar.

But I have some wonderful memories: driving through the haar (sea-drift) rising off the sea between islands and taings (tongues) of land appearing through them in the morning, the silvery light on the voes and sea when the mist cleared, and standing on the open deck of the Hendra ferry on the way to Whalsay having my head brushed by a squadron of gannets flying past with their six-foot wing-span.

And the add-on weekend in Fair Isle was the most exciting trip I have had for years! The ferry crossing from Grutness in Shetland to Fair Island is notorious: vast tides down from Iceland and from Norway either side of Shetland meet due south, just where the ferry crosses, then there's the 'Roost' of local riptides round Fair Isle itself. I met a F.I. local who warned me that even on a calm crossing it can be bad. Total panic. We rushed off to Boots and bought Traveleze and acupunture bands. Well, all was fine. But the return crossing which was rough, well, nuff said.
All I can say is, fly if you can afford it - also if the plane flies. On the day I left it was too misty for the plane to land and people were stranded for 3 days. Not so good if you have a connection to New York to catch....though actually I would miss the chat with the Skipper, Neil, if I did not take the ferry.

Ah, but the isle itself. I see why the Vikings called it Fridarey - island of peace. After that crossing it did indeed seem like heaven. Life in an isolated island (it is actually the most remote inhabited island in the UK) is fascinating - I met everyone in the first few hours - the skipper (or Master) of the ferry, the Good Shepherd, having invited us to a ceilidhe (the non-dancing kind) that night - so we met all the locals and heard a few of the members of the folk group, also called Fridarey, playing in the Puffin House (a bothy owned by the National Trust) - the whole group are members of the same family, but that night we heard only the skipper, uncle Neil Thomson, Lise Sinclair (fiddle-player and singer) and Lise's father. Fridarey are well-known at folk festivals. A special treat to hear them on their own patch with a small group of locals, N.T. volunteers and us listening, whilst the children played football outside in the still half-light of simmer dim at 10pm below the South Lighthouse (one of RL Stevenson's relatives of course).



South Lighthouse football at 10pm.



Members of Fridarey: Neil Thomson, Lise's dad and Lise Sinclair.
Hear some tracks of Fridarey's album 'Across the Waters'.
http://www.scotloads.co.uk/album.php/802/

As for that bonxie (the Shetlandic name for a Great Skua) - I had heard tales of this brown menace, the pirate of the north, the size of a buzzard (probably bigger) that eats other birds such as kittiwakes, or by forcing other birds to drop or regurgitate their meals. It lives out at sea except when breeding when it nests on the moors. The B52 bombers of the bird world, if you approach too near they will attack. And yes, I was shadowed by one. Out walking on the moors on the way to the North Lighthouse (yes, RSL's dad) it felt like being in a Film Noir, stalked by a secret agent. Every time I looked round it sank out of view but there it was again out of the corner of my eye. I was lucky. My friend Jean was attacked as she crossed a field - 10 different strikes. Luckily she had a hat with a deep brim on and kept her head down.

Staying at the splendid new Bird Observatory was an interesting collection of individualistic people - not all bird-watchers (because as you'll know if you are a twitcher that August is not the best month - puffins have left, and the autumn migrations have not started) but a Danish writer researching his next novel, 3 yachts-people who were sailing from Norway to Cornwall (to Rick Stein's Padstow restaurant to be precise), several PhD students working as volunteers for the bird-ringing, Americans and Norwegians. Tales of the Faroes, Iceland and Norway. Hmm.
Once you're up in Latitude 60 degrees North, those places feel so close, your neighbours in fact, only a Viking long-ship journey away.





The coast of Fair Isle from the North lighthouse - showing pretty obvious reasons for the need for the lighthouse.

Oh, as for the hip. Yes, it did hold out. Despite falling down a rabbit-hole - I was too busy looking through my camera. And I have a pocket-full of new poems!