Weekend in Perth

We had a lovely weekend in Perth, the weather was perfect for late Spring - warm and sunny with a light breeze. Perth is a nice small city with lots to do, especially nice nature walks! We went on several walks along the River Tay. It was beautiful to watch the swallows and house martins diving low over the river, while the swifts did their aerobatics higher up and the gulls glided by, some of them even trying to copy the more acrobatic birds by swooping down after flies. We followed part of the Perth Sculpture Walk which showcases several pieces of modern sculpture along the banks of the Tay. We also wandered into a more wooded part of the riverbank where we heard whitethroats and saw a flock of long tailed tits, several blackbirds and a very good number of song thrushes (song thrushes were once a really common species in the UK but have declined badly in recent years and it was lovely to see and hear so many of them).


We also wandered up Kinnoull Hill, which, on the lower slopes, is beautiful woodland, full of birdsong (especially the descending trill of the willow warbler) (see photo above) and more open at the top, with steep cliffs falling down to the plains below.

a ruined tower
beside perilous cliffs -

a peregrine hunts

It was wonderful to see this bird of prey as it glided past and dived near us several times. They're quite uncommon and certainly I've rarely seen them anywhere. On the bus home we saw three deer in the woods just outside Perth.

Two Art Exhibitions in Edinburgh

On Thursday I went to two art exhibitions:

North Light - Contemporary Photography (on until 8 June at the City Art Centre ) is a varied and interesting collection. A lot of the photos on show are social commentary, ranging from black and white photos of Edinburgh in the 1960s to more recent vibrantly colourful photos of a Sikh wedding ceremony. My favourites were the black and white photos taken in Orkney - Thomas Joshua Cooper's stark landscape of part of the Old Man of Hoy and Albert Watson's series of photos of stones - a standing stone and large scale close ups of ancient mortar and pestle. I left wishing more photos had been on show....

Across the road from the City Art Centre in the Fruitmarket Gallery was an exhhibition of works from Lucy Skaer (on until 9 July). Skaer's work is varied and interesting but sometimes feels to me to be too experimental, just for the same of being experimental. The highlight for me was her large scale reworking of the iconic Japanese print of the Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai , her version is entirely made up of grey spirals of various sizes - the exhibition is worth going to purely for this piece.

New Job!

I was delighted to be offered a new job as Scotland Development Worker with the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens to be based at Gorgie City Farm, which is ten minutes away from where I live. I had a good feeling in the interview, I was asked to wait in the garden and then the interview took place in a room with an animal mural on one wall and sheep, goats and horses in the fields outside! I start in a few weeks and probably will have a week off between jobs.

Swifts

Do you see the swifts are here again?
They swoop so low and soar so high
I think there may be more than ten -
do you see the swifts are here again?
We know it's summer round here when
our favourite bird comes gliding by
You see the swifts are here! Again
they sweep so low and soar so high!


A triolet for Totally Optional Prompts. It reflects my conversation when looking out of our window at this time of year!

Evening Walk

Yesterday evening we walked over to Blackford Pond, where we saw these proud parent mallards and a little grebe, respendent in its breeding plumage. The books describe little grebes as very shy and this one certainly was, it spent most of its time under water! The evening was beautiful, mild and still with a wonderful sky of soft clouds. We walked round Blackford Hill and the Hermitage of Braid and after coming almost face to face with a swooping kestrel (they're incredibly beautiful at close range!) we sat down for a while looking at the trees below, which were full of chattering jackdaws and the hill behind that was full of rabbits. Swifts were darting about high above us and the air was full of birdsong (I was pleased that I recognised the song of a whitethroat). A very peaceful place.

Moonstruck

In a garden silver bright with the moon
an owl hoots under the light of the moon

The city streets are deserted tonight
tv aerials held tight to the moon

A girl stares out of her bedroom window
she wants to take a bite out of the moon

A young boy runs into the empty street
trying to fly his kite to the moon

Musing and gazing out into the dark
Crafty green poet delights in the moon.


Chapter 4 of Unleash the Poem Within suggests that the ghazal is a perfect form for daydreaming and letting your mind wander.

The Ghazal Page , an excellent resource to find out more about this fascinating form, is currently holding a competition for moon ghazals.

Unleash the Poet Within - Wendy Nyemaster

This book is an intriguing mix of self help and poetry manual. The tone of the book is relaxed, chatty and women centred. Each chapter takes the reader through a specific poetic form (eg the sonnet) or type (eg the letter poem) and suggests which form is best for writing about certain personal situations, giving examples written by the women in the author's writing circle and titles of examples by famous female poets that can be accessed online or from a library. The focus is on using poetry to explore personal issues and to allow writing to access emotions and discover solutions to personal problems. Form and craft are described in a simple (sometimes simplistic) and straightforward way that demistifies poetry and enables the reader to feel confident about starting to write. There are also nice lists of tips for each form, along with a selection of ideas around areas such as sharing poetry, how to make time to write and using poetry in journalling.

My problem with formal verse has always centred on why to use a particular form, I'm a prolific haiku writer because that is a form that suits my way of looking at the world and the things that inspire me, but I don't like to write, for example, a sonnet, just for the sake of it, I want to feel it's the right form for the thoughts I want to express. This book really helped me with its chapters outlining why each form suits particular situations, eg:

sonnet - working out emotions
sestina - making sense of memory
ghazal - allowing your mind to wander
haiku - living in the moment
villanelle - accessing your inner voice
ode - dwelling on what is good in your life

I know that each form suits other situations too, but this was really helpful in getting me to think about form and when I can use it. So in the next few weeks and months, watch out for posts here containing my first ghazals and sestinas!

The book is aimed at beginner poets and women interested in poetry as therapy. As the author says: 'I decided to write a book on poetical form because it is something I can wholeheartedly believe in and can provide personal testimony about. It can help women to live fuller, more in tune lives...' It's a book about allowing creativity to help you explore personal issues and though it is also useful for free verse writers who want to start exploring form, it is not a manual for the experienced poet who wants to develop skills in writing quality formal verse.

Unleash the Poem Within by Wendy Nyemaster, published by Source Books.

rhododendrons

raindrops

on rhododendrons -

doves gently coo.

photo taken in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh

Weekend Walk

We walked over to the Botanic Gardens yesterday. We walked over the Water of Leith (see photo above) wandered through Inverleith Park, round the pond in the park. We saw a pair of coots feeding their four chicks in the new reed bed area that has been created recently. The open part of the pond was full of swans and mallards and there were several house martins and swallows flying around and swooping down to catch insects.

Walking into the Botanics, we noticed the new bird feeding centre that has been set up near the North Gate. We saw a greenfinch, a chaffinch and a couple of blue tits here as well as a grey squirrel and several feral pigeons, waiting underneath the feeders to pick up food dropped by the smaller birds. We had a very good view of a long tailed tit just at the edge of the Chinese Hillside.

We had a cup of tea in the Botanics Cafe, which is always a good place to get close views of more common birds such as robins or blackbirds. Today we were lucky enough to see a treecreeper climbing up a tree and then flying from tree to tree. We also saw blue tits, dunnocks, chaffinches as well as blackbirds and robins.

Gulls

Gulls divebomb each other,
squabble over perching rights
on chimney pots,
throw back their heads
in raucous chorus,
rip rubbish sacks to shreds,
steal chicks from nests
and devour them on the roofs

then launch into the sky
to soar on thermals,
sharp white wings
against the blue.


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