Water of Leith

A shape, sinous and brown, running along the riverbank - look an otter, but it turns out to be a mink. Now the Water of Leith has been cleaned up, the otters are out-competing the mink. But it's only ever mink that we see...

Under the bridge, a flurry of finches - a greenfinch feeding two fledglings and a goldfinch hurrying from bridge to tree and back again....

In the trees by the side of the river, the blue and pink pastel of a plump bullfinch, while a grey heron stands sentinel in the water....

rushing river -
grey wagtail leaps and turns
to chase flies.

Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog has always been one of the most interesting and odd film directors around, but recently he has also become one of the most environmentally aware too. His recent films (including Grizzly Man and The Wild Blue Yonder) have taken a provocative look at the state of the world. Encounters at the End of the World (showing at the Edinburgh International Film Festival) sees the director taking a trip to Antarctica, meeting some of the scientists, engineers and philosophers who work there as well as visiting seal colonies and penguin colonies and showing stunning scenes of life under the sea ice (using the same undersea cameraman as in The Wild Blue Yonder, whose name escapes me...). Its a brilliant film and avoids the tiresomeness that can sometimes creep into Herzog's work. A great way to end my viewings at the Film Festival.

But when is Herzog's great film about the nature of truth Incident at Loch Ness going to be released? It was the best film by far at the Film Festival about three years ago and really deserves to be released into cinemas in the UK (Or maybe I blinked and missed it....)

haiku

grey clouds -
the black-white flash
of gulls


previously published in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society
I've got two haiku in the current issue of Blithe Spirit too, I'll post them in due course! I've also had a haiku accepted for publication in Wisteria.

Gorgie City Farm - I've started my new job!

Well I've started my new job with the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens and it looks as though it will be very interesting - and also hectic! I'm based at Gorgie City Farm, Edinburgh's city farm, ten minutes from our flat. It's a lovely place with a great selection of animals (including a lot of rabbits!) and I hope to post a few photos in the next few weeks. I'll also be visiting a lot of other City Farms and community gardens and will post about them too.

I'm still without a home computer so can't post as often as I would like here but hopefully we'll have a new computer by the weekend.....

Reuse, Recycle and Revise 2

In preparation for the haiku workshop I facilitated on Saturday, I made some haiku bookmarks (using photos from magazines and my own haiku) for participants to take away with them. One of the first drafts of a haiku I wrote for a bookmark was:


softly weathering -
the faded colours of
abandoned boats.


But on re-reading it, I felt it would be improved by changing the first line:


glowing at sunset -
the faded colours of
abandoned boats.


I felt that the sunset adds a second element to the haiku and enhances the feeling of loss implicit in the second part. What do you think?



Reuse, Recycle and Revise for Read Write Poem

Haiku Workshop

I facilitated a haiku workshop yesterday at the Salisbury Centre in Edinburgh. There weren't many people there, but everyone was really enthusiastic about reading and writing haiku. We had some very interesting discussions about the haiku form and the intent of haiku as well as spending a very inspiring time in the Salisbury Centre's beautiful garden that has lots of wooden benches in peaceful corners, ideal for thinking about and writing haiku. Luckily the weather stayed fine, the rain only started an hour later!

Thanks to everyone who attended and to the Salisbury Centre - there may be a possibility for me to offer similar workshops there again in the future!

A Song of Sparrows

Edinburgh International Film Festival has moved forward in the year to June and it was great to start my personal experience of the festival with such a good film! The Song of Sparrows is an Iranian tale of an ostrich farm worker who is sacked when an ostrich runs away and then himself runs off to the city to try his luck in finding work. He finds himself accidentally becoming a cycle taxi and courier service and picking up lots of junk furniture to recycle. However he becomes so obsessed with his junk that he starts to forget his family and is surprised to find his son and his friends successfully cleaning out the old abandoned water storage building so it becomes a home for doves and new fish. The film is a wonderfully humourous meditation on human nature, greed and family. It's also beautifully filmed with some gorgeous visual moments - like the fish falling out of a barrel and wriggling into a drainage ditch. I would hope this film will get a release into independent and arthouse cinemas in the UK in about a year or 18 months so look out for it....