Night Fish by Kristine Ong Muslim

Night Fish is a small and perfectly formed chapbook from Kristin Ong Muslim. The poems are populated by ghosts and souls and, in the poem Extremities by seemingly disembodied limbs.

There's also a lot of water in these poems. The slippery water that eludes definition in Hypergraphia:

...........................................................................A
watery city of typography. All the pebbles are
letters desperately forming into words. The
handwriting is not quite legible yet.


It is the water of rising sea levels in Night Fish, a beautiful evocation of the changed (and likely disastrous) world we may face in the future:

From now on, there will never be any flat land.
just water. All words will be derivatives of
fixed names denoting the ocean surface bearing
the image of the moon.


It's a lovely, haunting, subtly disturbing chapbook.


Night Fish by Kristine Ong Muslim is available from Elevated Books, an imprint of Shoe Music Press

Monday Bunday

Well I promised you bunnies and here they are! There seems to be only one hotel to stay at in Edinburgh if you love bunnies. That's the one next door to the Zoo on Corstorphine Road. In front of the hotel there is a sloping bank of grass with a hedge at the back. On this bank there are bunnies aplenty! They always seem happy and very hungry! There used to be a little black bunny that lived with this group, but he diesn't seem to be around any more.

Botanic Gardens

We had a lovely wander round the Botanic Gardens yesterday. The weather was changeable so we were very glad of the two exhibitions on at the John Hope Gateway building that kept us out of the rain!


Downstairs, Gold Glass Rubber and Recycling showcases recycled art, sculpture and jewellery from Danish crafters. Everything in this exhibition is amazing, beautiful and fascinating. However, apart from the lovely brooches made by Gitte Helle out of broken porcelain, none of the jewellery seems really wearable (unless on the catwalk or in certain nightclubs). One series of 'art objects' was made largely of chess pieces and I wondered whether in fact these would have been better recycled by packaging them into new 'recycled chess sets'. This exhibition is on until 11 September and is worth checking out.

Upstairs is Found in the Fields a stunning exhibition of lithographs and linoprints from Carry Ackroyd, inspired by poetry by John Clare. The works give a modern interpretation of Clare's work and are full of closely observed scenes from nature, in some cases with excerpts from the poetry being threaded through the illustrations. If you can't get along to the exhibition, Carry's website has a wide selection of her work, including a lot that isn't in this exhibition. The exhibition is on until 4 September and is worth visiting at least once.

After we had seen the exhibitions, we wandered round the Botanic Gardens. On the pond we found a moorhen mother with five of the smallest chicks I've ever seen! Their mother had to rush them into the reeds as the grey heron flew over. I don't think there will be five chicks for much longer, as there are two pairs of sparrowhawks in the Gardens as well as the heron. Not to mention foxes....

Talking of sparrowhawks, one has just flown over our flat. I recognised it by its flight pattern, a few quick wingbeats and then a glide, over and over as it circled the sky.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Windowsill Gardening Update

As you may remember, we have been growing basil and coriander on our windowsill this year. They're both doing well and are a very tasty addition to our meals! (I always think these are the two herbs there is most benefit from growing yourself as they taste so much better fresh than dried). The basil is quite photogenic too as you can see below.


I mentioned in a previous post (which also contains an early photo of the basil and coriander) that we were hoping to get some tomato plants and we now have these, they're still small and are scattered round the house in the sunniest spots we can find (our flat only gets morning sun). The photo below shows the shadows cast by the tomato plants.

For Shadow Shot Sunday

Corstorphine Hill

We had a lovely wander up Corstorphine Hill at lunchtime. It was very warm and humid, with the gathering clouds seeming to promise rain, but it hasn't rained so far!

The hill looks lovely at the moment with all the rosebay willowherb in bloom.

There were lots of soldier beetles about, many of which were feeding on thistles rather than the umbellifers that they seem to usually prefer. Plenty of bees too.

There were lots of rabbits about. One dashed into the rosebay willowherbs at top speed and just where it vanished we noticed a couple of common spotted orchids!

There were a lot of bunnies outside the hotel near Edinburgh Zoo, and I'll share photos of those on Monday, which is after all Bunday!

haiku

our silence -
the chatter of gulls
from the roofs

Attention all Dog Owners!

Dog fouling is a big problem along the Water of Leith as it in many places. It's disgusting that people will use pastic bags to pick up the dog mess but then will throw the bag into the trees. Unfortunately nothing seems to stop them. This anti-fouling sign is more picturesque than most and can be found near the site of Lindsay's Mill alongside the Water of Leith as it passes through Dean Village.

For Signs, Signs