Bet Low, Calm Water, (at Mill Bay, Hoy) 1972 The Surfer Alone at Scapa, I watch a young surfer discard drab day-clothes on the beach before entering the cold September water. Climbing onto her polychromatic board, she moves into the shape of wave after wave, her body fear-free as she goes down and rises again and again. At a shipless Scapa, far out from the shore, she is showing me something about living in the moment, high on the waves, gathering grace. A Gift The streen, my mother’s word for last night. She passed it on to me, stressing the vowel sound, proudly, before I crossed the Pen ..read more

Calgary Bay I a) Chunk of shortbread river-cut – In morning sun the water thinned to biscuit dust – Tropic-pale shapes of sand curved like bodies – Isle-pools gleaming white-cold – b) Here folded into her crescent of fern – Beach grass shimmered – Gilded silk – The tide and gold salt where particles fall then crackle – Light – Feather-thin valves – The ocean running to its source – Beginning and ending the same – c) I write my name with my bare sole on the dust – We-stuck – It burns – Become smaller in the sea-freeze – Content – I watch seagulls fly like sky-fish to their personal distance ..read more

Easdale I dreamt of the village on fetid London streets, bees drowning in foxglove bells, flooded quarries overspill, the broken houses and the standing houses, memory of hands pressing on slate. I walk the way I did back then, carefully, balancing the fall of water on either side, dizzy with want for the rough touch of grass on my feet, the call of a northerly storm.  Lynn Valentine writes between dog walks on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. Her work is widely published and appears in places like Northwords Now, The Blue Nib and Ink, Sweat & Tears. She is organising her f ..read more

A Korean Odyssey: Island Hopping In Choppy Water Michael Gibb Camphor Press, 2020 Michael Gibb’s new book is a passionate meditation on a country that is rapidly changing, yet deeply bound to tradition. In this extract we join the author as he unwraps the story of a 17th century poet who, after being exiled to an island in South Korea, produced some of his most compelling work. Exile often meant a death sentence for Korean courtiers who fell out of favour with the ruling elite during the turbulent years of the Yi Dynasty (1392–1897). Banishment came with the territory. One in four government ..read more

A Korean Odyssey: Island Hopping In Choppy Water Michael Gibb Camphor Press, 2020 Michael Gibb’s new book is a passionate meditation on a country that is rapidly changing, yet deeply bound to tradition. In this extract we join the author as he unwraps the story of a 17th century poet who, after being exiled to an island in South Korea, produced some of his most compelling work. Exile often meant a death sentence for Korean courtiers who fell out of favour with the ruling elite during the turbulent years of the Yi Dynasty (1392–1897). Banishment came with the territory. One in four government ..read more

D.H. Lawrence wrote the first poems for his 1923 collection, Birds, Beasts and Flowers, including ‘Pomegranate’, near Florence in 1920 – a hundred years ago this September. Ever restless, Lawrence moved on from the Tuscan villa where he wrote several Birds, Beasts and Flowers poems, to Venice in October. Whereas at Venice For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. which is a wise choice, for it is No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in flower It was so long ago, and I another woman then But no, I have not forgotten them, flowering pomegranates Oh so red, a ..read more

Honey Island Melita lured us, all Homer's fault, the tip of a tiff over consonants between the vowels of Mljet and Malta. The islands and mountains in conference; round about here's where Napoleon halted, let's float in the shudder of continents and the silver foil sea that etches the flanks of a rock without bees, where you step down the basalt ledges, past grub-torpedoed butterfly trees, lizard inspecting the Adriatic edge. Ask round the bars for your fleece. The Aleppo pine does tai chi in the sky, with cones that spin one hundred metres in summer bonfires. But while we water ski the resta ..read more

Barrel Jellyfish, Hell’s Mouth, Llŷn Peninsula Bodies dropped by the tide shape your path, what you thought you knew, all opposites sounding true: land is deadly, ocean is home. You nudge their congealed fog, circling them with your words: blue cosmos spun into an organ, upside-down trifles in glass bowls, but solid with inner architecture of chambers and compass… no heart, no lung, no brain. All the same you know what song or cold fire burns to turn them on an axis, living by pulses, bright travellers finding asylum in the fathoms and fathoms of darkness, which for you is no alien practice ..read more

By Ben Lowings It was a Spanish seaman who christened the sweet and ancient isles of the Solomons so. He was minded of Ophir, supposedly where the treasure from King Solomon’s mines was heaped. Its hallowed landing grounds – naturally encompassed in a British protectorate – were the stage for the great opening battle in what was arguably the twentieth century’s deciding clash between the United States and the Japanese Empire. In our own time, the elegant string of islets has sometimes crept into the world news agenda because of an unfortunate period of sectarianism. Officers from friendly nei ..read more

Placing the Broch in the Landscape after Lotte Glob I bear it through a very slight breeze,  tread east to west. From where it sits it chants, the crown cracks the blue  sky gown. The base takes root, then shoots  from its seed on the top of this outcrop.  Lichen glows between slabs, being part slope,  part shelter. I listen into another dimension.  Something else takes over, grows.  Closer, look, sniff and touch. There beside it, not a place for regret.  I wear it over my heart.  The meadow pipit picks at grass by the door. Jars with words from Ps ..read more