A week ago I would have wanted to write a blog entry entitled ‘Poetry fiddles’ – that is, poetry fiddles while Rome burns. There was a lot of stuff getting me down – people with one or two bursaries under their belt who kept sending me another goddam poem just about oystercatchers. (Don’t get me wrong – I love oystercatchers, I know them and their nests and their chicks, and I rate them in the same way as I really do love the weird, magical old guy up the road who wears an off-orange waistcoat and spits a lot – but anyone who describes an oystercatcher’s call as ‘ethereal’ has disappeared up a dark place: they just haven’t listened.) But coming to my rescue were the poets at the Ullapool book festival, dragging my disillusioned iron out of the fire. Donny O’Rourke got it right through the near tears of a late-night poetry session when he said that poets can, and have, guided us forward. Shone a light on the dark path ahead. Told us who we might be. A hair’s breadth from being sloppy sentimental. Teetering on the brink of nonsense. But not falling in.
So there were Richard Price, Anne Frater, Rody Gorman and George Gunn making peoples’ hair stand on end with poetry that demanded to be taken seriously. On pain of death. Nothing less. They were connected to their moment in history, their place in the wide world, their craft and what it just might be able to rescue us from. Shining.
David
