Congratulations Ms Hadfield

What a wonderful thing to hear on Radio 4 amongst Gaza, porridge and credit crunch. Jen Hadfield wins the T.S. Elliot prize for poetry – and even though the lady in the Guardian article calls the prize ‘probably the most important prize in English poetry’ (that phrase is giving me some weird echo of the Carlsberg ads: ‘probably the best….’) – there is a whole lot of Shetland in there with all the other originality and talent. Shetland language and Shetland ‘place’ all back at the heart of poetry where it belongs, and has been before. Congratulations and thanks to Ms Hadfield. And to Robert Alan Jamieson who, she told us on the radio, had brought her to writing poetry in the first place. Which I suppose connects her even more strongly to the place via history and lineage than ever just living there could have done on its own (see Jamieson’s recent Nort Atlantik Drift  ,written in Shetlandic with English transaltions).

Hoy, Orkney by Yvonne Gray

Do we have an angle on this – apart from being overjoyed at this poet taking centre stage? Aye, well, maybe we do. We have published three poets from the very far north of the UK, and all with that magic ability to be saturated and bathed in the place, the history and specifically the languages – but to transform those ingredients into the most forward-looking, history-is-a-rolling-walkway poetry.  Two of these poets are from, or live permanently, on Orkney – Pamela Beasant and Yvonne Gray - and, of course, the collosus of the Grey Coast, George Gunn, is rooted and lives in Thurso. That is not to say that we are trying to spin our way to some bogus link with Hadfield’s glory. It is only to say that when many eyes turn north to investigate the riches in her work, they will find also the place and it’s history. And they may well find these poets as well.

David