Sonnet

Here is a sonnet. My, what a twist! It made me £12.50 and is thus, for so long as the capitalist system prevails, the best thing I have ever written.


'Sonnet: To Orkney'

The whispering wind makes waves across the moor:
Brown waves on land, and grey-green waves on sea.
In times of doubt and pain, how glad I'd be
To sit and watch them on your quiet shore,
Where I have sat so many times before.
You islands are a haunted place for me,
But yours are ghosts I'm ever glad to see:
The ghosts of happy times to come no more.
How strange to think that you have ever been
The world's last land, the seat of warlike kings,
The battlefield of clashing heathen hosts!
And now the bloody memories you've seen
Join with my own: all insubstantial things,
The windy, whispering voices of your ghosts


Something that came up the other night in pub-discussion with Prof. Riach, Chairman of Scottish Literature at Glasgow and, less impressively, the world, was the very local nature of much Scottish literature - two small examples of which I humbly contribute above. So many people following the trail blazed by MacDiarmid have belonged identifiably of a particular place. Edinburgh had Garioch and, in another way (though she'd be livid to be seen in this sort of boozy masculine company), Spark. Being a Glasgow poet is practically a profession of its own and I still can't believe Edwin Morgan's really dead! *sniff* Ahem. Orkney or course has Muir and Brown; Skye, and all Gaeldom, MacLean. MacCaig and Crichton Smith were both between Highlands and Lowlands, each with a particular bit of each.

Sue me if I missed your favourite, but the point is that these direct links with actual communities and cultures are a very effective antidote to the sort of ridiculous Victorian nationalism that Prof. Riach gives the splendid name of "haggis-vomit".

We thought perhaps that if the construction of Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land is ever to be finished (danger of burning gold; hard-hats to be worn by order) there will have to be a discovery of the local there, as a way of breaking the hangover of an imperial culture and literature. Scotland and England have both been distorted by that imperial legacy in their separate ways, for all that it has put us in touch with such a magnificent worldwide literature in the English language.

Scotland's problem is that, with Scotland such a recognisable brand (although to be fair many foreigners make the justifiable assumption that it's not really real) there is only one academic department studying literature made by Scots in Scotland in the world. England's problem is that, with English the common language of earth, there's apparently none at all studying literature produced by English people in England.