The word-kitchen

'Word-smith': not a brilliant metaphor, is it, when you think about it? 'Play-wright' is good: although it apparently began as an insult, it seems to me to capture the intricacy of writing for the stage, the requirement that everything precisely fit together; and of course it's also rather a good pun. But while 'word-smith' expresses an appropriate combination of heat and violence with creative skill, it doesn't ring true technically. Smiths turn one lump of metal into a finished piece of work, whereas writing is an act of assembly. But how about a chef? He combines things from all over the world, with care, craftsmanship, and an experimental spirit; and he also mutilates them in various ways before and after he does. This seems a very good analogy.

So it shall be the title of my official writing blog. Which may also from time to time show off the produce of my regular kitchen. Funny how these things just come together, isn't it?

My goals are several. In this one place I can bring together such of my existing work as is worth it; in this space I can think aloud and comment on it; and hopefully the existence of this blog will, by some combination of duty with vanity, induce me to get off my bum and actually do some writing now and again.

As I have today! This piece came about by two stages. I got the idea and much of the imagery looking out of the window as my train crossed Scotland from Edinburgh to Glasgow this morning; and scribbled it down for something to do, primarily as an exercise in pentameter. I wasn't very satisfied, so I thought no more about it. But this evening, at Glasgow Uni's Literary Society or, to use its marvellously Soviet-sounding shorthand, LitSoc, I and others got into a long chat with our speaker, Alan Riach. He is the chair of Scottish Literature (yes, the chair - for the WORLD) and we spoke about, among other things, the Scots language. I felt suddenly that my scribbling of earlier wanted to be put into Lallans: that would give it life, somehow. And indeed as soon as I got started I found not only that a dialect voice made the thing meatier and more vivid: it also furnished it, out of nowhere I knew of consciously, with a piece of folk-song for its central image to interact with and with a nicely ambiguous ending depending on the colloquial Scots confusion of 1st person singular and plural.

So here, to start us off (see what I did there?), it is:


‘Frae the laund o the gowden an green’

Sae gangs some auld ill-myndit sang; but nou
A see the laund o black an frostit white:
Snaw mizzlin aff yon mirk an riekie braes;
An scuddie trees; an empie furrit fields.
Aye, empie; but the wintry licht, sae cauld
An snell the sel o it, in leamin doun
Haes made the broun yirt juist sae wairm an bien
As gowd coud iver be. Ach, gowd! Whit’s gowd?
It’s trumphery an whirligig is aw!
Ay but thare’s mair o walth in gowden fields
O wheat an aits, nor in yer pailaces
An temples; still an on thare’s mair again
In snell an gowden licht that shiens an kythes
Whaur yon daurk nakit fields will growe again,
An growe again. Thare’s gowd eneuch tae mak
The hail warld rich an fouthie; gowd eneuch
For us.