TENTSMUIR NNR COASTLINES: SEA POETRY COMPETITION AND STANZA EVENT - POETRY COMPETITION PAMPHLET PDF, 739.56KB

Tentsmuir NNR
Coastlines: Sea poetry
competition and StAnza event

Wednesday 4 March 2020
Byre Theatre, St Andrews

Programme

Welcome

Welcome to Coastlines: Poetry inspired by Tentsmuir National Nature
Reserve, a competition organised by Scottish Natural Heritage to
celebrate the Year of Coasts and Waters.

We are delighted to welcome our guest poets Valerie Gillies, Anna
Crowe, Jim Crumley and Maureen Phillip who will be reading their own
sea-inspired poems.

This programme contains all the entries from the competition. We hope
you enjoy reading them as much as we have.

Molly Aldam, Graduate Placement, SNH

                                  2

Running order

14:00: Poetry readings from Valerie Gillies, Anna Crowe
and Jim Crumley

14:50: Comfort break

15:00: Multi-sensory poem performed by Maureen Phillips,
Rachel and Ariane from PAMIS

15:10 Jim Stewart's poems read by Pete Cunningham

15:15: Presentation of awards and readings by winners of
poetry competition

15:25: Audience Q&A with the poets and Tom
Cunningham, Tentsmuir NNR manager

15:45: end

                               3

Anna Crowe

Co-founder of StAnza, her translations from Catalan and Spanish
(Bloodaxe and Arc) brought a Society of Authors Travelling
Scholarship. Her poetry has been translated and anthologised, and
recorded for the Poetry Archive. She was awarded the Peterloo Prize
(twice), the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, and three PBS
Choices/ Recommendations. She enjoys collaborating with artists in
other disciplines, such as painters, sculptors, photographers, textile
artists and calligraphers. Her third collection is Not on the Side of the
Gods (Arc, September 2019).

                                     4

Jim Crumley

Jim Crumley is a Scottish nature writer and the author of 40 books.
Although his books are essentially prose works, poetry features in
almost all of them to one extent or another. He has been short-listed for
a Saltire Society book award, the Wainwright Prize, the Boardman-
Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the Bamff International
Mountain Book Award in Canada. His poems have also appeared in
many newspapers and journals including The Independent, The
Scotsman and The Scots Magazine. A unique honour for a native of
Dundee was to compose a series of short poems which are displayed
on mosaic mileposts along the length of the Dighty Burn that flows to
the north and east of the city and into the Tay at Balmossie just across
the river from Tentsmuir. His most recent books are a quartet of titles
based on the seasons: the first of these, The Nature of Autumn, was
published in 2016, and the final one, The Nature of Summer, is due out
in June. He was a columnist for The Courier for 20 years until 2018.

                                    5

Valerie Gillies

Valerie Gillies was born in Canada in 1948 but grew up in Southern
Scotland. She has an MA and an MLitt from the University of
Edinburgh, where she wrote her thesis on William Drummond’s Flowres
of Sion. She was also a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of
Mysore in India, which has continued to have an important impact on
her poetry. She is married to William Gillies, Professor Emeritus of
Celtic Languages and Literature at Edinburgh University, with whom
she has three children, and they live in Edinburgh. Along with Will
Maclean, William and Valerie Gillies collaborated on St Kilda Waulking
Song (1998), which features the poem by the same name in its original
Gaelic and in a contemporary translation. In another family
collaboration, she has contributed poems to the jewellery catalogues of
her daughter Maeve, a Manhattan-based designer.

                                   6

Multi-sensory poetry from Pamis
We are delighted to have an original multi-sensory Tentsmuir poem,
written by Maureen Phillip and performed with support from Arianne
Holmes and Rachel Frame. In multi-sensory storytelling, a story (or
poem!) is told through all five senses, allowing those who communicate
less verbally to connect.

Maureen Phillip
Maureen is the Senior PAMIS Family Support and Development
Director. Having an MA (Hons) in English , Maureen combines her love
of literature, stories, plays, poetry and nature with her love of people
with profound and multiple learning disabilities, and creates multi-
sensory stories that enable people to access storytelling through the
senses.

Rachel Frame
Rachel loves people. She loves participating in multi-sensory
storytelling, attending the theatre, music, travelling and spending time
with her family and friends.

Arianne Holmes
Arianne enjoys being involved in multi-sensory storytelling. She is
bright and bubbly with a great sense of humour. She also loves
swimming, travelling, bouncing to music on a trampoline and eating
cake

                                    7

Competition entries

         8

Winning entry

The Return of the Eagle with the Sunlit Eye
by Kathleen Gray

Welcome back, wise bird of the waters.
  Welcome back, you belong to us.
     Welcome back, guardian of seas.
       Welcome back, you are safely home.

We know this place. Passed down from
the old ones. They spoke of the land between
two estuaries: great Tatha and little sister, Eden.
A washed, water map.
Our friend the great North Sea still strums sand;
greeting us again. Her bounty of salty, sweet
seal provides. The clarsach ebbs, flows, the tune
of tides. Our presence completes this shore song.
Memory of wing, feather, fur, claw, scale, fin.
All that is gone, will return. We, the harbingers
of hope.

       Welcome back, great soarer of the skies.
     Welcome back, to your rightful place.
  Welcome back, a return from exile.
Welcome back, to your sunlight eye.

                                   9

Runner up

Tentsmuir by Liz Taylor

Shifting sands, drifting sands,
storm and spindrift lifting sands,
an ever changing line.
Where Tay and Eden greet the sea,
creation and destruction hail
the shifting Sands of Time.

                              10

Runner up

Tentsmuir by Alexia Grosjean

Sink, softly,
into the silken sands.

Sea-spray stings
and
seal-song sings.

Above,
clouds catch currents
and
sea-eagles soar, serenely.

                               11

A winter’s day at Tentsmuir by Mary Harwood

We walked the spongy dunes in a zig-zag pattern, avoiding the pools,
on our way to the beach, out of sight in front of us.
The sand became looser, we knew we were near.

At the top of a short climb it was there, ahead of us,
miles and miles of amber sand and never-ending sea.
We hurried on down to it, glad we were here.

The wind was behind us as we walked, watching the shifting sands
hurrying, lemming like, on their way to meld with the foaming waves.
The day was delightful, cold but clear.

                                    12

Untitled by Barry Carter

The wind, the sea, and sands -- confluence of dreams
is hunting fingerprints, a ministry
of nature's hands. The moon drowns, drawn to dunes'
hypnotic sands, gold drains from the kingfisher's
wings, and winter feigns juggling suns.
Forests whisper, rumours run, and spring
reaches out from a mirror to retrieve
and to put back the broken piece of glass.

waves are star seeking spears, songbird's shrill
caroling nears, the wind's faint drumming distils
invocations of fishing kings and wishes of wistful mothers
who gather near waters that are wielding incantations.

                                      13

Lucky Scalp III
Being scalped, off Tentsmuir by Beth McDonough

Negotiate that blue expanse of firth,
contoured on some navigation chart,
to find an awkward reef called Lucky Scalp.

Both on paper and online,
the O.S. also terms that fishy scrap
the oddball, Lucky Scalp.

Google on. Check all elsewhere.
Canmore states the same,
but row a little further, read

fragments which can just confess
that "in local dialect", it may be known
as Lucky Scaup.

Scaupie too, in fisher mouths,
their Fifer accents roughing up
good English and that given name.

But oddly, Scaup means mussel bed
in sloppy Scots. Strange, how many molluscs cling
to the ballast dumped as Lucky Scalp.

                                     14

Goodbye to Zephyrs by Tom Rist
It’s not the sea that’s lonely
though the waves break on the shore
and the skies stretch emptily away
and the breakers roar,

though the groynes reach to the deepness
and the deepness crushes man,
though countless cubic tones of weight
is the ocean’s span.

It’s that the sea is nothing,
unconscious in its fire,
and careless of the watching me
that is its choir.

There is no triton here
no Thetis and no mer,
only the unintelligence
of the empty air.

Goodbye to zephyrs then,
the personified charade
of the world that feels my sadness
on the long promenade.

                                     15

Nature at its best by Duncan Brown

Tentsmuir is full of wonderful sights

Not just through the days but also the nights

Gems hidden deeply, jewels to be found

Wonders of nature upon heavenly ground

Wispy sands, fast flowing tides

Seals on sandbanks and birds in hides

Swirling winds whistling through tall pine trees

As waves come crashing in off rough seas

Avenues of forest like Alice in wonderland

Unlike an ever changing picture of shifting sand

Eider ducks and Oystercatchers capture the eye

Like the shimmering of wings in a crystal blue sky

Highland cattle roam amongst marsh orchid and ragged robin

Whilst inquisitive seals are frequently seen bobbin’

Wading birds like plovers and geese gather in their masses

Whilst photographers hope for the elusive otter to emerge from the grasses

Signs of history in the way of coastal defences

Which whilst we reflect allows us to connect with our natural senses

                                        16

And the ice house that once allowed salmon to be preserved

Gives the Natterer bats the home and protection deserved

Yes Tentsmuir is full of wonderful surprises

Whether it be from when the sun sets or from the moment it rises

But no matter what time the wind blows within nature’s calendar year

The ghostly sound of R.A.F. jets you feel you can still hear

So if you are looking for adventure please visit Tentsmuir

As you won’t be disappointed that is for sure

And whether you visit as a family or just on your own

You’ll have discovered one of best wonders of nature ever to be known.

                                       17

the Cradle of Tentsmuir Point by Ewan Jenkins

the tide rolls and laps toward the heath,
rushing to touch and always received,
receding as the moonlight wanes,
frothing forward at the sun's last gleams.
we sense our birthplace on this site of intimacy:
exhaled onto the sparse shore,
met by wildflowers waving tall
stones smooth from the caress of an endless love,
thick grasses, and the bite of storms,
and there, a future of community and canopy
sheltering abundance beneath verdant, mingling crowns
this was the land of heat and light
and below our feet ran the veins of life
drinking and feeding from a shared and earthen deep.

we learned of shadows;
we hid our glistening backs
from the flying ones.
strange legs clackled toward us,
great grey bodies basked in the sun.
we crawled on our wet bellies,
half-liquid children,
urged by a secret urge;
fulfilling the ocean's desire, fulfilling our promise to the sun,

                                      18

to walk into the alchemical cauldron
and live form, after form, after form.

here now we stand at the windswept wasteland
the ocean coming endlessly on,
we meet her gaze, and with a nod,
acknowledge the home we came from.

                                     19

Soothings by Katalin Patnaik

Worries take me to the shore
And like a thousand times before
I say what I always used to say:
May the Tay take them away;
May the Tay take them away.

Memories rush back at me
- the rising waves of my psyche.
The shifting sand seems to prey:
May the Tay take them away;
May the Tay take them away.

Salty water streams on my face
The drops fall down in a crazy race
Dolphins and seals are wailing today:
May the Tay take them away;
May the Tay take them away.

Obnoxiously, birds speed by
Soaring and chirping high in the sky
Teaching me grace through their play:
Let the Tay take them away;
Let the Tay take them away.

Along I run with dragonflies
                                   20

My grief grows wings before my eyes
I know clearly: woes can’t stay,
Because the Tay takes them away;
Because the Tay took them away.

                                   21

A Winter’s Day Beach Walk by Leslie Moonlight

On a cold raw day on Tentsmuir beach,
there was not a soul to be seen,
or even a bird, or a ship in sight.

In the distance noisy thunder was heard, but soon to be mistaken,
for army practice gun shooting, from over the water at Barry Buddon.
Without a drop of rain pouring down in my direction,
a wonderful rainbow appeared to brighten up the sky.

Suddenly a blustery, gutsy, wind started to blow top sand across the beach,
that it made spectacular twisting and winding movements,
that looked like speedy Sidewinder snakes, dancing to the waters edge.

The tide was on the turn, and nothing could hold back its foaming waves,
from landing on the beach, and certainly not,
the on mass defensive Sidewinders, engaging to deter it.

The battle commenced as both enemies crashed head on,
to such effect, that the Sidewinders, bounced straight off the rolling waves,
that turned them into a mist of spray, lost forever more.

                                        22

A Tentsmuir Calendar by Roderick Manson
January

Sea summits show too much venom to last beyond the ice crack calm.

February

The dunes of tomorrow are never the dunes of today.

March

War may not come but defences will always be here.

April

Life thrives in the passing shelter of reflected water peace.

May

Stained glass whirrs and flutters in the shimmering heat of spring.

June

The shadow-caster has gravestone wings; death is a hunger of the sky.

July

Shades of green ripple in the summer winds, murmuring waves to the shore.

August

Conflagration without flame and smoke; there are fires enough to burn.

                                        23

September

Look to the sea; the horizon will not be there long.

October

Tail chases body to russet-bury the seeds of the coming life.

November

Sealed the cycle of seasons with a birthing in the fall of the year.

December

The lifelong day has twenty-four hours; all that shifts is the balance of lights.

                                         24

Winter Solstice at Tentsmuir by Ian Stevenson
For Chloe

The weather drags the watchers in
Their blackened hooves cut
Half-moon statutes into the pathways.
There is no motion left in their bodies
A stilled beauty burns delicate.
Sunset and breath become ghosts.
This is the land of water
Awakened
Its white light perfected.
The solstice flares, sensuous
Empties its shadows upon the shore.
The beach grass bites at the legs that brush too close
Too close
The wind cups them like puppets.
A monument of breath.
A rainbow wraps itself against the cold.
Rain, rain,
And the song of rain
Let fall
Times end.

The rain has brought the wood to this place.
There are no waves here,
Only the standing sea
Howling white
Beneath the glowing
Green ribbons of cloud.

Here it has nothing
Here not even the wind can drag it away.
It is boiling in its own madness
Hearing the hooves of something warm passing
Whispering to itself.
Lost perplexed an empty reflection of frailty.
And the geese returned to their other world
And the seals flock to where the fish thundered
All of time is emptied into a single coil of sand.

The paths have rusted into the grass
                                        25

Winter hangs old from the branches
Wax dark dry.
Let the winds blow like dreams across the sand.
Let the moon steal into her shadow.

A birth begins
In this unquiet place.
The deer have returned
Astonished.

                                     26

Sea Eagle by Marc Brady

As I trudge through the forest as far as I can see,
I hear the sea eagle tripling away near the coastal sea,
As I walk to the beach, sand beneath my feet,
I hear whispers in the clouds, the sea eagles are out to play.

                                    27

Nature was her playground by Jodi Glass

   The river long running from north Scotland, on its way to the north sea.

     The minute it lands in Tentsmuir beach, it’s covering toes running in

              and out of welcoming cold water, in hot summers.

washing sand off to be replaced by more. Sea eagles fly, bird sounds unique
                                    to

  Tentsmuir. You don't get Forest entrances or small birds at the east sands
                                   beach

walk through trees and Forest paths. To read the sky. Sun shining and clouds
                                  dancing

A six year old is laughing. Sand dunes not yet reached by every new wave, is
                                now her slide.

                         Nature was her playground.

Giggling in delight as she slides down, just to climb up. For hours on end. Only
                      interrupted by paddling to cool down.

                     Sand trailing behind every footstep.

  The tide is coming up, time to leave by the trees. With birds and squirrels
                            fleeing past high up.

         A hidden beach, found by accident, but an afternoon delight.
                                       28

The laughter of a six year old, playing in river water and on sand dunes.

                     Is a memory locked in forever.

Take the 42 from Dundee, go past Linksie and my auntie’s house, you’re
                           halfway there.

                                   29

Strandloopers by Finola Scott
Mesolithic Camp, Old Quarry Tentsmuir

This amber season of ripening, she wakes
to the high chatter of geese. Shivering she turns
towards last night's embers. Recalls the laughter
at the meal, the victory songs after the hunt.
Pale sun winks through chinks in the hut
lures her to the rich treasures of the shore.
She's glad the hunters chose her.

Soon their task will be complete; it will be time
to head home to where mothers nurse the babies.
She will miss this shifting place. Miss the seals'
barks tangling with tide-crash. Miss the pull
of purl water on the humped sandbar, miss the sear
of guillemots arrowing the blue. Her mouth floods
at the thought of blood-dark kelp and ladies tresses,

She's proved herself. The young seals caught
innocent at haul-outs will feed the camp
through the Dark Time. She knows she has earned
a pelt to warm her dreams. They are all heroes.
That sand-bound bulk, shore stranded, will tide them
bellies full, through the long dimming, She takes
a fish hook from among the flints, goes out.

                                   30

31

Tentsmuir National Nature Reserve

All photos © Lorne Gill/SNH

                                32