Poetry features prominently at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival, which begins on Wednesday in Scotland’s Book Town. Here, we publish poems by three writers who’ll be appearing at the event.
ENVOI: FOUNTAIN
By Tom Pow
On a humid morning
in the neat Swiss village
of St Livres I come to
Le Fontaine des Amoureux,
a stone trough as long
as a man and deep enough
to drown several. It is dated
eighteen seventy something,
the last digit effaced. I tilt
my head to avoid a hanging
basket of what's pink and
flowering in effusion. I cup
my hands below the beak
of the spout and, as I wash
my face, I say words for you;
imagine, at Le Fontaine
des Amoureux. Then
I cool my hands and wrists
with words for both
our children. The thoughts
are hopes I dress as prayers,
to give them shape and to
free me for the road ahead.
Tom Pow will be reading from his collection, Naranjas, on Saturday, September 25
PUIR HEART
By Josie Neill
A sair hert’s hard tae thole.
It’s that tender-
The hert in your briest,
Is it no?
Its that much work tae dae,
Druntin an fashin,
Flytin an fumin,
Ye’d think it’d
Be med o fierdier stuff.
Nor bluid an gowpin tobies,
An wee bieldie compairtments
For greetin
An lauchin
An rowin
An luvin.
Josie Neill will read from her collection, There’s Ma Mammy Wavin on Sunday, October 26
MERMAID INDOORS
By Basil du Toit
The human had unsettled her – his
breathing difficulties underwater,
the puckering of his fingertips,
stinging of his eyes, the raw fish diet
that didn't agree with his stomach.
Now, she was sitting in his house,
smelling like a shoreline that has
been baked rancid in the low tide,
the great flail of her tail-fin curled
awkwardly backwards out of sight.
Her body spread the coldness of
iceboxes or shipping containers;
elements of salt and ammonia
composed her presence, the rank
mephitic odour of a dying fish.
Her gaze was fixed and ankylose,
stiff cellulose, unblinking, bare,
hardened by the eye-withering
sharpness of ocean saltiness;
blue scales speckled the carpet.
She spoke with the sadness of
a sea animal which has laboriously
learnt the one-sided language
of men, incapable of addressing
the alien, disfigured half of her.
She spoke of dualities – natural
and supernatural, middle class
and beatnik, two circulations
(one where the blood ran cold)
mingling fish and mammal.
She exclaimed her wonderment
at soft warm towels, humidifiers
and scented candles from John
Lewis; but mostly she spoke of
that world given up to satisfy
her keen, occasional taste for men –
shoals of bonefish and barracuda,
the perils of propellor injuries
and dredge fishing, dark realms
of maelstrom, wreck and kraken;
and she kept coming back to
that bathroom of his, fragranced
by rosemary and eucalyptus,
with the curved slipper bath
that was far too small to hold her.
Basil du Toit wins the Wigtown Poetry Prize for this poem. The runner up is Mark Gallacher. Both will appear at a special prizegiving event on October 2, alongside Wigtown Scots Prize-winner Robert Duncan and runner up Lynn Valentine; Wigtown Scottish Gaelic Prize-winner Eoghan Stewart and runner up Gillebride MacMillan; Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize-winner Jane McKie and Dumfries & Galloway Fresh Voice Award-winner Carolyn Yates. (All poems can be read at wigtownpoetryprize.com/poetry-competition/2021-prize-winners)
The Wigtown Book Festival 2021 runs September 22-October 4. Full programme and ticket information at www.wigtownbookfestival.com
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