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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer


Elizabeth


  • the birds of the air

    This is Airthrey Loch at the university, almost completely frozen on Sunday, and I imagine it will be even worse today. Wwe had six inches of snow yesterday morning and it froze solid last night as the temperature went down to -12 and it hasn’t reached 0 yet, in spite of bright sunshine. No-one is going anywhere today, and we are busily feeding birds.

    So far today we have seen
    blue tits, coal tits and great tits
    hedge sparrows and house sparrows
    blackbirds and starlings
    chaffinches and goldfinches
    town pigeons and woodpigeons, who have flattened the snow where they have walked all over it, making it easier for small birds to find the seed
    and three reed buntings, shy birds who only come into the garden in very cold weather.

    The forecast is for another really cold night and another very cold day tomorrow before the thaw arrives. Last time we had this much snow and a fast thaw, there was a flood, as it coincided with the spring tides, but by the time the snow melts this will be over and done.

    Other than that I have been reading Thoreau’s Walden for the first time – a rather shameful admission I’d have thought – and, though he was an inspiration to many writers I admire very much, I’m actually finding him a bit of a grumpy old man (though he was, I believe, rather young for the position at the time) and a thumping literary and spiritual snob. It’s a struggle.

    But I do like the comment: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

    I have added a lot more to the Resources pages on the main web-site, mostly blogs, but also three new poetry books. Two of them were published this year but the other one just took me a while to discover – enjoy.


  • deep and crisp and even

    This was our garden on Tuesday. It’s not much different now, so I guess there will be no garlic planted yetawhile. There is much bird activity at the feeders, sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, bluetits and great tits – and pigeons, of course – and the cold weather is bringing in chaffinches, goldfinches and yellowhammers. There were five there this morning – I’ve never seen so many.

    We have mostly stayed in the house and so finally the new look website www.luchair.co.uk is up. It’s a work in progress! There are headings for recipes, but no recipes, and I want to add blog lists to the resources pages, but they will come in time.

    We did go for a walk between showers on Monday, and saw bullfinches on the hawthorns, and buzzards over the fields. We turned for home as the sky clouded over, and saw a deer cross the road, leap the fence and disappear into the trees.I wasn’t quick enough to photograph it, but I did get this:

    The light was fading now, as cloud built up and the sun went down. The city looked wonderful in the snow.


  • walking the territory haikus

    bright birch leaves spinning
    down the still frosty morning
    gold on silver grass

    mist on the river
    heron stalks the reed beds
    light grows, winter bites


  • walking the territory


    It was cold this morning! And damp.I went for a walk along the road out of the village, remembering the camera for once. This is what you see as you leave the houses behind.

    This week I’ve been re-vamping the Lúcháir website. It’s a big process, giving the whole thing a fresher look – more colours, more space and a lighter feel – and a better focus. The process will include small tweaks to this blog, too, now that it covers both the sites.

    As part of the process I wanted to get some photos of the soft rush (the original luachair which inspired me). Here’s one.

    I got quite carried away.

    I love this willow. There is a small burn over there where some people claim to have seen kingfishers. I never have.


    And this is one of the views that sold our new house to me when we first saw it, nearly thirty years ago.


  • Armistice day

    I remember Armistice Day from my childhood as a relic of an outmoded jingoistic attitude that nobody seemed to find relevant. Hardly anyone wore poppies, and nobody wanted to talk about the war. In Liverpool we were still living with undeveloped bomb-sites in the seventies, and we felt it was more than time we moved on and created something new and worthwhile.

    So it seems odd to find it creeping back. I don’t think it’s altogether true that it’s some sort of plot to make our current wars seem acceptable and even noble, though I’m prepared to believe that governments are taking advantage of the phenomenon. It seems to come from somewhere else. A vague anxiety about our place in the world, a feeling that we are surrounded by people we can’t trust, and we need to believe that we can – and should – fight our way out of it.

    I’m not buying it. I know that sometimes you have to fight. And sometimes you find yourself in a fight when you didn’t expect it. But mostly you don’t. Mostly there are better options you should try first. Mostly, war is the worst response you can make, the most destructive, and the most corrupting, and then you finish up having to negotiate anyway.

    But today, with heroes on our minds, I am thinking of three heroes that I know, two in war-time, one in ordinary lfe.

    One is Hugh Shields, a Lovat Scout in the Second Waorld War and an expert in explosives. He seems to have been in everything – Dunkirk, the D-Day landings, the Shetland Bus, helping the resistance in Norway. And then at the end he went to bring home prisoners from the Japanese prisoner-of war camps. What he saw there shocked hi. He held a six-foot soldier worn to a skeleton and light as a child in his arms as he died, and he knew than than war had achieved nothing. When the government sent him the forms to apply for his medals, he put them on the fire, and he wrote back saying ‘I have four sons, and I’m coming home to make pacifists out of the lot of them’. And he did. He took every opportunity to talk to the younger generations about the war, and encourage them to work for peace. He had alzheimers when we knew him, and his grip on the current world became more and more intermittent. But his last message was to our youngest daughter, encouraging her to keep on.

    The second is Charles Rankine, who was a Japanese prisoner of war and suffered terribly. He told me how grateful he was to see the mushroom cloud at Horoshima, because he knew it meant the end of the war. Unlike Hugh, he never became a pacifist at all – in fact quite the reverse, he was often bitter. But as a mining engineer, he was forced to work on the Bridge over the River Kwai, and on one occasion he realised that the Japanese were about to do something with explosives that was going to kill people, and he warned them about it. To the end of his life he wondered if he should have done that, or if he should have let them go ahead, and sabotage the bridge. And when the camp was liberated the commander who had pistol-whipped him (among other things) came and asked for forgiveness, and Charles forgave him. And to the end of his life he wondered about that too. I always said he should, but as I get older, I realise the difficulty of those choices, and honour him.

    The third is going to remain anonymous, because it’s an ongoing story and not mine to tell. But it isn’t only in war that people have to stand up for justice and discipline, and create peace and a new way of living. It’s something we have to do for ourselves in our ordinary lives, every day.


  • James Kirkup Poetry Competition

    Here is a poetry competition which I can wholeheartedly recommend poets to enter.
    First of all, it’s free. Red Squirrel don’t believe in charging for entrance to competitions.
    Second, when I did it last year, it was a thoroughly wonderful experience from start to finish. I met the judges and heard them talk about the care they had taken to read and consider all the entries. The competition attracted work of a very high standard, so to be included in the anthology as I was, is a very affirming event. The organisation was terrific, and the award-giving was a warm and friendly occasion when we got to meet not only other Red Squirrel authors (likewise friendly and very interesting people), but also the staff of South Shields library and James Kirkup enthisiasts who turned out in force.

    So if you’ve ever submitted your poem and paid £5 for the privilege (and more, sometimes, this year), only for it to disappear into a black hole, try this. No-one could guarantee prizes, but you can be sure you entry has been given all the care and respect you could want.

    Details here


  • the territory in November


    What a week this has been! Last weekend I was in Edinburgh for the Radical Book Fair and the AGM of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics but didn’t stay to check it out as I wasn’t feeling up to much, and couldn’t wait to get home. It turned out that I had shingles, which effectualy put paid to any plans I might have had for the week. I don’t think I’ve done much apart from sit by the fire and read thrillers and watch day-time television. My brain went to sleep and I couldn’t take in anything more demanding.

    Outside, however, the garden, the fields and the riverbank moved into winter. It’s strange, you can hear it as you go out of your front door. There are new birds here, different songs, different flight patterns, movements where you don’t expect them. First it was waxwings, moving in a free-flowing mob through the village, over the bridge into Riverside, calling and slinking through the branches. The robins were obviously intimidated, displaying and singing fit to bust on the tree-tops and the top of the telegraph pole. They are still here today, but more scattered, less obtrusive.
    Then on Tuesday and this morning it was long-tailed tits. It’s hard to see them; they are small and timid and neutrally coloured, but you can hear them all the time. They move about in bands too, and whistle to each other as they go. Whenever I hear them I think ‘fairy pipers’ and then feel rather ashamed -it’s such a twee image. But there it is (and never was piping so sad/and never was piping so gay too much Yeats in my adolescence no doubt).

    The trees are magnificent too, losing leaves daily but such rich colours. From my window I can see the last remaining orchard in the village – the orchards of Cambuskenneth Abbey used to be famous – and behind it is the visual equivalent of the Spector wall of sound – a row of yellow Lombardy poplars, and in front of them some tawny beeches and a golden birch. I wanted to photograph it , but I don’t think I could convey the effect, and anyway it would involve the the foreground of other people’s houses.

    The river is full now because of the rain and the spring tides. Sometimes seals come up from the Firth on high tides, and I thought I might have seen one on Friday, just a glimpse of a sleek head and a bac curving below the water. But as I watched, whatever it was came up again and rolled. It was much smaller than I expected, and surely that was a tail and a paw? I think it may have been an otter, the first time I’ve ever seen one here. The it slipped away, and left the river to these swans.


  • where I’ll be tomorrow

    The Radical Book Fair, run by Wordpower Books at the Out of the Blue Drill hall in Edinburgh, is one of the most exciting of the year, and this looks like one of the most interesting events this year.


  • building resilience

    This year is a “mast year” when some trees – particularly oak and beech – suddenly produce massive amounts of seed. It doesn’t mean there’s going to be a hard winter, it’s just a dodge some trees employ to make sure that every so often there’s more seed than the local predators can cope with, and therefore more chance that some of it might germinate.

    It’s a form of resilience building, which is a concept I got from learning about permaculture and which I’m quite interested in just now. The thing is, it’s easy to be green when things are going well. Organic is worth the price, you have time to walk instead of driving, it’s not cold enough to miss the central heating anyway and the garden is coming along quite nicely, so there’s lots of lovely food to cook with —- you know the score.

    But what happens when things get ugly? You default to the car and the junk food, that’s what. Or I do anyway.

    So here’s what I learned about resilience.

    Start slow and get it right. I’m going against the drift of my whole personality here, as I’m a great one for the clean sheet and the big picture. But don’t do that. Make small, well-thought out changes, and let them bed in. Habit and experience are your friends.

    Make your life as easy and efficient as you can, within your green parameters. It’s difficult enough going outside the mainstream; if you add elaborate schemes and gadgets to the mix you are asking for trouble.

    Expect to fail. Build in fall-backs, like freezing meals in batches so good food is as quick and easy as a carry-out in a crisis. And think of what might go wrong. Can you still cook if the electricity is off? or the water? What happens if there’s a flood (we won’t get inundated in our village, as the water will flow onto the other bank of the river, because it’s lower, but we might well be cut off) or heavy snow?

    Don’t see green options as an extra, or a choice, because if you do, it will become a burden and expendable. Stop thinking you are doing the world a favour.

    Make it fun. Build in beauty and joy and peace. Do what you love.

    This post was inspired by what happened around here when life got crazy, but there are many people out there who are busier and even more up against it. How do you build in resilience?


  • building resilience



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