Forest Poetry

“Thank you so much for booking on to our Creative Writing Workshop at Abriachan Forest Trust tomorrow (March 13th). Please bring your usual writing materials (be that pad and pen or laptop) and some warm/waterproof clothing in case we want to take a wander round the grounds for inspiration.”

It’s not the first time I have been to Abriachan Forest and written poetry in the forest classroom. It’s not the first time either that I have driven up the steep hill with its winding road, single track and passing places. It’s not the first time I missed the turning and had to turn around. I was the first time that I have taken a travel sick friend with me and pulled over into farm gateways for fresh air stops every so often.

The warm and waterproof clothing was not required. It was wet and windy and no one suggested a walk around the place for inspiration. We had all we needed with poems to oil the creative wheels, a warm stove blasting out heat, a pot of tea and a tin of biscuits.

The workshop – the Jessie Kesson Workshop began at 2.00.  It was lead, not by Jessie, but someone who had won an award and is poet in residence at Moniack Mhor Writing Centre just outside of Inverness.

Extracts from “The Wild Bird Passes” provided our first task – picking phases from her work and weaving them into our own prose or poetry.

I reach the dark heart of the forest. Trees crowd together, shoulder to shoulder, blocking out light. The air tastes dry and musty. Ancient trees, not willing to bow, loom high. There’s little colour, no bright green of moss, no red flash of wild flower. Brown parades a thousand shades. And silence – no bird song erupts in the quiet, only the low moan and slow creak of trees as the air stirs.  Unseen eyes watch and a vague sense of threat strokes my skin.

I might read a lot of poetry, and write a lot, but I don’t always understand it. We read through “The Wood Pile” by Robert Frost. It’s set in a forest. There’s a bird flying about. There’s a wood pile. It’s not a recently felled tree chopped up. I have seen enough woodpiles in my time, in various forests dotted about the Inverness district. It didn’t really occur to me to question why the wood pile was apparently forgotten. Other workshop attendees suggested the woodcutter had died. Here’s my take on it:-

The Wood-Pile

This wood pile,

One of many,

Not forgotten,

But seasoning,

Dreams of the table,

The chair, the crib

In the next life

Craft, the best of

Skill and fashioning

Takes time

Patience and waiting

Too soon

Too new from the felling

And the wood splits

And splinters

But the waitng,

Waiting, waiting

Seems endless

There’s a second verse which I like less and will work on, maybe. In it another wood pile dreams of a fire and flames and a stove. I’m not sure it’s needed or adds anything to the poem. The thing about poetry is that you can give a voice to things that don’t have one.

Our third prompt was from Sorely MacLean’s poem “Hallaig”. There is something that I find stirring about Gaelic – both written and read. There was no one to read the Gaelic version. Yet again I’m not sure I understood what was going on. There were lots of place names, and people names with too many consonants and not enough vowels but we stumbled through them.  Writing from the viewpoint of tree was a challenge. What do trees see? What changes do they live through? What commentary might they make of the short life span of fleeting forms?

I’m not posting my poem. Polished up a bit, it might be submitted to a competition. I loved the work of some of the other writers there. My friend, my travel sick companion, wrote a lovely poem. The tree, standing tall, was thinking about the seeds it had sent out, whether it had sired a forest or not.

It was a good couple of hours, not too many people to make you feel threatened, not too few to make you wonder why no one else was there. It was a comfortable environment to share and everyone was very encouraging. There was talk of setting up a regular creative writing group at Abriachan. Count me out. Much as I love poetry, I don’t love winding uphill roads, single track with passing places.

The homeward journey was easier to navigate but we stopped often to settle unsettled stomachs along the way.  I’m not sure if the unsettled stomachs are indicative of bad driving, bad roads or bad digestive systems – or a combination of all three. Keeping up a conversations didn’t seem to help.

It was nice to let someone else lead a workshop. Saturday is looming and Breathe Writers are meeting at the Bike Shed. Pencils and paper at the ready…

Sussing Out the Secrets to a Short Story

I spoke to a friend earlier this week and mentioned his absence at the Moniack Mhor inspired weekly writing classes. Discovering that it was all about short stories, characters, settings and so on, he declared that he had been there, done it, bought the T-shirt and written numerous stories. Come to think of it, so have I, but it didn’t stop me.

We began with creating a character. Claire gave us a list of things and we set to the task. I like my man Ivan. He’s not a remarkable character, but once placed in a setting and given something to talk about, he became interesting. It seems that he has the potential to feature in a series of stories according to the folks around the table.

Not allowed to simply read through the list, we were to imagine finding a bag, and the contents of the bag would reveal the character.  Some people described the bag in detail and there was always something in the bag that made people go “Ah”.

The bag was resting against a wall beside the bus stop. It was just a plastic carrier with a supermarket logo in primary colours. A quick look around, an empty road, no returning person.

There was an elaborate Mother’s Day card poking out of the top of the bag. A huge vase of flowers covered the front with purple petals picked out in soft cardboard, and a sprinkling of glitter. There was nothing subtle about it – purchased for a mother most definitely loved.

A bag of bird feed nestled next to the card. It was from the farm and poultry shop on the other side of town. Not your usual peanuts or suet balls. Something for hens perhaps? Maybe he kept hens. But no. There was a home-made looking magazine printed on cheap paper with the title “The Pigeon Fancier”. In a police station the same sort of thing might have had pictures of local criminals, but these pages were filled with photographs of pigeons, artfully posed, eying the camera, feathers smoothed and oiled.

I warned you that he wasn’t a remarkable person. At the end of the road where I live there is a man with a shed full of pigeons. There are quite few other birds that settle on the roof of his house and along the wooden fence. It has a feel about it like visitor’s time in a prison, chatting through the bars.

The next task was to write a setting. My man Ivan disliked anything to do with football – so I took him out of his comfort zone and into a football stadium.  I have been to one or two games. We were asked to work through the different senses in describing the place. The first time I went to see a live game we were way up in the top seats. The players were like ants. I hadn’t realised how much I needed the commentary that TV provides. They didn’t tell you who had the ball, who they passed it to, who fouled them, who took the free kick – all the essential stuff.

Dialogue was next on the list.  Claire was looking for a dozen lines.

“So, you want in, then? A piece of the action? Need to move it, mate, before them birds are all bought?”

“I’d like to see the birds first if I may. I don’t like buying birds without having a good feel.”

“Yeah, well. Feeling ‘em up - when does it stop, eh? Wouldn’t we all like to feel ‘em. Then they’d be damaged goods, see?”

“Damaged?  They can’t be that sturdy if you can damage them that easily. Where did you say they were from? Do you have their passports?”

“Passports? Are you kidding? They don’t come with passports. We ship them in. Slip an envelope into the right hands at the passport control.”

You have perhaps worked it out already. The bird seller took a while to catch on. Poor Ivan didn’t. 

Next we marry the dialogue to the setting.

Ivan was becoming uncomfortable not just with the way the conversation was going.  He didn’t like football or football grounds. He wondered why they couldn’t have met somewhere else. They were standing beside the food kiosk. The bird seller was reaching into his pocket for loose change. The smell of chip fat oil was nauseating and Ivan had spilt hot coffee on his hand and it stung.

“Got any brown sauce, mate?” The man pushed the polystyrene tray along the counter.

Ivan was hoping the man had a Spanish dovetail to sell – grey feathers if possible. The ad in the local paper had been in large bold print – “Birds for sale!” The talk of no passports worried Ivan. He needed to know the breeding background of the birds.  It surprised him that the bird seller didn’t seem to find it that important.

I’ll skip the middle bit of the story – it goes on a bit. Someone scores a goal.  There’s a lot of singing. I plundered my setting chart and covered all the senses. The bird seller tried to pressure Ivan into a decision. His voice took on a threatening note.

The bird seller looked around, eyes shifting from a group of me leaning against the coarse brickwork to a single man loitering beneath a poster.

“Something’s not right.”

A hand slapped against Ivan’s chest, feeling the fabric of his shirt.

“Are you wired?”

“Wired?”

“You’re an effing cop! I’m being set up. The whole conversation on tape! I should have known!”

Ivan, small man that he was, tried to make himself even smaller.

“I just want a Spanish dovetail with grey feathers,” he said soflty.

“A Spanish dovetail?”  A dawning look crept over the bird seller face.  “Birds? Real birds? With feathers? Not birds, then? Not women?”

Scorn poured into every word.  It stung more than the spilt coffee.

“Effing ‘ell” said the seller shaking his head as he walked away.

And there you have it - a complete story, apparently, in first draft form. I don’t know whether Spanish dovetails with grey feathers actually exist – but I had you convinced they did, didn’t I?

Thistle

Gate crasher

Invader

Not invited to the party

You drift in, keeping a low profile

Lurking beside the drinks counter

You sidle close, yearning to join the conversation

But no one says

“What a lovely green dress!”

You’re not one of the pretty people

Prickly

You rub people up the wrong way

Bouncers approach armed with canvas gloves and a trowel

You are evicted