I’m asking the question again, this time for StAnza 2021.
The birds – herring gull, goldfinch, heron, raven, wren, chough, corncrake snipe and blackbird – feature in a digital installation of nine prints by Lisa Hooper and nine poems by myself.
It’s available from 6 to 31 March.
The poems came out of a residency at the Wigtown Book Festival in 2019, and were first combined with Lisa’s prints as a presentation for the (online) Wigtown Book Festival in 2020.
We put together a portfolio of poems and prints and approached the Book Festival about exhibiting them this year. And then Covid happened… so here they are online.
Although if you do make it to the WBF shop and gallery at 11 Main Street during the festival period (24 September to 4 October), you will be able see a set of Lisa’s prints.
There are nine prints, each featuring a different bird: blackbird, chough, corncrake, goldfinch, heron, herring gull, raven, snipe and wren. All feature in poems I wrote for last year’s WBF, and the prints were made by Lisa in response to the poems in early 2020.
All these birds have been present in Dumfries and Galloway, though corncrakes are now absent, and choughs the rarest of visitors. They, like most of the others, remain present as place-names, even if the languages spoken by those who coined these names are now also either absent or rare.
For example, Drumatrane and Cairnywellan (both from Gaelic) are ridge of the corncrake and rock of the gulls, while Cronkley (from Old English) is the heron’s clearing, and Penfran Burn (Old Welsh) flows down the raven’s hill.
The prints are in editions of 10 and available for sale framed (as singles or as a group of nine) and unframed. Unframed prints are also available by mail order. Please contact claire@wigtownbookfestival.com for details.
Where are the birds taking me?
More far than near more guessed than known more heard than seen
their flight their calls their plumage
bullfinch-red or siskin-yellow black silk of a raven salt-white of a herring gull the blue flash of a magpie’s wing
as sudden as thought as absent as forgetting
to apprehend them requires a focus on stillness
an apprehensive stillness opening all the elsewheres the birds are taking us to.
As Spring Fling x Wigtown Book Festival Writer-in-Residence for 2019, I’ve been creating new work exploring the links between birds, art and the landscape, inspired by my experiences during Spring Fling. The new work will be revealed at Wigtown Book Festival (27 September – 6 October) but in the meantime here are some insights and sneak peeks…
I’ve been researching place-names in Dumfries and Galloway which relate to birds. There are many, covering all sorts of ground, from coastal rocks to inland moors and up into the high hills. Many of these place-names are derived from Gaelic, spoken in Galloway until the 18th century.
Here are three, given with their English meanings, together with a description of the place taken from the Ordnance Survey place-name books compiled in the 1840s and 1850s. The map extracts are taken from OS maps published around the same time.
Benyellarie (N of Glentrool)
“A large lofty rocky heathy hill on the farms of Palgown… on its eastern side is a large precipice called “Scars of Benyellary.”
Benyellarie, from beinn iolaire, the eagle’s hill
Cairnywellan Head (by Port Logan, S of Portpatrick)
“A head land which terminates Port Nessock Bay on the South side. It is a Conspicuous object & well known to mariners.”
Cairnywellan, from cárn na bhfaoileann, cairn of the seagulls
Drumadryland (E of Cairnryan)
“A Broad heathy hill on the North side of a large Moor or marsh, and on the farm of Delhabach”
Drumadryland, from druim na’ dreolan, ridge of the wrens
Over the Spring Fling weekend (25–27 May) I visited artist studios across Dumfries and Galloway, from Gatelawbridge to Port William, speaking to artists and visitors. As well as seeing a fantastic range of bird-themed artworks, I spoke to lots of folk who shared their sightings and memories of birds.
Lisa Hooper, Friends from the North
Over the next few weeks and I’ll be reflecting on my Spring Fling experiences, and writing a new piece of work to be presented at the Wigtown Book Festival in the autumn.
Amanda Simmons, Arctic Terns
In the meantime here’s a selection of birds from the weekend – some spotted during conversations and workshops, some glimpsed as I travelled, and some contemplated in studios and galleries. My thanks to everyone involved.
Sarah Stewart, origami birds
Conversations I heard of an oystercatcher nesting on a roundabout, a crow that kept banging into the window, and jays burying acorns. I was told there are no magpies around Kirkcudbright and Wigtown – some say they were exterminated, others that they can’t co-exist beside carrion crows. I heard of swallow fledglings standing in a line on a beam, sometimes for three or four days, before they launch themselves, of thrushes littering the garden with broken snail-shells, and of a buzzard swooping to lift a frog from a pond, like an osprey takes fish. I was told of stock doves nesting in owl-boxes, and that there are more egrets now, but fewer lapwings and swallows. I heard from a member of a rowing club who enjoys seeing gulls, sandpipers and herons up close, and a member of a golf club who sees mostly magpies. I was told of a sound like someone in distress, which turned out to be a barn owl, and of green woodpeckers, red kites, small owls and bittern in Cambridgeshire. I heard of a heron which stands in the pond that’s not full of newts, and of a raptor which, falling on chaffinches gathered at the bird-feeder, misjudged its flight and crashed into the fence, before picking itself up and flying away embarrassed. I was told of a thrush singing at Carstairs Station, of blackbirds flying out from the bay tree, and of a hen pheasant which planned to nest in the field behind a house until the neighbour’s cat disturbed it. I heard of the bell in the County Buildings remaining silent when the ospreys didn’t return, and of sedge warblers which sound like techno and hiphop.
Goldfinch, on a chair by Bill Johnston (1893–1974), in Kirkcudbright Galleries
Observations
From the car I notice a woodpecker land on the verge, its distinctive black-and-white striped head, while a large puddle in a lay-by that loops off the road has attracted a duck and several ducklings. The looping flight of siskins around a flowering laburnum tree, oystercatchers heard through an open door, the songs of a Galloway hedgerow in late May. At the Cairnholy stones, a blackbird flies from the nearby house to the far side of the valley in seconds. From within an evergreen a thrush emerges, stands speckled on the threshold a moment as if deciding where to, then off. A buzzard circles above the green slope at Port Castle Bay, now seen, now hidden.
Poems on the page and in the world 