entitled to sing

A Review by Ian Stephen

without title
Gerry Loose
Shearsman Books (2024) £12.95

Exact Colour of Snow
Bridget Khursheed
Shearsman Books (2025) £10.95

Leaving Songs
Donald S. Murray, with drawings by Doug Robertson
The Islands Book Trust (2025) £10.00

Gerry Loose’s last book is a substantial collection at 128 pages but there is no sense of too much or everything being bundled in. That said, it is a collection to take in small doses – a very particular malt, close to hand for when there is time and space – these poems and prose-poems need both. It is one to return to as its linguistic pleasures are often complex at first sip and in aftertaste.

            This does need commitment from the reader but the book is brimful of variety and wry humour. Settings of poems reflect the travels of an international poet, including Montpelier, Vietnam, Latin America. But Japan is never very far away, even if the poem begins in ‘nothing but a hut’ in Carbeth. There is a simple dedication to the person who made the most apt of cover images, the photographer Morven Gregor but that too has its surprising, not showey, conclusion which is also an opening for all that is to come. A flower is not picked but observation and language shares it while leaving it untouched. You read on to find a love poem titled with a quote from Pablo Neruda and freely using lyrical repetition. The languages throughout are many, including the dialect of the cicada, hints of Italian, French, Irish and Scottish Gaelic and the songs of a great variety of birds.

            Arresting imagery is sketched strong and bold, with few brushstrokes but sound too is never far away. Gerry was a true makar in his compulsion to find form for thought and insight and out-of-sight imagining. And these forms do vary – lower case is often the way but then you will meet caps and stops and just feel there is reasoning or trust behind their use. You also trust his choice of a reflective prose style. Even though he was a master of disruption he made fine sentences and there is at least one poem built on them, as also used by Thomas A Clark and Ian Hamilton Finlay but Gerry’s usage is his own.

           
            The (non) title poem seems to me expressionist but brimful of celebration for the species we share earth with but also the language developed to honour them:

‘allis shad and twaite shad vendace and powan’

And this for mysterious music:

‘there’s four wrens to a penny’

            Bridget Khursheed’s acknowledgements in ‘Exact Colour of Snow’ include a nod to a friend who pointed out she writes in black and white. I’m not so sure. The 2nd collection of this poet shares the same format as ‘without title’ and is presented with similar paper and typography. The subjects studied are also set in Scotland and abroad, also range from the natural world to crazy human interventions, also alternate between eschewing punctuation and using it. I would say there’s a bit more storytelling but interspersed with allowing  free exploration of what’s within. Angels are personalised. In ‘Collecting seaweed’ she dives below her own surface:

‘sometimes mask on I look at the silver jelly rocks

underwater and my hair escaping beanie prison

reaches out weightless

the crimpy soft folds of endless plush

grandmother’s settee loose coverings

and tide push and loop

the expensive stuff out of reach

on the sand I am in my element again’

            That letting-go is strong in the title poem and even more so in the dynamic and intense sequence bringing us to childbirth in ‘A confinement’. Freedom of form, incorporating a well-made prose, builds a swelling abundance of produce, meticulously catalogued.  It’s not all harmonic as the raptor’s tooth and claw, observed, conveys a pregnant woman’s sense of  foreboding and risk. A story is told and there is suspense but the freeform writing is used to strong effect.

           
            Yes, there is a monochrome effect in many of the poems which can jump from the recovering Kelvin to the ironies of a clay-pigeon range. But there is also a judicious splash of colour here and there, a technique also shared with Gerry Loose. Briget Khursheed’s intense scrutiny of dyeworks seems like the territory of Tarkovsky’s ‘The Stalker’ though the post-industrial landscape is all too real. In technique I’m reminded of a wonderful self-published book by the late Mairi Macdonald of Grimsay, a photographer and poet who used colour on one page only to show a poppy from Arras on a black and white page. (https://www.wilibraries.org.uk/GroupedWork/d16e5a79-6815-627e-290b-635be15d1fe2-eng).

            There is dramatic monologue too, for more immediate effect, in ‘Old Biddy’ revealing the versatility of this strong poet. That form is also found in Donald S Murray’s ‘Leaving Songs’, an illustrated journey from the Butt of Lewis to Canada and (sometimes) back, told in a rhythmic dramatic verse alternated with  short prose pieces, sometimes in character. The Islands Book Trust have used Donald’s long-term collaborator Douglas Robertson to leaven the words with sympathetic and accessible illustrations. This book is very different from the other two in that the tale is to be conveyed rather than found within.

            The publication ties in with a multi-partner touring performance of words, illustration and music to commemorate the anniversary of the departure of SS Metagama in 1923. She carried economic migrants from the Highlands and Islands (and other parts of Europe) to Canada. Donald Murray grew up in the Ness district of Lewis and has researched the experience of Hebrideans settled in the cities or more rural communities of the USA and Canada. It’s possible that phrases heard or family legends shared have fed into the sequence of verse, sometimes character-studies.

            For me the device of bookending with a voice of the Butt of Lewis lighthouse itself or its foghorn is effective. I was also jolted out of more regular rhythms and rhyming scheme in ‘Love-Song’ where chiming or half rhyme is used and the spoken voice came through strong:

‘And yet it’s gone and happened’

            Additional lyrics used in the show, include new songs from Willie Campbell and Liza Mulholland, a relative of the bard, Murdo Macfarlane. Other performers acknowledged include Dolina Maclennan and singer, Calum Alex Macmillan. Here is a link to the Lewis ‘Wee Studio’ recording of one haunting example of a Macfarlane song of exile passed down generations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ZNoGekj2A

            There was an added pleasure of recognition in engaging with the work outlined above as all three poets have been published in Northwords Now.