It's National Poetry Day today, and this year's theme is Light.
I suppose when you study a poet at school you end up either loving or loathing their work. For me, with Norman MacCaig, it was the former. I fell in love with his writing and the pictures of Scotland - the places, the people, and the little things - which he creates with his words. The poem below is one of the three I studied for Higher English (along with Return to Scalpay, and In Praise of a Man), and is still one of my favourites. It also fits in nicely with the theme of National Poetry Day this year. Notes on a Winter Journey, and a Footnote 1 The snow’s almost faultless. It bounces back the sun’s light, but can do nothing with those two stags, their cold noses, their yellow teeth. 2 Over the Loch’s eye a cataract is forming. Fistfuls of white make the telephone wires loop after loop of snow buntings. 3 So few cars they leave the snow snow. I think of the horrible marzipan in the streets of Edinburgh. 4 The hotel at Ullapool, that should be a bang of light is crepuscular. The bar is fireflied with whisky glasses 5 At Inchnadamph the snow is falling. The windscreen wipers squeak and I stare through a segment of a circle. What more do i ever do?… 6 (seventeen miles to go. I didn’t know it, but when I got there a death waited for me – that segment shut it’s fan: and a blinding winter closed in.)
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