Poem of the month - February 2006

About the poet

Anna Crowe was born in Devonport in 1945, and grew up in France and in Sussex. She has an M.A. from the University of St Andrews, where she and her family have lived permanently since 1986.

She works as a poet, translator and as a creative writing tutor in schools, for the Arvon Foundation, and has led a poetry workshop at St Andrews University (Continuing Education) for many years.

Anna won the Peterloo Open Poetry Competition in 1993 and 1997. Her first collection, Skating Out of the House, was published by Peterloo Poets in 1997 and was subsequently reprinted. Mariscat Press published a pamphlet of poems, A Secret History of Rhubarb, in 2004. A second Peterloo collection, Punk with Dulcimer, is due to be published in spring 2006.

In 1998, Anna and fellow poet Stewart Conn, were invited by the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes to go to Barcelona to have some of their work translated into Catalan. This collection, L’Ánima del Teixidor, was published by Edicions Proa as a parallel text in their Ossa Menor imprint in November 2000. She has translated songs for the Barcelona music publishers Tritó, and her translation of the work of Catalan poet Anna Aguilar-Amat (Music and Scurvy), was published as an online publication by Sandstone Press in 2004. She has recently completed a book of translations of poems by the eminent Catalan poet Joan Margarit, for Bloodaxe, Tugs in the Fog, to be published in 2006.  She is working on an anthology of Catalan poetry in translation, to be published jointly by the Scottish Poetry Library and Carcanet Press in 2007. Other current translation projects are the work of the Mexican poet, Pedro Serrano, and Ramon del Valle-Inclán's novel, Tirano Banderas. She is a co-founder and, for the first seven years, was Artistic Director of StAnza, Scotland's Poetry Festival. In June 2005 she was awarded a Travelling Scholarship by the Society of Authors. 

The inspiration behind the poem

Anna says 'I'm sure that having to learn French, when plunged into school in Marseille when I was ten, made me suddenly wake up to language and its possibilities. I remember one incident, when something I'd told another girl about England provoked the response, "C'est un mensonge!" I didn't know the word, and thought it sounded beautiful.

Even being told it meant something that was "not true" couldn't stop me repeating it in delight to myself, and the girl walked off in disgust. I have lived in Scotland longer than I have lived anywhere, and regard it as my adopted country (with Catalonia a close second). Years ago, when I found myself described in a programme as a "Scottish poet", I felt an imposter, but now I think, that's what I am, and I'm proud to be part of such a rich heritage.

I had begun to write poetry in the eighties when living in Newcastle, joining Jon Silkin's writing group, but it was here in Scotland that I began to find my voice as a writer. I think that Scottish poets who were born here are tremendously lucky to have three languages to choose to write in. I would not presume to write in Scots, but it is a wonderfully expressive language, and the odd word does sneak into a poem from time to time, simply because it's a word I have got used to using, and it does the job better than anything else.

I wrote Scops Owl in Mallorca where my parents lived for twenty years until 2004. I had been staying for some weeks because my mother had broken her leg. It was very hot, I couldn't sleep, and I was homesick. I seemed to spend hours awake, listening to the monotone call of the scops owl, which is pure woodwind, and I wrote the poem for Julian'.