Poem of the month - May 2008

Staffa One basalt column to take the weight of a whole island; it is an unbalanced stage, dismal perch for puffins. At first that’s all I see: the lonely stave, black, insupportably thin. Vision has diminished to a narrow, parallax view. It is my fault, this part-sight, brought on by melancholy. I look again, and the island accordion has unfurled, hex upon hexagonal, a million green-water way stones. Foam breaks its fall upon graphic strokes – the giant’s concertina frozen mid-play. I, too, am a stopped note standing stock-still, amazed. By Jane McKie from Morocco Rococo (Blaenau Ffestiniog: Cinnamon Press, 2007) Poem supplied courtesy of the Scottish Poetry Library

The inspiration for the poem Jane says: "I wrote the poem after taking a trip to Staffa, the uninhabited island that lies about six miles north of Iona, in early summer 2006.  It is written from the perspective of arriving on a ferry from Iona and seeing the island for the first time.  It is also about seeing ‘properly’ for the first time after a period of grieving: the sudden recovery of diminished vision, the beauty of the island breathtaking enough to assert itself above introspection.  In a sense, it does literally unfurl: its complexity is revealed incrementally on approach.  The basalt columns are almost alien in their regular structure and lead the mind to speculate about origins, embroidering the myths."

About the Poet Jane lives in Linlithgow with her husband and young daughter.  Her poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies, including New Writing Scotland and Granta’s New Writing Volume 15.  Her first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), has recently been awarded the Scottish Arts Council/Sundial prize for best first book of 2007.  She runs a small press, called Knucker Press with the aim of encouraging writers and artists to collaborate in book or pamphlet form.