Scots poem of the month - February 2009

This piece of creative writing was supplied by the Scottish Poetry Library who receive Foundation funding from the Scottish Arts Council.

The Sweetness o the Aipple The sweetness o the aipple is tae dee: a double sweetness concentrates within oor herts and ripens tae articulacy, and so completes no juist a circle but a sphere. No whit we mak but whit Earth gives, tumult an pain o aa that lives, oor pity an the hope o days, maks poems possible, a taste o time, an aipple-rhyme, dawn’s fingers brushing Chinese-mist doon Perthshire Braes. Walter Perrie From the unpublished collection Lyrics and Tales in Twa Tongues (2008) (supported by a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary)

About the poet Walter Perrie was born in Lanarkshire in 1949 and was educated at Hamilton Academy and at the universities of Edinburgh and Stirling. Since the 1970s he has worked as an editor, poet, critic and travel writer. Along with John Herdman he edits and publishes the literary magazine Fras and Fras Publications. The Corbie an the Tod first appeared in Duncan Glen's Zed2 O, number 22. and was later included in a pamphlet from Fras Publications: Twelve Fables of La Fontaine made owre intil Scots. (Blair Atholl 2007). He lives in Dunning, Perthshire.

Inspiration for the Poem The only comment I would make on the origins of the poem is that I am interested in Chinese arts and it is remarkable how often Perthshire landscapes can look like scenes from classical Chinese landscape painting, especially of the early Ming.