Good with our hands
We are welded from workers
with a sturdy way of life
metals and bolt
then planes and boats
now tech and innovation.
Blue and white
men and women
who are good with their hands–
my country’s pride.
There are factories tattooed
across our lands
hidden in the hills.
High-tech airborne radar
advanced lasers and electro-optic systems
made in Scotland but exported
worldwide.
Scottish fingers fiddle to find solutions.
Lanyards bouncing around neck
like nooses.
They eat their lunches
nonplussed, in the cafeteria
no mutter
of Yemen,
of Syria.
No sign of Nae Pasaran.
Drones, warplanes, missiles
made behind wide smiles
warm accents and cartoon thistles.
My country is good with their hands.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2020. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2020 was Janette Ayachi.
Josephine is an incredible performer of her work, yet her poems translate onto the page well too, and as we have perhaps recognised from the performance poetry scene, that is quite rare to find! With a background in theatre, history in spoken word and a well-earned place in the future platform of the written word at Scotland’s literary forefront. With this poem, whether or not the poet meant any double-entendre with the title, I read it right away as the workers and the fighters both being good with their hands. The slow-suicide of long hours and low wages in the working-class world, forces of nature and the violence in the weapons made-by-hand for the hand. Rhyme here is only let loose for rhythm, yet the metaphor is carried effortlessly all the way through, and the poet still manages to surprise us with her ‘cartoon thistles’ as a cover-up at the end – a subtle yet slap-in-the-face representation of how in unity, in uniform, we can sum up a nation, and how we all can each contribute to disaster.
Author’s notes:
In late 2019 I came across an article on The Ferret. I learnt that Scottish Enterprise had granted £15 million to various companies that made arms or parts for arms in Scotland that year. I did some more research and I found out that we have hundreds of factories dotted across the country that are directly linked to the weapons being used in the Middle East and elsewhere. Britain is the second biggest arms dealer in the world but Scotland pretends to have nothing to do with it. We like to wear rose tinted glasses when we think about our country and where it sits globally. We will praise ourselves for pissing on Trump’s golf course, we scream ’We’re not like them’ but when it comes down to our participation in war, there is a stony silence. I live beside Prestwick airport and I see US military planes flying in and out of the airport at all hours of the day. I feel very close to it all but information is scarce and it’s easy to forget. I wanted to write something that explored this idea of violence being hidden behind ‘innovation’ and ‘jobs’. I don’t offer a solution within the poem. I suppose that’s down to the reader but I’d like to.
