Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Philip Nanton
  • >
  • Punctuation Marks
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Punctuation Marks

Philip Nanton

Where sea and land meet, begin there.
The ampersand, the join, is a fault
which caused jagged peaks to rise –
from the ocean’s floor –
spanning a vacant gulf.
On any map of the world there are footnotes
reminders of nature’s force.

Long ago, nomads, fragile as their pottery,
skimming waves, trecking from south to north,
stopped once too often for wood and water
and perished.
From the pre-ceramic Cibony
to the ceramics of Saladoid and Suazoid
we know them by their shards.
Common island caribs, sunk in a murderous tide
that flowed from east to west
bearing assassin and poets
discoverers of the New World.

Come nearer, focus on one dot of an island
I was born there, on the rim of a volcano
on the edge of a large full stop
where the sand is black
where the hills turn a gun-barrel blue
where the sea perpetually dashes at the shoreline
trying to reclaim it all.


Philip Nanton

From The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry, selected by Ian McDonald and Stewart Brown (Oxford: Heinmann, 1992)

Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Tags:

adventure ancient history archaeology ceramics and pottery colonialism islands language maps sea seashore St Vincent and the Grenadines writing poetry

About this poem

This poem, representing St Vincent and the Grenadines, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Philip Nanton

More about Philip Nanton

Podcasts

Our audio programme of poets, poems and news for you to listen to.
Listen Now

Join

Become a Borrower or support our work by becoming a Friend of SPL.
Join us
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library