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
  • >
  • Niall Campbell
  • >
  • The Tear in the Sack
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

The Tear in the Sack

Niall Campbell

A nocturnal bird, say a nightjar,
cocking its head in the silence
of a few deflowering trees,
witnesses more than we do
the parallels.
Its twin perspective:
seeing with one eye the sack-
grain spilt on the roadway dirt,
and with the other, the scattered stars,
their chance positioning in the dark.


Niall Campbell

from The Salt Book of Younger Poets, edited by Roddy Lumsden & Eloise Stonborough (London: Salt, 2011)

Reproduced by permission of the author and the publisher.

Tags:

Best Scottish Poems 2011 birds night observation perception perspective short poems

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2011. 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 2011 was Roddy Lumsden.

Editor’s comment:

2011 was a good year for young Hebridean poet Campbell; as well as winning an Eric Gregory award, he undertook the RLS Fellowship in France, and appeared widely in magazines, in advance of his first forthcoming pamphlet. This poem is typical of his shorter lyric pieces, with some nice soft rhyme strings – the central image is neat and charming, yet the poem remains somewhat slippery – which parallels? What does the ‘chance positioning’ suggest?

Author’s note:

‘The Tear in the Sack’ was written one evening a few Novembers ago. I had just returned to the city after a week on Uist and a few images of the rural, farming and fishing life were obviously still roaming around my head. And perhaps because of this the poem was written unusually quickly for me – were I, like MacCaig, a smoker I might have been able to measure the time as a cigarette or two.  The poem was a sort of tribute to one of those odd moments of apparent clarity, when the strange patterns we live by lift themselves, for a moment, from the randomness: the Nightjar suggesting itself by its similarly rare act of singing through the dark hours rather than the daylight.

Listen

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2011

edited by Roddy Lumsden
Find out more

Niall Campbellb.1984

Niall Campbell is a Scottish poet originally from South Uist in the Western Isles. His first collection was the inaugural winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize.
More about Niall Campbell

Online Shop

Browse our range of poetry books, cards and gifts in our online shop.
Shop now
  • 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