Just as any truly accurate representation of a particular geography can only exist on a scale of 1:1 (imagine the vast, rustling map of Burgundy, say, settling over it like a freshly-starched sheet!) so it is with all our abandoned histories, those ignoble lines of succession that end in neither triumph nor disaster, but merely […]
Da starns are da map I unrowl
Let Arthur Wharton come back from the dead
To see the man in black blow the final whistle.
The good ship Friendship sails between Glasgow / And your far, your golden, coast. / May fierce friendship forever flourish…
Remember when you turned cartwheels / in the schoolyard. / And danced down the length / of the fallen tree,…
Although we favoured football as a rule,
/ PE was comprehensive at our school.
/ Coached in a bit of this, a bit of…
The receiving player must catch and sprint / through a rush of hot blood and adrenaline, / the ball held…
I found netball and then it was the mad white blur of fourteen pairs of white socks, ten ponytails, an…
Triple goddess, three heroines in one / Rippling through water fluent as a selkie, / In your wake star-bubbles glitter…
We swing ungirded hips, / And lightened are our eyes, / The rain is on our lips, / We do…
Needling of jabs, riddle of ducks and feints,
/ you wait for a clear target.
/
/ It comes, as brief as a spark plug’s…
The sound down low, the impossible blue
/ of the Water Cube in Beijing filling the screen.
/
/ A young diver stands on the…
