Poetry features prominently at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival, which begins on Wednesday in Scotland’s Book Town. Here, we publish poems by three writers who’ll be appearing at the event.

 

ENVOI: FOUNTAIN

By Tom Pow

On a humid morning

in the neat Swiss village

of St Livres I come to

Le Fontaine des Amoureux,

a stone trough as long

as a man and deep enough

to drown several. It is dated

eighteen seventy something,

the last digit effaced. I tilt

my head to avoid a hanging

basket of what's pink and

flowering in effusion. I cup

my hands below the beak

of the spout and, as I wash

my face, I say words for you;

imagine, at Le Fontaine

des Amoureux. Then

I cool my hands and wrists

with words for both

our children. The thoughts

are hopes I dress as prayers,

to give them shape and to

free me for the road ahead.

Tom Pow will be reading from his collection, Naranjas, on Saturday, September 25

 

The Herald: Poet Josie NeillPoet Josie Neill

PUIR HEART

By Josie Neill

A sair hert’s hard tae thole.

It’s that tender-

The hert in your briest,

Is it no?

Its that much work tae dae,

Druntin an fashin,

Flytin an fumin,

Ye’d think it’d

Be med o fierdier stuff.

Nor bluid an gowpin tobies,

An wee bieldie compairtments

For greetin

An lauchin

An rowin

An luvin.

Josie Neill will read from her collection, There’s Ma Mammy Wavin on Sunday, October 26

The Herald: Poet Basil du ToitPoet Basil du Toit

MERMAID INDOORS

By Basil du Toit

The human had unsettled her – his

breathing difficulties underwater,

the puckering of his fingertips,

stinging of his eyes, the raw fish diet

that didn't agree with his stomach.

 

Now, she was sitting in his house,

smelling like a shoreline that has

been baked rancid in the low tide,

the great flail of her tail-fin curled

awkwardly backwards out of sight.

 

Her body spread the coldness of

iceboxes or shipping containers;

elements of salt and ammonia

composed her presence, the rank

mephitic odour of a dying fish.

 

Her gaze was fixed and ankylose,

stiff cellulose, unblinking, bare,

hardened by the eye-withering

sharpness of ocean saltiness;

blue scales speckled the carpet.

 

She spoke with the sadness of

a sea animal which has laboriously

learnt the one-sided language

of men, incapable of addressing

the alien, disfigured half of her.

 

She spoke of dualities – natural

and supernatural, middle class

and beatnik, two circulations

(one where the blood ran cold)

mingling fish and mammal.

 

She exclaimed her wonderment

at soft warm towels, humidifiers

and scented candles from John

Lewis; but mostly she spoke of

that world given up to satisfy

 

her keen, occasional taste for men –

shoals of bonefish and barracuda,

the perils of propellor injuries

and dredge fishing, dark realms

of maelstrom, wreck and kraken;

 

and she kept coming back to

that bathroom of his, fragranced

by rosemary and eucalyptus,

with the curved slipper bath

that was far too small to hold her.

 

Basil du Toit wins the Wigtown Poetry Prize for this poem. The runner up is Mark Gallacher. Both will appear at a special prizegiving event on October 2, alongside Wigtown Scots Prize-winner Robert Duncan and runner up Lynn Valentine; Wigtown Scottish Gaelic Prize-winner Eoghan Stewart and runner up Gillebride MacMillan; Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize-winner Jane McKie and Dumfries & Galloway Fresh Voice Award-winner Carolyn Yates. (All poems can be read at wigtownpoetryprize.com/poetry-competition/2021-prize-winners)

The Wigtown Book Festival 2021 runs September 22-October 4. Full programme and ticket information at www.wigtownbookfestival.com