The Natural World - a Poetry Event for UNESCO World Poetry Day 2017

Fin whale jaw at Clachtoll in Assynt, Scotland

We marked UNESCO World Poetry Day last night with a reading event at the University of Suffolk, attended by students and local (and not-so-local) poets. Suffolk Poetry Society hosted the evening, and our guest readers were members of Poetrywivenhoe. Huge thanks are due to those who organised the event, providing refreshments, amplification and so much more.

Our theme, 'the natural world', produced poems on edgelands, coastlines (including a magical depiction of the essence of low tide from Pam Job) - and wildlife along railway tracks. There were seasonal references and a few slant-allusions to climate change and conservation initiatives. Subjects ranged from a female eel-catcher (Alex Toms) to a view from the train of the iconic swans at Manningtree (David).

I bought a copy of Ornith-ology from the book table. This beautiful anthology of birds in poetry and art was edited by Tim Cunningham for Poetrywivenhoe and the Mosaic stanza. M.W. Bewick, one of the Wivenhoe readers, brought copies of three Dunlin Press books, including his striking poetry collection, Scarecrow, which has just been launched.  

I read a couple of my poems, 'Moonshine', about the appearance of a Snowy Owl in Cornwall in 2009, and 'Notes from a Netting Station' about the fin whale bone in the photo above that lies, rotting, in the north of Scotland, near the old salmon netting station at Clachtoll in Assynt.

Poetry gatherings often find their own organic themes when no theme is proffered, but I felt the subject last night provided a sufficiently wide canvas to allow plenty of scope for interpretation, while, at the same time, making us feel we were travelling together on a journey of discovery.

'Nature is ever at work...' John Muir

Assynt Poem in Reach Poetry

 Fin Whale's jawbone

My poem, 'Notes from the Netting Station', has just been published in the February issue of Reach Poetry. The inspiration came from the windswept beach at Clachtoll in Assynt in the north of Scotland, where there is a salmon bothy dating from 1846, and a netting station. Clachtoll was once a crofting township, with a large population of sheep. The abandoned netting station is strange place. Salmon fishing was carried out in the past by a process known as 'bag-netting'. The netted fish were kept cool in a nearby ice house. A jawbone and part of the skull of a Fin Whale can be seen outside the bothy, and it was the sad sight of these 'bare bones' that sparked my poem.

The beach at Clachtoll (Clach = rock; toll = hole)

Net-drying Poles at Clachtoll for bag-net fishing

The Netting Station (complete with large drops of Assynt rain!)