Category: Blog

I was in Ireland shortly after Seamus Heaney’s death, in Dublin, then on west to the Aran Islands. Both as seen from the Poolbeg Light on the South Wall at the mouth of the Liffey on a blowy day and rising tide and from a storm-bound Aran, Ireland seemed a smaller place without his presence, somehow empty, empty as a fish-box washed up in the tidemark.   Issue 8 of Archipelago is dedicated to his memory. I’ll not repeat here what I say in its Editorial as to his support for the archipelagic venture. But the issue has for frontispiece a collaborative work by Norman Ackroyd and Seamus Heaney, in which the poem ‘Postscript’ is ghosted over an etching of…

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  I should have asked my friend the gannet before I set out, for a gannet’s eye view of the chances. But it was not to be and I knew it in my heart. I knew it in my bones as I stepped off the plane in Steornabhagh (21 May), though I took everything I could as a ‘sign’ to the contrary. My plan was to explore Lewis and then go south to join a party of friends (old and soon-to-be) at Tairbeart on Harris in readiness for the word from Angus Campbell to haste ye to Leverbrugh and embark. It was not to be. I knew it literally in my bones next day as I walked in a bitter…

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The New Year is already well underway. The long-hand on the clock is stretching towards the light, as a drowning person’s hand might reach for rescue. Spring is beginning to bury its dead. The evenings delay their roosting little-by-little. And when night at last rises up in the shadows and thickens, on come the desk-lamps, out come the maps and charts, and the serious dreaming begins, in the best spirit of Baudelaire’s ‘Le Voyage’. You should not wish your life away. You only have one. But I would throw all the days between now and the end of May overboard, if I could, and put out this moment from Leverburgh, on Harris, for St Kilda. That is my plan, if…

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  Anchored stern and bow, sea-logged to the gunwales: So I have moored my mind for the winter ahead. To be the more sea-worthy if all else fails Come better weather and spring buries its dead.   13th December 2012

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Douglas Dunn (Scotland’s greatest living poet), will be giving a reading at an occasion open to the public in the Old Library, All Souls College, Oxford, on 8 November, from 6pm. All are welcome. Professor Dunn’s St Kilda’s Parliament (1981) and a long list of his poems about Scotland’s outer limits were an important, long-term inspiration behind the eventual founding of Archipelago in 2007. Readers will remember that his work first appeared in the second issue of the magazine in the form of a lengthy disquisition – ‘English: A Scottish Essay’ – on the poet’s tongue and its – and his nation’s – relation to the English language. The poem ends, after more than 250 lines, as follows: One day I’ll…

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Those of you who have put out to sea aboard ARCHIPELAGO before will know she is powered by an Ailsa Craig. It’s a thing we take comfort in, as she goes plunging after Seeker Reaper  (Skipper Hay at the wheel) dirling: Long is sgioba,  long is sgioba,  gaoth is gillean, gaoth is gillean . . . Now, after so many months at sea I lose count, and down to our last gugha between us, I am pleased to tell you we have glimpsed land. Issue 7 is almost all in the hold, and we’ll be ready in good time for the men in white coats – the fish-market men – as November dawns on the harbour town and the deciduous…

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Geoffrey Hill’s Odi Barbare (see elsewhere on this site) has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize. We send Professor Hill our congratulations and urge readers to order a copy of the book while stocks last. It will not be reprinted. Archipelago 7 is almost all delivered. We have had to postpone at least two pieces to issue 8 having otherwise exceeded our optimum extent. That is, along the lines of the last three issues. Among the contributors: Tim Dee, John Elder, Seamus Heaney, Roger Hutchinson, James Macdonald Lockhart, Michael Longley, Angus Martin, Sandy Moffat, Les Murray, Katherine Rundell, Robin Robertson, Tim Robinson, and other treats and surprises. Among locations touched on: Kintyre, Raasay, Giant’s Causeway, Rathlin, Connemara, Co. Clare, Vermont,…

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  26 April 2012, Newman House, St Stephen’s Green: ‘Over the Irish Sea’ symposium hosted by University College Dublin – Jos Smith of Exeter University gives a talk about Archipelago, its preoccupations, its contributors, and the idea of ‘critical localism’ as a radical stay against globalism. It is inspiring to have the project of the ‘unnameable archipelago’ given serious attention at such an occasion and among so many high-powered scholars. Otherwise, of course, I try not to be too serious. I have bought a first edition of Tom O’Flaherty’s Aran Men All (1934) of which I’ve only read an excerpt before.   2 May 2012: I’m writing this beside the Atlantic at Port Bhéal an Dúin (Port of the Fort’s…

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With Geoffrey Hill’s latest book of poems in the world at last, I’ve been mending my nets these past few days and had a few prospective shots, for target catches around Barra, the Isle of Lewis, Raasay, Ornsay, Kintyre, on south to Rathlin, then down the Irish Sea and round as far as the Llwchwr Estuary, on the North Gower coast. Things bode well to make the new issue different once again, come November’s high seas, with startling new art and other illustrations too. I’ve left some fixed gear out there off Connemara and in the wider Atlantic, with my eye on a couple of catches, but mum’s the word. I’m using monofilament and I’m not after You-know-who (pace Monsieur…

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This year we’re flying the Blue Saltire at our masthead as the good ship ARCHIPELAGO jibes and takes the weather’s bearings, steadying sail flapping, bilge pump outlet spluttering, riding light drawing ‘eight and eight’ against the backdrop of a stormy sky. Meanwhile remembering Hugh MacDiarmid aboard the herring fisher Valkyrie (‘lying in his bunk and writing incessantly’) off the Shetlands in 1936, I lie in mine, reading A Book Around the Irish Sea: History without nations by David Brett. Published in 2009, this inspirational study in place and locality has an approach similar in spirit to our manifesto, first published in issue 1 (Summer 2007). The magazine’s line in referring to an unnameable archipelago has been criticised for denying history.…

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