Listening
A sky from which all but the last blue has been lost
So the mountain against it stands like a great smoothed tusk
Wintered alone.
There is no wind, and yet
Sometimes the uppermost spindles of the birch trees dance
Criss-crossing the sky.
All of it about coming to a cabin to ask for quiet
Waiting for blue lightning to flash the ground
Just once, and leave words burned in frozen snow.
From Kenneth Steven's newest volume of poems - Letting in the Light - published by SPCK in London in September 2016, and available also as an e-book.
Monday, 26 September 2016
Monday, 29 August 2016
Greenland
A few days ago I saw an image on the internet that imprinted itself on my subconscious. It was all the more shocking because I was exploring something entirely different, and as a result I was quite unprepared for what I saw. It was a small picture at the bottom of my screen of a starving polar bear attempting to climb onto a thin fragment of ice. The bear looked to be a quarter or even less of its normal weight: there was little left of the creature. It was the remains of a polar bear.
A number of years ago I had the privilege of visiting Greenland. It is a wondrous country: the biggest island in the world with just fifty thousand of a population. There are no roads in Greenland: the tiny communities that hug the coast are linked by sea. I have thought of it since as a child's fantasy kingdom: when you look up at the mountains you can hardly believe the height of them, or the sharpness of the peaks. It is the most hauntingly beautiful place I have ever seen.
I spoke to a man from one of the villages who remembered his childhood. He said that when he was a boy they drove round to visit friends in winter. Not by road - there were no roads then any more than there are none now - but by sea. They got into their cars and they crossed the sea ice to visit friends. Now, he told us, there is no sea ice. Not that it is too thin for such driving: there is no ice at all. He told us the ice is retreating a full ten miles each year.
Before I left Greenland I bought one souvenir - a tiny carved polar bear. A long time later I wrote this poem, remembering the precious days of our stay and thinking of the future. I thought of it the other day, when I saw the image of the starving polar bear and all day could not put it from my mind.
Last year in Greenland I bought it
Under great whales of mountains by a sea of ice,
From a table of things all carved from shining:
Little men threading water, their softstone canoes,
Walrus rearing at harpoons in mid-roar.
Now, all this time later, that place
Remains like some story from a book.
I turn it in the light, my polar bear on a pad of ice,
And think of the world wilting in the sun's wrath,
And nowhere left for the polar bear to go.
Kenneth Steven www.kennethsteven.co.uk
From Salt and Light, published in 2011 by Saint Andrew Press
A number of years ago I had the privilege of visiting Greenland. It is a wondrous country: the biggest island in the world with just fifty thousand of a population. There are no roads in Greenland: the tiny communities that hug the coast are linked by sea. I have thought of it since as a child's fantasy kingdom: when you look up at the mountains you can hardly believe the height of them, or the sharpness of the peaks. It is the most hauntingly beautiful place I have ever seen.
I spoke to a man from one of the villages who remembered his childhood. He said that when he was a boy they drove round to visit friends in winter. Not by road - there were no roads then any more than there are none now - but by sea. They got into their cars and they crossed the sea ice to visit friends. Now, he told us, there is no sea ice. Not that it is too thin for such driving: there is no ice at all. He told us the ice is retreating a full ten miles each year.
Before I left Greenland I bought one souvenir - a tiny carved polar bear. A long time later I wrote this poem, remembering the precious days of our stay and thinking of the future. I thought of it the other day, when I saw the image of the starving polar bear and all day could not put it from my mind.
Last year in Greenland I bought it
Under great whales of mountains by a sea of ice,
From a table of things all carved from shining:
Little men threading water, their softstone canoes,
Walrus rearing at harpoons in mid-roar.
Now, all this time later, that place
Remains like some story from a book.
I turn it in the light, my polar bear on a pad of ice,
And think of the world wilting in the sun's wrath,
And nowhere left for the polar bear to go.
Kenneth Steven www.kennethsteven.co.uk
From Salt and Light, published in 2011 by Saint Andrew Press
Friday, 19 August 2016
Games
I find that I have to write this before the end of the Olympic days in Brazil. The news bulletins here in Britain have spoken of little else for weeks: the gold medal by one or other British athlete is the first headline each morning.
And hidden somewhere in among the end-pieces of the news, there are sometimes stories from Syria. Almost like tiny fragments of debris: things found among the ruins. I keep wondering - as I have done almost since the beginning of this war - just how huge the aftermath of it will be. The longer it continues the greater the shadow somehow, and the more terrible the stories that emerge.
But we do not really care. I continue to have this awful sense of the way in which we rank human beings: somehow there is an order of importance. We know that white Europeans essentially come top, and news from other places has to be pretty desperate before we take much notice. Even with all the horror that emerges concerning Syria in the end, I do not believe for one moment that we will be changed by it. We may think we learn for a time; the truth is that we will forget once more.
So what is the point of writing at all? I sit beside my computer screen in the tranquillity and late summer beauty of Highland Perthshire in the north of Scotland. I have the freedom to write what I want; as is evidenced by what I put onto the screen. It is a kind of prayer for the forgotten people of Syria; a cry into the darkness that we might look and listen and remember.
Somehow the suffering I see on my screen and at the news stands puts all my petty concern into perspective. I think of my beloved five year old child - for whom I would do anything, were it necessary - and I think of the fathers of Syria who can do nothing for the pain and cruelty and hunger that their equally beloved little ones are suffering.
Here in Dunkeld, in this most beautiful corner of Scotland, we are known for our music. I had the idea of gathering together some of the better known musicians to give a concert in our Cathedral, on behalf of the Syrian cause. We found a charity called Edinburgh Direct Aid and we asked them to come to speak to us about the work they were doing to alleviate the suffering in Syria. We hoped that a few would join us from the local community: this is only a small rural village.
The cathedral was so full that we had to find extra seats for people. There were over 500 present. That day, after a magnificent concert, we raised £5 000. We were pleased: it had been worthwhile. Then came the amazing news: someone present had been so moved by the event and what had been created that they were donating £20 000 to Edinburgh Direct Aid. Mighty oaks and little acorns.
And hidden somewhere in among the end-pieces of the news, there are sometimes stories from Syria. Almost like tiny fragments of debris: things found among the ruins. I keep wondering - as I have done almost since the beginning of this war - just how huge the aftermath of it will be. The longer it continues the greater the shadow somehow, and the more terrible the stories that emerge.
But we do not really care. I continue to have this awful sense of the way in which we rank human beings: somehow there is an order of importance. We know that white Europeans essentially come top, and news from other places has to be pretty desperate before we take much notice. Even with all the horror that emerges concerning Syria in the end, I do not believe for one moment that we will be changed by it. We may think we learn for a time; the truth is that we will forget once more.
So what is the point of writing at all? I sit beside my computer screen in the tranquillity and late summer beauty of Highland Perthshire in the north of Scotland. I have the freedom to write what I want; as is evidenced by what I put onto the screen. It is a kind of prayer for the forgotten people of Syria; a cry into the darkness that we might look and listen and remember.
Somehow the suffering I see on my screen and at the news stands puts all my petty concern into perspective. I think of my beloved five year old child - for whom I would do anything, were it necessary - and I think of the fathers of Syria who can do nothing for the pain and cruelty and hunger that their equally beloved little ones are suffering.
Here in Dunkeld, in this most beautiful corner of Scotland, we are known for our music. I had the idea of gathering together some of the better known musicians to give a concert in our Cathedral, on behalf of the Syrian cause. We found a charity called Edinburgh Direct Aid and we asked them to come to speak to us about the work they were doing to alleviate the suffering in Syria. We hoped that a few would join us from the local community: this is only a small rural village.
The cathedral was so full that we had to find extra seats for people. There were over 500 present. That day, after a magnificent concert, we raised £5 000. We were pleased: it had been worthwhile. Then came the amazing news: someone present had been so moved by the event and what had been created that they were donating £20 000 to Edinburgh Direct Aid. Mighty oaks and little acorns.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
Living Room
Living Room
Now the storm of last night's passed;
everything lies torn in early morning
like a ship left tattered on the sea,
her rigging all in shreds, decks strewn with debris -
yet the storm itself forgotten, meaningless
beneath the glass-clear sky of morning.
You lie asleep, your hand curled white,
your breathing barely there at all;
and I come close on soundless feet and see
the shouting strewn about the floor,
the twisted arguments, the accusations -
I hear the echo of the long, slow crying
before the silence fell and we both crept away
to the corners of the dark, to gnaw the silence
and hear our hearts until we slept at last.
Now we have awakened into this strange day
and will not know what we should say or think
but look away, pretend, do everything
as if in some unwritten play, and acting badly -
wondering what happens next, how everything will end.
From Kenneth Steven's newest collection of poems, Letting in the Light, just published by SPCK in London; a volume about the pain of marital breakdown and the parting from a beloved child.
ISBN 978-0-281-07670-3
Now the storm of last night's passed;
everything lies torn in early morning
like a ship left tattered on the sea,
her rigging all in shreds, decks strewn with debris -
yet the storm itself forgotten, meaningless
beneath the glass-clear sky of morning.
You lie asleep, your hand curled white,
your breathing barely there at all;
and I come close on soundless feet and see
the shouting strewn about the floor,
the twisted arguments, the accusations -
I hear the echo of the long, slow crying
before the silence fell and we both crept away
to the corners of the dark, to gnaw the silence
and hear our hearts until we slept at last.
Now we have awakened into this strange day
and will not know what we should say or think
but look away, pretend, do everything
as if in some unwritten play, and acting badly -
wondering what happens next, how everything will end.
From Kenneth Steven's newest collection of poems, Letting in the Light, just published by SPCK in London; a volume about the pain of marital breakdown and the parting from a beloved child.
ISBN 978-0-281-07670-3
Friday, 8 July 2016
Light
LIGHT
Sometimes it’s not about
delays and cancellations;
the door that needs repaired,
the shopping left behind.
You come home early and find
yourself alone:
the sun blooms pink against
the kitchen window,
and there’s the whisper of a
butterfly against the glass.
You slip inside a place where
hurry doesn’t happen,
and stand there, listening,
as raindrops glisten all the
way along the sill.
You scrape a chair back, sit
down softly
as though you were in church,
your hand across the table.
For in your mind you’re back
in childhood –
the film of it is faded in
your eyes and yet it’s there.
And everything you have to do
and have to be
seems suddenly to matter less
than what the robin sings
this April evening as the sun
comes glinting here and there
about the house. For all
these little things
are fragments of the light
that make up life.
This poem will appear in Kenneth Steven's newest collection,
Letting in the Light, to be published by SPCK in London later this month
Sunday, 19 June 2016
News
NEWS
Do not cry for them. They
were only Syrians –
not Americans or French,
British or Dutch.
It’s just that 300 of them
died trying
to get from Libya to Italy
It was the eighth item on the
news,
after a piece on the stock
market
and word of league tables in
the English schools.
They were only Syrians after
all.
Interesting that exactly 300
of them drowned –
not two hundred and
ninety-eight, or
three hundred and four.
Exactly 300.
How very tidy. How tucked in
and neat.
That’s all we know. Not what
they did or where they came from;
not what they had to sell to
make the crossing,
or what they left behind in Syria
and all they carried with
them when they drowned.
Now they lie on the bed of
the Mediterranean
and I see them in my mind’s
eye, serene,
their struggle done at last.
Lying as if asleep,
the water softening their
wrists and faces.
Children lying tucked against
their mothers;
old men hollowed out, their
cheekbones hungry,
and all the little they had
left beside them
meaningless now and lost.
They will lie here until time
has wiped them out,
has softened them and they
have gone, these nameless ones.
But do not cry for them;
they’re only Syrians –
and there’ll be more, lots
more, before the war is over.
This is deliberately posted in the week we decide our future in Europe. It's sadly the case that xenophobic posters and rhetoric have been all too much in evidence from one side, at a time when the need to reach out to the suffering people of Syria could not be greater. Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of membership of the European Union, the crying shame of that suffering must be addressed.
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Stromness
Recently I had the joy of being back in Orkney. The islands that make up the Orkneys are to the north-east of the mainland of Scotland: they are, if you like, in the top right hand corner of the country. Mainland Orkney is made up of long, low hills; a seemingly endless series of bays and inlets, and rich agricultural land teeming with birdlife and song. Dig a hole in Orkney and it would seem all but certain you'd find Viking treasure: nowhere in western Europe is so littered with archaeological treasures. And in the high summer the sun only dips below the western horizon for an hour or so before beginning to climb once more in the start of a new day.
But I went back to Stromness. The main street of mainland Orkney's second biggest town is a higgledy-piggledy winding of grey houses and slabs. There is a whole book waiting to be made out of it: little alleyways that lead down to glimpses of the sea; adverts in windows for old sails and boats; tangerine cats stretched in the sunlight; aged houses filled with stories of shipwrecks and mermaids. It was at the end of this street that the great Orkney writer George Mackay Brown lived. He always said that he never needed to travel: he had everything he needed in Orkney, and it was as though he ploughed the very soil for the poems, stories, novels and plays that poured from his pen.
It's in the middle of this street you'll find Tam's bookshop. It's the smallest bookshop I've ever known; and the most exciting. Here is to be found everything concerned with northern-ness: novels about the Faroe Islands, histories of Greenland, diaries from Iceland, the story of the discovery of Jan Mayen. Tam was married to the late great Gunnie Moberg; a fabulous Swedish photographer who worked with George Mackay Brown, melding her images with his words. Both are worth finding and discovering. And if you happen to land up in Orkney, promise me you'll wander down the main street of Stromness and spend a good hour with the treasure trove of Tam's bookshop.
But I went back to Stromness. The main street of mainland Orkney's second biggest town is a higgledy-piggledy winding of grey houses and slabs. There is a whole book waiting to be made out of it: little alleyways that lead down to glimpses of the sea; adverts in windows for old sails and boats; tangerine cats stretched in the sunlight; aged houses filled with stories of shipwrecks and mermaids. It was at the end of this street that the great Orkney writer George Mackay Brown lived. He always said that he never needed to travel: he had everything he needed in Orkney, and it was as though he ploughed the very soil for the poems, stories, novels and plays that poured from his pen.
It's in the middle of this street you'll find Tam's bookshop. It's the smallest bookshop I've ever known; and the most exciting. Here is to be found everything concerned with northern-ness: novels about the Faroe Islands, histories of Greenland, diaries from Iceland, the story of the discovery of Jan Mayen. Tam was married to the late great Gunnie Moberg; a fabulous Swedish photographer who worked with George Mackay Brown, melding her images with his words. Both are worth finding and discovering. And if you happen to land up in Orkney, promise me you'll wander down the main street of Stromness and spend a good hour with the treasure trove of Tam's bookshop.
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