Features / Poets’ Corner – James Sinclair
Carol Jamieson’s latest guest in her Poets’ Corner feature is Lerwick writer James Sinclair, author of Simmer o Love.
I especially love this poem as I too was a teenager around that time.
James describes exactly what it was like hanging about in Lerwick at the dances and the terrible insecurities that beset us all when we ‘fancied’ somebody. He illustrates so well the stark contrast to his workday which was fraught with different challenges.
I asked James a few questions about what inspires his poetry and the story behind this one.
He replied: “My poetry is influenced by the natural world, weather, my Shetland heritage and mostly these days, talking to people, yarnin. I was a late starter to poetry, beginning in my 40s. I have tried writing in both dialect and English, but have found that my natural voice is the Shetland dialect.
“I have lived in Lerwick all my life. My dialect has a strong North Yell feel, influenced by spending a lot of childhood holidays there and listening to my mother who moved to Lerwick over 60 years ago but never lost her North Yell twang.
“Simmer O Love came to me, out and about on a sunny spring day. I thought this feels like summer, then I had the thought about the summer of love in 1967.
“I wondered how that summer was in Shetland, thousands of miles away from California, where flower power was blossoming. Simmer O Love features in my second poetry collection Sheeksin.”
Simmer o Love
Da simmer o sixty seven
free love an free towt.
Wir skipper wis fur nedder
as we lay at da back o Mousa
nicht eftir nicht,
shuttin an haulin, shuttin an haulin,
fur barely enouch ta tak a fry hame.
Dir wisna muckle love aboard
Men shargin in een annidder
Da simmer o sixty seven
Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Haerts Club Baand an Pet
Soonds.
Da perties I guid ta edir hed a fiddle i da coarner
ur Hank Snow an Jimmy Shand on da gramophone.
An as fur Kaftans an Nudie suits
hit wis da smookie fur your wark an da Fair-Isle gansie
aa idder wyes.
Dir wir nae opportunities ta smoke joints an drap acid
We hed ta mak dö wi red Embassy an a half bottle o
Ushers.
Da simmer o sixty seven
micht o been da simmer I fell heid ower heels fur da
boanie Helen.
But shu ony hed eyes fur Lowrie John,
an he hed hit aa, da lueks, da money an da car.
As far as I could mak oot, he wis foo o his ain piss an
importance
an ee nicht outside da Planets I telt him dat sam.
An eftir he’d knockit da livin daylichts oot o me
shu guid hame wi him onywye.
