Features / Poets’ Corner – Christian S. Tait
Carol Jamieson’s latest guest in her occasional Poets’ Corner feature is Christian Tait who was born and brought up in Lerwick.
She, her husband Harry and their two daughters moved to Trondra in the mid-seventies, “the place of our dreams”. She returned to Lerwick in 2013.
Christian recalls: “My writing life began in the late eighties when I was approaching fifty years of age. Harry and I were on holiday in Austria. A chance meeting, and a brief conversation with an elderly gentleman from Lancashire (who happened to be a poet) resulted in him sending me some of his work.
“I left the parcel unopened for a few days as I was worried about what I would say in reply! Up to then my only creative outlet had been music. However, his poems spoke to me very clearly, and I wrote my first poem that day. I sent it to him by way of thanks. He became my mentor, and that poem appeared in my first book Spindrift.
“So my Lancashire friend opened the door for me, but I owe the content to my Grandpa, L.G. Scott. He was a wise, intelligent man, gentle and full of fun. He had many interests – particularly all things to do with Shetland – its people, its language, history, geology and archaeology as well as its literature, and those who wrote it – many of whom were his friends.
“He shared all this enthusiasm with me in conversations, stories and family outings all over Shetland, which I grew to love as much as he did. He also triggered my love of music. One of my early memories is sitting on his knee at the piano while he sang and played Shenandoah. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I can hear it still…
“I hope you will recognise his influence in the poem I have chosen – People and Place. This is my best effort at describing my feelings about Shetland, where I am at one with the world.
“I cannot finish without mentioning the part Harry, my late husband, played in all this. He took a lively interest, and encouraged me from day one. Also he gave me so much practical help with IT!”
How rich and beautiful Christains poetry is. She is not afraid to talk with depth of the raw, painful, cold and jagged aspects of Shetland as well as human life.
In her latest book Emojis in the Margin she chronicles her journey through losing her husband. It is not a light easy read, but it is full of meaning, tears and hope. In addition, she has written three other books: Spindrift, Stones in the Millpond as well as And Darkness Fell.
She read People and Place over the phone to me; it caught me up and brought me to the edge of the cliff, the sea-flavoured wind pushing me back, the sun blinding me and the solid rock beneath my feet.
The poem allowed me to revel in the cold, jagged, grey, inhospitable but stunningly scenic place we call home.
“Time tastes of salt and has no meaning”
There is no need for time as the sea, the sky and the hard cold earth are indeed timeless.
People and Place
The North is not afraid to go naked.
It wears no cloak of forest green
Nor does it flaunt itself with blowsy flowers
for this is no Eden.
No apples. No fig leaves. No secrets.
Our boundaries are clear,
every inch defined by sea -meets-land.
No questions here.
We know where we stand.
Perpendicular coastlines hold the memories of molten rock,
and in narrow valleys smooth boulders bear scars
that chart the painful drag of glaciation.
These are the bones of our hard history.
On rough days we lean into the wind
and learn all there is to know about awe and humility,
as sea-giants quarry great blocks of stone
and toss them like pebbles over the cliff’s edge.
Time tastes of salt, and has no meaning.
When it is calm we gaze across an ocean
that stretches in lazy undulations towards a hazy horizon.T
he body becomes nothing in the face of immeasurable space
but the spirit rejoices in broad acres of emptiness.
Minds are stripped down to the only thing that matters.
The place is its people, its people the place
thirled together in life and in death.
We’re soil, worm, bird, corn-rig
And wind stunted tree.
This covenant shackles us . . . and sets us free.
Christian S. Tait
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