Seventh time lucky!

This blog post is for people who write poems. I have just had a poem accepted for publication in a magazine I've wanted to get into for a while (pause for a moment of celebration...)

I know I'm not alone in sending poems out regularly to magazines (not regularly enough, there are still heaps waiting to be shown the light of day, but I try to send some out most months). The key moment in the process is receiving those self-addressed envelopes back in the post. There's a moment of resistance when I don't want to know if the answer is yes or no and leave the envelope unopened. But of course in the end wanting to know wins, and I pull back the sticky leaf and drag out the contents. More often than not, the answer is no. The editor's not reading at the moment, the poems don't work for them, they don't fit the issue, they just don't like them quite enough. Sometimes they say which ones nearly made it in. Sometimes they say please send more.

And sometimes they say, I'm taking one (or two). Yes.

When I get poems rejected, the only thing that eases the sense that it is ME that is being rejected (which is not a nice feeling, no matter how elegant and tactful the editor's style, and there is a tremendous range of editorial rebuff, and kind rejections are really very much, very very much appreciated...) the only thing to ease the hurt is to send more poems out. I've learned this the hard way over years. Licking the wound does not work. But putting more poems out in the post does. Trying again, kicking the poetry ball back into the field, works for me.

So, when a rejection comes in, send poems out. But which poems? The same ones, to a different place? Different ones to the same place? No. I pick a magazine from the list of magazines I want to get into (every poet has to have one of those...). I don't know how I choose which one, I just use some kind of instinct of which one I want to try today. Then I try to send poems that might fit the style of the magazine (though that can be a hard call, it is hard to judge an editor's taste). It takes four times as long as I think it will to make that choice.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of which poems have gone to which magazines and how they have fared. It helps me to judge which poems not to bother sending where and which ones might go down OK. It ensures I don't send poems out simultaneously to different magazines or repeat pitches. And, it means that I have a rationale for chucking poems out onto the compost heap.

If a poem is rejected over and over, it's usually because there's something not nice about it and eventually, like a wounded tomato, it just needs to be put somewhere it can rot down out of sight. I call that place the compost heap.

So (and thanks for reading this far, as I'm about to get to the point) how many times does a poem need to be rejected before it goes on the compost heap? I used to say 5 times. My poem 'Rahayu' was rejected four times before I sent it to Island, back in 2003. Julie Johnstone, the editor, liked it so much she asked to see more of my work and the result was that she published my first collection, letting light in. So I reckoned that a poem needs at least 5 outings before I chuck it.

But what if it gets 6 rejections? Keep trying. The poem that has just been accepted has been rejected by 6 other editors. It was its seventh try. I've always rather liked it myself. I'm glad I persisted.

Retreat from the retreat

I spent the last week at Glencanisp Lodge, running a creative retreat. I have led thirteen of these over the past 5 years, since my local community bought the house in 2005. For the first few years I did it on my own, and then a year ago I helped to form a community interest company, called Top Left Corner, to run the retreats and do other community arts projects. Last week was the last of the weeks that will be held at Glencanisp Lodge, at least for the foreseeable future.

Top Left Corner has had to fold - the costs (particularly the cost of renting the lodge) are too high and customer numbers too low to enable us to make sufficient profit on retreats to cover the basic costs of running a company (insurance, accountancy, administration, marketing etc). I have spent a year on an immensely steep learning curve, at the top of which I can see I have acquired an understanding of lots of business concepts, though I am still as ignorant as I ever was about how to 'succeed in business'.

What I do know, however, is how to run a retreat, and this last week was a delightful pleasure - a lovely one to end on. There are three phases to a good retreat week.

There's the start, which begins for me with preparation, and when the participants start to arrive I'm already tired from shopping and getting the lodge set up ready to be a retreat venue (installing a library, putting writing tables in every room etc). But as the house fills up with people, I revive. Last week it was a mixture of friends, acquaintances and unknowns. My job is to make everyone feel welcome, to help them to find their space, and to stir the pot of people until they blend into a whole. This can take a few days. This last week it seemed to happen within a few hours. It was a fairly small group (9 of us altogether) of mature artists and writers and everyone had clear reasons for being there and mostly pretty clear goals for the week. I urge everyone to identify treats they will indulge in during the week.

After the soup of creators has blended, my job is to disappear or at least not to get in anyone's way, but to be there to help the creative work to go on. I do a daily session in the morning, called a 'creative warm-up', which allows people to come and check in, get a boost in their work if they need it, check their direction, or simply spend time with the others. I offer a gentle activity, a walk or a talk, on most days. We went to Achmelvich to read Norman MacCaig poems together. We walked to Suileag bothy to discuss our creative processes.

An important part of this middle of the week is listening to my guests' ideas and urges and helping them to give themselves the treats that they deserve. I encourage people to go to the bookshop at Inverkirkaig, or to walk the river circuit and buy a pie on the way. I link them up to local artists. I point them in the direction of Fergus Stewart's ceramics studio and to Highland Stoneware in Lochinver, to Barbara Macleod's jewellery workshop or to the soap and candle shop in Drumbeg. I called Helen Lockhart to come to the lodge to sell her yarns - she filled the sofas in the living room with irresistable colour one afternoon. Agnes Dickson came to sing Gaelic songs. My partner Bill came to talk land revolution. My aim in all of this is for my guests to feel how alive this community is, and to feel that they have touched its pulse and made real, human and artistic contact with this special place.

Then there is the end. It begins before anyone starts saying 'only a day to go'. It's a subtle shift, but I always feel it. It's when I start to check if everyone is finishing what they set out to do, asking, hopefully not too pointed questions, about progress, completion. On the morning of the final day I run a session about beginnings and endings and this always helps to focus creative minds on the last push towards closure. I start to think about how to empty the fridge. I pack up my own things in my room. I have winding-up thoughts. Creative work pulses to conclusions. We share what we have done.

And then, on Saturday morning, we wake up, bundle our hangovers into our bags and go home. I empty the lodge of our presence: books, music and food. I return to the quiet solitude of the croft. I rest and reflect.

It was a wonderful week of art: paintings, textiles, words and friendships forged and strengthened. Glencanisp Lodge is a wonderful venue for creativity, and I gain a subversive pleasure from inhabiting what was once (and still sometimes is) a venue for killing (fishing and hunting) and using it for creating new and beautiful artworks. And as always, it is wonderful to be home.

On the morning after, I woke to the first skein of geese of the year, flying over, on their way north to distant summering grounds. It is, now, time to move on.

The balance has tipped

We celebrated the equinox on Sunday night with a ceremonial fire in the woods, crouched next to a ruin out of the wildest blasts of wind. As the full moon struggled to shoulder its way through the cloud-crowd, the bonfire roared 'enough' to winter.

This morning, I strolled towards the gate thinking how mild and calm it was and noticed the sound of kissing - lots of rapid squeaky little pecky kisses - and something like purring. Up in the highest branches of a rowan tree perched two long-tailed tits, like furry lollypops - balls of fluff on long stick-tails. One made a show of a twig in its beak, then fluttered off, nestwards. The other followed.

Love is in the air.

It's spring

It's now, officially, spring on Braighlinne. The first flower to open is a primrose, as always. And as always it is under the slowest trees to come into leaf, aspens, down close to the shore of Loch Roe in the cove we call Kelvin Grove, because of the Kelvin engine from a long abandoned fishing boat which squats there, below the high tide mark.

Some legendary boat, nesting

behind this old shore dyke,

sheltered by this aspen grove,

left behind, like a golden egg,

this Kelvin engine, rusting.

As if they have seen the primroses too, blackbirds have begun to sing their glorious improvisatory songs. Late in the afternoon, I stand transfixed by a high-wire performance: the bird sits in beak-lifted sillhouette, its back to the sunset, facing the moon in the eastern sky, and pours out one witty trickle of tune after another. Its tone is to a flute as primrose yellow is to gold. I wonder if its dowdy partner, hiding in the birches, is as impressed by its song as I am?

Earth Wondering

Since about November 2008 I've developed a habit of writing a daily 'wondering'. These are short bits of text, usually about something on the croft, if I'm here, or the natural world elsewhere, if I'm not. Some of the wonderings are variants on the theme of 'wow, look at that, isn't that incredible/great/beautiful/splendid/perplexing'. Many are questions, blurts about something that makes me scratch my head and furrow my brows, or mysteries I wish I understood.

For example, here's one of the former variety, from Summer: 'A cormorant surfaces with a fish in its beak, and the mirror-calm loch rolls into a spiral of ripples, widening until the water is a huge vinyl disc, ready to play cormorant waltzes. A tern dips like the diamond-tipped needle – let the music begin.'

From winter, one of the questioning ones: 'A woodcock, invisible until almost trodden on, batters away through a thicket of hazel. How does it not smash into the trees?'

I scratch them down in a notebook, and gradually the pages have mounted up. Last year I took a selection of wonderings I wanted to share, organised them into four sets, one for each season, and created four booklets illustrated with some of Bill Ritchie's wonderful close-up photographs. I gave them as gifts to a few people, who seemed to enjoy them. They are handmade, printed on 100% recycled paper and bound with string.

Now they're for sale, on my website, for £5.50 each or £19.50 for the set. Or you can get them for rather less than that direct from me.

Re-hibernating

It is not spring. Not yet. The lack of primroses and the hail and snow force this conclusion, not to mention cold nose, cold fingers, cold toes.

At the weekend, we moved down to the shore of Loch Roe, but we've been forced to admit we were premature, and now we're back in the woods again.

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while, or who have read 'Wildlife on Braighlinne' in the wonderful Wilder Vein anthology, will know that my partner Bill and I life a nomadic life within the 11 hectares of our home. It's a kind of transhumance, similar in spirit to that of herders, hunter-gatherers and other peoples who still live close to nature. We spend the winter in a cabin in the woods, sheltered from the worst storms. In spring we move down to our little caravan on the shore of the sea loch. In summer, when the midgies make cooking inside a steamy caravan unpleasant we take to cooking and eating in another caravan up on the breezy heights of the croft, then wend our way back down to the shore to sleep. In autumn we revert to our spring quarters, until the path down the crag to the shore becomes too icy to navigate by torchlight as the nights draw in, when we retreat to the woods.

The seasons don't obey calendars. Spring on Braighlinne is defined by the opening of the first primrose. Summer comes with the first midgies, or the arrival of the terns from Antartica, whichever come first. When the terns leave, that's autumn. And winter announces itself by the first hard frost.

So what were we doing heading for the shore before the first primrose, you may well ask. Bill had one of those significant birthdays, and his chosen venue was the shore. Over the past 10 years, five of his birthdays have been after the first primrose, and five before. This year, once again, his birthday came early.

Last night we were back in the cosy cabin, fire glowing in the stove, a warming lentil stew on, and snow on the ground outside. It's the seasonal equivalent of having got up, thought better of it and snuggled back into bed for another snooze.

Wake me when the primroses are open.

The language of the land

This landscape is written all over in Gaelic. Every stream, slope and hollow is named in the language, and many of those names are rich descriptions, with hints about the trees that grew here, the animals that frequented the spot or the uses that people made of the land. Some of these are still pertinent: our croft Braighlinne, the slope above the pool, will always be aptly named, and Baddidarach still has lots of oak trees. But the wolves have gone from Gleannan a' Mhadaidh, and Creag Dharaich was devoid of trees until oaks were planted as part of a reforestation project in the 1990s.

Yet the names can guide us in how to restore the land to ecological health, they can inspire us about what the landscape might be like for future generations and they can help us to connect to this place as a lived-in ecosystem, one with cultural as well as natural heritage. The tragedy is that not only have the woods and wildlife been decimated over past generations, so too the very language that spoke about them has been almost completely lost.

I am proud to be part of a movement to try to prevent the total collapse of the Gaelic language here in Assynt, and thanks to the Ulpan teaching system, I'm one of a group of people determined to help bring about its revival. In December I took part in a teacher-training programme that means we now have three fully trained tutors in the parish, and another one just north in Scourie. My part was to be a 'guinea-pig student' for the tutors to practice on, and I learned more Gaelic in the process than I have by struggling with self-study for I don't know how long. There were eleven of us and seven of us are now continuing with twice-weekly Gaelic language classes. Ulpan is a brilliant system, and I'll write more about it here in future. For now, you can read my piece about it in the Bratach, here.

Another crucial part of sustaining Gaelic is all the associated culture. The language is fuel, but the heat and light are what matter: stories, songs and poetry; tunes, dances and games. The Feis and Mod movements are keeping these alive, and it was inspiring to see the tiny village of Scourie run their first Feis last month.

In Assynt, the song tradition has remained strong and many people were taught songs by family members who did not otherwise speak Gaelic to them. One of these is James Graham, who has become one of the country's most lauded Gaelic singers, and who put years of study into becoming a fluent Gaelic speaker. There's an interview I did with him a while back on the Northings website. He is now one of our trained Gaelic tutors and an excellent teacher, when his job with the Mod doesn't take him away from us. For the wider cause, I suppose I should be glad that someone with his talents is involved in the Mod, but we'd rather we had him here, helping to get Gaelic back onto our lips.

Why am I, an incomer, bothered about Gaelic? As well as wanting to understand the names on the maps, it's the poetry. All the song lyrics and all the poems of this place, prior to Norman MacCaig's visiting eye, were in Gaelic. Just across and down the Minch, people are still writing in Gaelic. I want to be able to read it in the original, not with all the music and nuance washed out of it in translation. I live in the woods, and the trees here formed the original alphabet, called Ogham, when the Gaelic language was first written down. There's a depth of association with this place that I am sure can only be best expressed in Gaelic.

In my mission to deepen my connection to the nature of this land, I can but try to speak its native tongue.