Today is cloudy and cold. Weather here is erratic, especially so in the spring, and the sun of the last few days is elusive. But it is the green time, newer and bigger leaves on the trees every time I look out of the window, a stretch on the plant stems in the garden, everything pumping out newness and enthusiasm as hard as it can go. The apple tree is in full bloom, and the damson and fruit bushes are beginning to set fruit. Birdsong is loud in the trees along the burn – not just the ‘get off my land’ yelling of the wrens, but a lot of incessant ‘feed me!’ contact calls from blackbirds and thrushes nesting in the sallows and hawthorns. This gives me great joy, as for the first three years we lived here, blackbirds and thrushes never came into the garden – I think there was too much building and disruption. But now they are settled in and coming closer. Here’s an old poem, from the River Calendar sequence in The Territory of Rain.
Summering
Summer is moving on.
The train cuts through summer verges
of foxglove, rose and elderflower.
Moon-daisies burn like bonfires.
Yellow spikes of broom spill
scent of butterscotch and coconut.

Summer is loud and flirty,
all trills and cascades of birdsong
and exhibitionist butterflies
twinkling over the cuckoo flower.
Lapwings jazz-dance, and skylarks
climb the sky, lost in the sundazzle.
Swifts careen round the chimneys,
playing kiss-chase on edgy black wings.

Summer is changing weathers,
rain and wind make kaleidoscopes
of cloud and rainbows scattered
across the face of the hill.
New wheat and barley shake green
and silver ripples over the fields.
Bird, flower, insect, leaf, grass,
rise and fall and multiply, hatch
faster than beak or tooth can eat.

Summer is always hungry
moving out to catch the crop,
the mayfly hatch, the caterpillars
feasting on the new leaves,
unguarded nests, still ponds,
the nectar trail from orchard to lime walk,
from clover to heathery slopes,
cream, honey, berries, new eggs, love.

With the new book safely at the printers, I have spent a lot of time in the garden, clearing weeds and last year’s spent foliage, moving things around and adding a hazel tree and some agrimony plants to the magical garden, moving the mugwort to the boundaries, which seems to suit it, and creating a space for a shady bower in the roundel between the magical garden and the night border, where the night scented stock, evening primroses and nicotiana will grow. It is time for the good green herbs.
This is the title of one of the sections in Comrades of Dark Night, a reference to an instruction of St Bernard to his monks that they should not go for the exotic treatments of the professional doctors patronised by rich people, but confine themselves to the remedies available locally, and available to the poor. It’s where I put the Charms for the Healing of Grief, and my translation of the Charm of Nine Herbs, with the poems inspired by each of the herbs, and the reflections they ignited about our attitudes – not just to herbs or medicine, but to sensory knowledge, as distinct from digital, and traditional wisdom as opposed to authorised learning processes.
To my mind, St Bernard’s instructions chime with the extravagant gimmickry of the ‘wellness industry’ today, and this echoes some of my poetry reading. I’ve read Vicki Husband’s Glasgoscopy, which deals with her experience as an occupational therapist visiting patients during the pandemic, Julene Weaver’s Slow Now with Clear Skies, which reflects on the different kinds of contact we have with people because of it, and the way it disrupted our thinking about healing and communities and relations with food and landscape. Karen Solie’s Well Water also deals with environmental issues, showing how our delusions about ‘development’ and control of our health and living standards divorce us from the basics of embodied living, even caring for our water supply. All these books ask, ‘What is health?’ ‘What is healing?’ and all in some way see the body as a metaphor for the community and the environment, assert that we can’t heal one without mending the other.

I hope to do more in-depth reviews on the blog of these poets, who differ much more widely than I the impression I give here, but that will have to wait a bit.
Because, for the next fortnight, I will be giving readings!
The first one is for the support group, NeuroCentral, which supports people living with neurological medical conditions on Monday 4th May.
The next is the first public one, on the 7th May, which is also election day (don’t forget to vote!) at St Bride’s Church Hall Cambuslang, at 2.30 in the afternoon. We will have poetry from Anne Connolly as well as myself, music, tea, cake and squirrel cookies. If you happen to be free in the afternoon, do come!
Then on the 14th May, in Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street Glasgow at 7pm, St Mungo’s Mirrorball will be in session. The headliner is Isobel Baafi, and also reading will be Charlie Gracie, Donal McLaughlin, and Mairi Murphy, reading from their joint publication Rabble of Glints.

Perhaps you might like to subscribe to this newsletter? Subscribers will be able to order books from my shop without charges for p&p. (But please note that my publisher Red Squirrel Press doesn’t currently charge for this, though you might get lured into buying more of the lovely books she publishes than you bragained for!). I don’t spam you with marketing, and the platform I use won’t sell your data.