"I wrote poetry while I was at Newcastle University, and despite some publication which 
 ought to have encouraged me, I gave it up as a hopeless occupation for a while. Instead, 
 I wrote a series of unpublished novels, which taught me most of what I know about writing, 
 apart from that gained by large amounts of reading - anything from Proust to the proverbial bus ticket. 

 Poetry comes to my desk every day in book and typescript. I have not lost my love of Greek 
 and Latin poetry, nor of English Poetry from Chaucer through the Golden Treasury to Eliot and Auden. 
 In my years in Scotland I have become something of a specialist in Scottish poetry and the 
 language and dialects of Scots. I have been studying Scottish Gaelic for some years. 
 I hope you will look at "Poetry Scotland's" website in which my hand may be readily discerned, 
 but which is managed and run by webmaster and poet Colin Will."
 


The Shapes of Trees
 
Here comes the mist,
sweeping through the trees,
whitening summer dawn.
 
Shapes of poplar,
chestnut, a grove of oaks
succumb to its swirl.
 
Blankness envelopes me,
as this mist teases me,
curled as a simile,
 
the faint outline
of each tree
like one of its leaves -

until it rolls away,
white revealing green.
Colour grows into morning.
 
Mist of memory, from which
the woodland shapes
come back to me,
 
it clings to secrets
till dawn's slant sun
clothes them in roselight
 
- each branch, every tree -
a drifting boundary
beyond whose blind I see.



Let's go pick blaeberries
 
Let's go pick blaeberries again,
strong, dark, sweet blaeberries
 
that lie in lairs
as though they understand
the country's dangerous.
 
They hide dark wine-blue hue
among mild red-green leaves,
on slopes that stalk the sun.
 
Let's spend an hour or so
pretending we live like this
always, provisioning
 
this fruit we breakfast on,
freeze down, consume as pies,

juice thickened by heat,
sweetened with honey.
 
Let's go pick blaeberries, shy
on high braes of July,
blaeberries, earthy,
 
Let's go pick blaeberries.
Let's go seek, let's go early.