Shore Poets
Hamish Whyte was born near Glasgow where he lived for many years before moving to Edinburgh in 2004. He has edited many anthologies of Scottish literature, including Noise and Smoky Breath: an illustrated anthology of Glasgow poems 1900-1983, The Scottish Cat, An Arran Anthology and Kin: Scottish Poems about Family, as well as co-editing several issues of New Writing Scotland. He runs Mariscat Press, publishing the poetry of Edwin Morgan, Gael Turnbull, Janice Galloway, Stewart Conn, Douglas Dunn and A.L. Kennedy among others, including Shore Poets Angela McSeveney, Ian McDonough and Jane McKie.
He has worked as a librarian, reviewed crime fiction for Scotland on Sunday and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. His collection of poems, A Bird in the Hand, was published in 2008 by Shoestring Press - a new collection, also from Shoestring, The Unswung Axe, is due in 2012. An earlier poetry publication, Window on the Garden Essence/Botanic Press 2006) was reviewed in Scotland on Sunday as ‘Impossible to describe, like Joni Mitchell and James Joyce deciding to rewrite Thomson’s The Seasons in the style of Sappho.’
Dogsitting in Stockbridge
stoic (not cynic)
your daughter’s dog
Badger hirples along
Glenogle Road –
you can see
where dogged comes from
he lifts his head to stare
at invisible foxes
in the Academy undergrowth
sniffs walls and posts
for the latest news
lavishes more attention
than it deserves
on a scraggy plant
by the Snakey path
bits of him don’t work
he has to be wheelbarrowed
up the Dunrobin steps
have his haunches held
over the Bell Place bridge
rewarded with biscuits
after every pee and poo
the cartoon persona
the skewed ambling
the whingeing rug with
the baleful look
the deafness to commands
the interrogation of objects –
he’s really an early
Greek philosopher transmogrified
into a woolly liquorice allsort
The Unswung Axe
The unswung axe rests on a stump
Beside the kindling, laid down
While Christmas runs its course.
These Canadian distant cousins
Of my late father-in-law actually live
On Christmas Road, in Robert’s Creek,
British Columbia. My father-in-law’s
Name was Robert. I don’t know much
About them except that they have a care
For trees and sheep. They’re snug
In their wooden house while winter
Drifts the snow around them.
We keep in touch only at Christmas:
They send news of how the seasons treat them,
The occasional family snap, which makes them
Seem even more strangerly. But they’re thinking
Of us, they hope me and mine are doing well
And the year to come will be fruitful,
They say god bless. I always post a card
With festive greetings and good wishes
For the new year - I do wish them well,
These folk, who write me every year
From the farthest reaches of kin.