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Yvonne Marjot
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the poet
Yvonne Marjot washed up on the Isle of Mull in 2001 after a varied career that took her round the world. Her poetry, inspired by her surroundings, often links mythology with the natural world. She's been published online as well as in anthologies – the most recent of which being In Flight. Her debut collection, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won Yvonne the 2012 Brit Writers Prize for Poetry.
the poems
Workshop
Inspired by the exhibition at An Tobar,
Tobermory, Isle of Mull
(August 2021)
How small a space
is a mind,
to track
and trace
our place in this landscape.
Old stories retold,
folded and pressed;
pieces sliced and plotted,
conjured in gold
or barely guessed.
Fabric as palimpsest:
stone set on stone, dense
with ink, tense with meaning.
Complexity bounded,
a nexus of time and intent.
Tree shadows, courtyards,
a village traced and lined,
a vision confined,
a vestige, a moment:
a world unfurled.
A tight-woven fastness –
a limitless vastness:
this place,
so small a space
to hold a mind.
Artist Eve Campbell spent lockdown creating textile art arising
from memories of the landscapes and places that inspired her –
unfurling the world within the walls of her home.
The Smith
In his hands the smith is holding light,
his face caught in its glow, thought bent
on his creation. Focused, calm, intent,
with all his skill he brings it into life.
His grasp is confident, fingers deft and sure.
Fluent in his clasp, the tongs coax a fine,
subtle spiral from the glowing rod of iron.
He wipes his brow on his arm, bends to endure
the flare of the forge: hungry, its red mouth roars
as air wakes the coals. The living metal twists
and writhes, vivid in the shimmering heat. His wrist
transmits the impulse. He hefts the weight, pours
his strength into the stroke, one with the force
of each blow; the hammer knows its task.
His neck is a molten column, his face a mask
marked by the heat, lit from within like the forge.
The anvil is rooted deep in the earth, the coals
are the world’s furnace, igniting the heat
that hides in the planet’s core. Sinews tighten
as he shifts his grip, seeing the work whole.
The hot iron smells like blood, like sex. Like life.
He straightens, observes, moves it
gently into water. Steam tempered, the lucent
surface, beaded with droplets, gleams in the light.
Outlined in crimson, his hammer lies still.
He stands, annealed in the fires of his own skill.
Harespell
The hare lies so calm
in her form of grass,
but she trembles still
in the wind from the hill.
For the wind is a spell,
and the spell is a word,
and the word
is the weight
of a world.
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb