I’ve been thinking about this poem, its ins and outs, connotations and associations, and I do believe I could write ten thousand words on it. (Not tonight! - but I’ll make a start, and may add more another time.) It must be one of the best examples I’ve seen on WW of a poem that really allows the stuff of poetry to do its work - I mean the imagery, and the concrete visual, aural and other detail. The poem carries meaning, but the meaning is almost entirely implicit in the concrete stuff. It’s in the sounds - the crackle of gravel, the rustle of a newspaper - and in the landmarks of Edinburgh (familiar to me!). It’s in this Haar, this shadowy, shape-changing, unstoppable entity, this being that will perhaps bring a sea-change into the life of the person who is said at the beginning to have ‘given up’. These concrete elements of the poem are very inventive, very imaginative, and they give the poem a very lively presence.

Every time I look at it I see something else. ‘The three west end spires/ swallowed like swords’ and the Balmoral turning into a handkerchief. This ‘creature’ is a performer, a conjurer! And the glass snowstorm - this image is nothing short of inspired - the haar turning to snow, but much more besides.

I’m still working on the meaning(s) of the poem, and couldn’t at this stage summarise them in a paragraph. Maybe never will. The key thing is that, reading and enjoying the poem, I have that important sense that you always get with a good poem, that meanings will emerge. So far I see a scene with two persons, the poem’s speaker and the one addressed. He/she is told that the haar is moving into the city. The haar seems more than just mist - it seems to have a conscious intent, to be an intelligent entity of some sort In an odd sort of way, it seems a touch sinister but not destructive. It is enveloping the city and heading for the house of the one who seems to have ‘given up’. It will bring him/her a ‘bedrock silence’ and the possibility of a ‘solid, unsubstantial peace’ - a new state of mind, perhaps, a new direction in life, a sea change. Whatever this change may be, it has two apparently contadictory qualities - it’s solid, and it’s elusive. That would be the nature of any new direction or new awareness in life that I could imagine - it would be of earth and air at the same time, have something firm and sure about it but also something elusive and shifting.

I won’t go any further just now, until I see what you think. Does my reading of your poem chime with your own? If not, or not quite, are you happy that it can be understood in this way?

James.

Hi James,

I am extremely happy with your reading! Thanks! You have understood all my intentions here and read more besides which I am very pleased by. I wasn't sure if there was enough in it - in the opening lines and final ones to make that intention clear - or if it even made sense.

The haar really is a conjurer isn't it? It always astounds me. And it makes me feel incredibly peaceful when everything disappears. And to make Edinburgh disappear with its grand buildings and history, astounds me all the more. It always seems to me like the haar is more than just a weather front! Those concrete images - the sounds etc are to try and represent those particularly shallow elements of everyday life. And the haar is there (as the speaker reminds the addressed person) to remind us that all this could disappear, and leave you alone; and the things that seem concrete aren't, and maybe this insubstantial mist is what reminds you of that. Your reading has taken that logic one step further: what the speaker is trying to encourage in the addressee-the sea change, and change of life etc this makes perfect sense. It is there, but I hadn't exactly thought about it in those terms.
Anyway, this is a poem I have been trying to write for about five years, and was at first a story. It was rewritten many times, and so I am just so glad you think it works!
Cheers, Kirsty

Kirsty -

as ver, James has said it all, already. This is a very fine poem indeed. As an Edinburgh loon myself, I'm all too familiar with haar coming off the Firth and the sea to vanish our substantial city. One quibble - I think of ghouls as being corporeal, in contrast to the vapourish appearance, or invisibility, of ghosts - might there be a better word for this idea - wraith, ghaist, will o' the wisp, or some such?

Braw screivin' !

Best,

Mike

Kirsty Hi

Very much enjoyed reading this as you have some fine images - James has , (as ever) given you great feedback and I am sure this will support further work. For me I think you could almost do without the first two stanzas - the body of the writing is in the last four and

it streaks across Princes Street,
long-fingered,

would be a great first line with clear signals to those who do not know the city what you are about here. I think the first two stanzas take away from the powerful impact of the writing in the rest of the poem. ( but this is just my opinion).

Really liked lots of this but especially:

You are inside a glass snowstorm, wildly shaken
the last survivor in a remote outpost,
all traces kicked over

thanks
Tina

Thanks Mike and Tina for your support and feedback. :-)

I know what you mean about the word 'ghoul' Mike. It does seem rather solid! I like wraith. With ghoul I was thinking - 'shapeshifter' as much as anything.

I imagine there will be further tinkering with this anyway. It is sort of hard to stop sometimes...
Cheers, Kirsty

It must be very satisfying to have worked on a poem for a long time and then find that it really succeeds. This one certainly does - I see it as a lively assertion of imagination as a ‘cure’ for our preoccupations with the mundane and materialistic. On first reading, coming to the line ‘But if you would just listen’ I half expected some sort of counsellor’s advice on a mundane level about reasons why one shouldn’t give up on life. Instead you give us a vibrant imaginative flight.

Something else that impressed me from the beginning is that the poem gives the impression of being triggered by a personal life-event, most likely in the life of the addressee in the poem, but there's no sense of there being anything private about it. I don’t know whether it really was triggered by something like that, but I think most readers would feel that it had its source in an exchange between two people one foggy day in Edinburgh. What impresses me, though, is the way the poem broadens out from that. There’s nothing private about it; it reaches out to its readers.

Some possible changes you might still make:

Leave out the line ‘No cityscape, just spreading space’. Those vivid pictures of the haar smudging the ‘Scottish Gothic’ (Scott Monument?) and swallowing spires like swords, say everything that's contained in the summing-up statement in that line. No need to make it explicit, or sum up the images - the reader can already see the cityscape dissolving.

Have another look at your punctuation. I used to be an English teacher, and for that very reason I don’t want to give punctuation lessons to adults who write quality poems. But the punctuation of free verse can be tricky, and if you need any help I’ll oblige.

Your poem reminded me slightly of Norman MacCaig’s ‘November Night, Edinburgh’. Only slightly - your poem has a different tone and spirit. But I like MacCaig’s lines:

The brown air fumes at the shop windows, Tries the door, and sidles past.

James.

Hi James,

Any help on punctuation would be most welcome, especially if you think some of it this poem does not quite work. I am very much a newcomer to writing poetry and I really want to feel like I could get a final, final draft of this poem one day, especially after all my endless tinkering. I am very interested to hear if there are any rules for punctuation in free verse that I should know about. It was my understanding that with free verse you made your own internal logic, and that affected the punctuation and other elements of style. Making (and then - maybe - breaking) your own rules as you went along, to make different kinds of effects/tone etc. Or is that right and in this poem I am just being a bit inconsistent somewhere? I'd appreciate any advice. Then I can have a review and a re-draft.

I think that the line 'No cityscape, just spreading space’ is probably unnecessary. I found I had to cut a lot in this poem because there seemed to be too many images, but there are only so many times that you can reiterate the same point! I think I kept this line in mainly for rhythm reasons. But I suppose that is a sort of falsehood or at least not really a legitimate reason to keep a line in a free verse poem!

Cheers, Kirsty

Don’t know what I was talking about, saying look again at your punctuation as if the poem was full of mistakes. No, it’s only some finer points of punctuation that I can see - most of them justifiable. Your omission of punctuation between sections, e.g. ‘claim you/ it streaks’ and ‘horror trick/ don’t underestimate’ is appropriate. It reflects the fluid motion of the haar, which doesn’t stop at the end of a sentence any more than it stops at the traffic lights!

More generally, line-breaks without punctuation - i.e. line-breaks where we expect a full stop, comma etc* - can be appropriate for anything mysterious, or uncertain, or anything which is being written about in a wondering or questioning way. That’s as distinct from things the poet wishes to assert or affirm with more conviction or certainty. Any ‘theory’ like this doesn’t get us very far in the abstract, but as a poet you can always be aware that punctuation at the ends of lines can be used or not, depending on the content or tone or mood of what you are writing.

On the same theme I’d suggest putting a full stop after ‘peace’, right at the end. This is because I feel the end of the poem is much more assertive than the lines describing the haar. What the addressee (‘you’) will become aware of as a result of the haar in all its literal and symbolic power is something very clear, definite and true. I know it’s complex in being both ‘solid’ and ‘insubstantial’ at the same time - but it’s real. The speaker is saying with conviction, you will hear that bedrock silence, you will understand what it means. The speaker’s conviction at the end needs a full stop.

The only thing that maybe qualifies as a punctuation mistake is the semi-colon after ‘given in’. That should be a full stop, I think.

I’ve never come across any special rules for punctuating verse. All the rules of prose punctuation apply - except that virtually any one of them can be broken if the poet can justify doing so, and isn’t putting unnecessary difficulties in the reader’s way.


*That’s as distinct from ‘run-on’ lines, where no punctuation is expected anyway. In your poem,

and that is when I realised that you had given in

are run-on lines. In prose they would be ‘That is when I realised that you had given in’. In verse there’s only the line-break, no other sign is needed or expected. Whereas, between these two lines:

there is something coming to claim you it streaks across Princes Street

there’s more than a line-break - there’s a ‘ghost’ full stop. ‘There is something coming to claim you. It streaks across Princes Street.’ The fact that the poet has deliberately left this conventional punctuation out registers with the reader, who (hopefully) can see a justification for leaving it out.

If any of this is as clear as mud (or Edinburgh haar!) let me know and I’ll try to unpack it a bit more.

James.

I think James is going to write the book but this poem deserves it and I do love that sense of claustrophobic fear, of being swallowed up, the last person left, the silence and at the end that image that the fog might well be a thing as solid as rock and you will be buried and the silence so deep your screams will never be heard.

It's brilliant. I love every line and nuance and break and sound of it.

Oonah

Hi James
Thanks so much for this considered response and your advice, which is extremely useful. I was feeling my way with the run-on lines, (which as you say was to keep in tune with subject), so your explanations of the punctuation choices make perfect sense and ring true with me. It is always interesting to discuss some of these practical elements, because it is not something that you can easily read about or discuss elsewhere. So I have made the changes you suggest because they do seem the right things to do with this poem, or are due to my keeness for semi colons.... (The punctuation mark of choice for the perpetually undecidided!)

Cheers, Kirsty