Diary of a Shopkeeper, 6th February
Ingrid Leonard and Rammo visit Archive Coffee.
This week I’m heading south for a fortnight of trade fairs, wine tastings and vineyard visits, which is exciting after two years of not travelling anywhere at all. But it’s slightly daunting too. Have I the correct vaccine certificates? Is London a ramping cauldron of virus variants? How will I taste wine with a mask fastened to my face? I daresay I’ll survive all the challenges and live to write about them in future columns. My positive attitude is bolstered by an exciting new collection of Orkney poetry, which is full of travel both local and international.
Ingrid Leonard’s Rammo in Stenness is, as the name suggests, rooted in the poet’s home parish. Several pieces go back to adolescence for their inspiration, and the title poem is a tribute to a much-loved school bus driver:
Through Waithe we rode and past the Onstans,
Brodgar and the Stones gone to windrift,
Nistaben below a shallow hill. Bus-stops set
by school kids and marked by field or farm.
The collection is bracketed by two poems portraying an island student travelling the length of Scotland:
They buoy me, these leavings
an returnings across a country in line
wi the seasons.
It’s not just farmers whose work follows a seasonal cycle, nor is it just students who have autumn and spring terms in their diaries. Shopkeepers migrate like birds, except we always fly south: to trade fairs, showrooms, workshops and wineries every February and September. Of course everything was cancelled from spring 2020 onwards, and it’s only now, two years on, that the old rhythms are starting to re-establish themselves.
Rammo in Stenness also features poems set in Peru and Lithuania, two countries Ingrid has lived and worked in. My wine travels have never taken me to either of those countries, and I wouldn’t expect any foreign travel at all this year. It’s theoretically possible but too fraught with difficulties and potential cancellation to make it sensible. Though surely this is the last year we’ll have to be so cautious. Fingers crossed.
Caution has its upsides. Instead of travelling to vineyards in Europe or beyond, I’ll be visiting a couple in the south of England, something I probably wouldn’t have got round to if foreign travel had remained easy. Another upside of my voyage south is the chance to meet up with old friends I haven’t seen for too long. One of my favourite poems in Ingrid’s booklet, ‘Voar’, is about just this. It’s clear the poet is writing about the voar of life, our young days when we travel light through time and space:
I gid in me own time’s voar among
a guid skrythe, aipsan atween doors
fae wan student flat tae another.
I’m a long way past my own voar, but still I find the Ingrid’s words inspiring, nowhere more so than in this poem’s joyous exclamation, ‘Is there a better wak than / thi wan ye mak tae see yer freends?’
‘No’ is the answer to that, and so I look forward to walking to see friends, with a little help from Loganair in the early stages of my journey.
Ingrid Leonard’s debut collection is impressively varied. There is tragedy as well as comedy. There are evocations of Orkney institutions like the Shopping Week Queen, and landmarks like Maes Howe. But at this point, as I look out my window at gales and snow and wonder if my flight will actually leave this afternoon, it’s the poet’s celebration of travel and friendship that rings in my ears:
I hear a hunder thousand
Yamils sayan hii! Make use of yer legs.
Rammo in Stenness is available to buy for £5 from Kirkness & Gorie and Stromness Books & Prints. You can also buy it, and other booklets of new Orkney writing, here: Abersee Press.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 9th February. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.