Your stay with us contributes to space to create, the Crear arts charity that supports groups and individuals across the arts internationally, as well as promoting arts in education within Argyll. Currently Crear has worked with over 27 local schools and hosts a series of masterclasses and concerts that are open to the public.
For several years now, a group of international poets has been brought to Crear under the auspices of Literature Across Frontiers and the Scottish Poetry Library, for a translation workshop. Each group brings different languages and different cultures to Crear, but all of them are inspired and enriched by what they find there. In 2009 the poets came from Germany, Poland, Romania and Scotland, and as well as translating each other’s work, they found themselves writing poems about the experience of being at Crear. This is a little sampler of their work, and shows that what is supported at Crear is the music of language as well as the language of music. If you’ve visited Crear yourself, for whatever reason, we hope you will be reminded by these poems of its particular beauty and atmosphere, and that you will be pleased to think that your contribution enabled these contributions, too.
Old Love Never Rusts
for Wojciech Bonowicz
Old love never rusts in Poland.
This is what we learn at Crear.
Outside, there’s the smell of rain and fox;
blackberries entangled with ferns.
The sheep cough like old men.
Across the water, Jura and Islay
change colour all day:
grey-green, grey-blue,
so many greys, light and dark,
seep into the greens and blues
of grass and sky and water.
The sun brings white gold;
white gold for old love that never rusts –
What would you say, Robert Burns?
This is where we gather to listen
to your songs. This is where
we gather.
Sujata Bhatt
26 August 2009
THE HARD STUFF
(For Ioanna Ieronem)
O Ioanna!
As of tonight I exist
In Romania
Because
Your eager, expert tongue
Lapped up my ‘Milk’
In Bucharest it will go
Before me and I shall follow
Grateful and proud
Carried safely over
All that is missing is a word
You do not have
So ‘nightcap’ does not translate
(Though no effort has been spared by you
Your country’s ‘go to girl’ for Shakespeare…)
Here at Crear the sun’s going down over Jura and Islay
Soon the Ghigha moon will light
The weary way to bed
Before we part
I have two gifts to offer you
One hand holds this poem
And in the other, trembling
A peaty sleeping draught
Of malt
Donny O’Rourke
About Crear
Love
at first sight.
Tap water
the colour of white wine.
Air
that makes you drunk.
You’ll need
a dram of malt
to sober up.
Warning at Crear
Staring at those
Whisky Islands
for too long
may cause
severe outbreaks
of poetry.
Michael Augustin
August 2009
CREAR
that big blackberry
there
is the word
I need
I’ve tried to get it
nettles and thorns
hurt my hand
that
blackberry
gleaming in the thicket
Ioana Ieronim
Poets at Crear, 2009
We have come to Crear to find Milky coffee
Donny and reminisce
find the rich warm milk that we have
tried to be weaned of
through words
for so many years.
Sujata Here every night
our old eyes are flung
far out into the skies.
Here every day
when we awaken
we open new eyes.
We look, laugh and enjoy
but somewhere inside
Wojciech we sit cornered in a stone,
we don’t even breathe
because
the poem
first shuts you inside. And
the poem won’t allow.
Ioana At Crear there is
that big ripe blackberry
that’s exactly the word
needed in a line
hey, try to pick it,
though nettles and thorns
may hurt my hand
Michael here is the place to count
how many old poems
fit in a new one
and how many new poems
fit in the old one
Here poetry isn’t a continent any more
and it is not yet an ocean
and that’s why at Crear
all poems
have to be written
still
*
Here we are, having all come from afar
soon we’ll have to go for a while
but we will come again, we will
tho' it were ten thousand mile!
Michael Augustin
For several years now, a group of international poets has been brought to Crear under the auspices of Literature Across Frontiers and the Scottish Poetry Library, for a translation workshop. Each group brings different languages and different cultures to Crear, but all of them are inspired and enriched by what they find there. In 2009 the poets came from Germany, Poland, Romania and Scotland, and as well as translating each other’s work, they found themselves writing poems about the experience of being at Crear. This is a little sampler of their work, and shows that what is supported at Crear is the music of language as well as the language of music. If you’ve visited Crear yourself, for whatever reason, we hope you will be reminded by these poems of its particular beauty and atmosphere, and that you will be pleased to think that your contribution enabled these contributions, too.
Old Love Never Rusts
for Wojciech Bonowicz
Old love never rusts in Poland.
This is what we learn at Crear.
Outside, there’s the smell of rain and fox;
blackberries entangled with ferns.
The sheep cough like old men.
Across the water, Jura and Islay
change colour all day:
grey-green, grey-blue,
so many greys, light and dark,
seep into the greens and blues
of grass and sky and water.
The sun brings white gold;
white gold for old love that never rusts –
What would you say, Robert Burns?
This is where we gather to listen
to your songs. This is where
we gather.
Sujata Bhatt
26 August 2009
THE HARD STUFF
(For Ioanna Ieronem)
O Ioanna!
As of tonight I exist
In Romania
Because
Your eager, expert tongue
Lapped up my ‘Milk’
In Bucharest it will go
Before me and I shall follow
Grateful and proud
Carried safely over
All that is missing is a word
You do not have
So ‘nightcap’ does not translate
(Though no effort has been spared by you
Your country’s ‘go to girl’ for Shakespeare…)
Here at Crear the sun’s going down over Jura and Islay
Soon the Ghigha moon will light
The weary way to bed
Before we part
I have two gifts to offer you
One hand holds this poem
And in the other, trembling
A peaty sleeping draught
Of malt
Donny O’Rourke
About Crear
Love
at first sight.
Tap water
the colour of white wine.
Air
that makes you drunk.
You’ll need
a dram of malt
to sober up.
Warning at Crear
Staring at those
Whisky Islands
for too long
may cause
severe outbreaks
of poetry.
Michael Augustin
August 2009
CREAR
that big blackberry
there
is the word
I need
I’ve tried to get it
nettles and thorns
hurt my hand
that
blackberry
gleaming in the thicket
Ioana Ieronim
Poets at Crear, 2009
We have come to Crear to find Milky coffee
Donny and reminisce
find the rich warm milk that we have
tried to be weaned of
through words
for so many years.
Sujata Here every night
our old eyes are flung
far out into the skies.
Here every day
when we awaken
we open new eyes.
We look, laugh and enjoy
but somewhere inside
Wojciech we sit cornered in a stone,
we don’t even breathe
because
the poem
first shuts you inside. And
the poem won’t allow.
Ioana At Crear there is
that big ripe blackberry
that’s exactly the word
needed in a line
hey, try to pick it,
though nettles and thorns
may hurt my hand
Michael here is the place to count
how many old poems
fit in a new one
and how many new poems
fit in the old one
Here poetry isn’t a continent any more
and it is not yet an ocean
and that’s why at Crear
all poems
have to be written
still
*
Here we are, having all come from afar
soon we’ll have to go for a while
but we will come again, we will
tho' it were ten thousand mile!
Michael Augustin
