Fithie

The Fithie Burn has been one of my neighbours for almost forty years now. Sometimes it can be unruly and even dangerous, sometimes hardly there at all. Fithie is not a mighty river, although there are times when you definitely would keep away if you wanted to be safe. It has remained always a source of interest and wonder, and a constant pull for photography and for simply looking. It is seldom silent and, of course, never still.

The photographs above were taken in the past few days, but the poem below was written a little while ago. In 2023 was included in an anthology called Alchemy and Miracles (Gilbert and Hall Press).

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Steve Smart · Fithie

The standing waves sheathe,
dressing the dam’s top-stones
in flares of constant booming –
silken Robeson, Old Man rolling, 
unseen, un-faced. A bittern chorus.

Last week a cheeky burn,
now wilful and riverine –
not long-since brown stampede,
and before that a dry-throat cackle,
piped away for crops or power.

At two and three and four a.m.
when the latched sliver  
of an open window’s jamb 
grants night-sound passage,
I hear you near me, Fithie.

While my lines rest politely, each
neatly stitched left to right,
your direction tussles all unfastened,
hush-crooning whispered static –
a live stylus travelling.

From where I lie awake
time guddles woozy and confused,
is it upstream or down?
While, a tumble written seaward –
you shoulder irresistibly by.

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my Cid

El Cid is a sweeping 1961 Holywood epic starring the unlikely pairing of Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston. It seemed to be on telly at some point in most school holidays when I was young. It’s based on the medieval Spanish poem El Cantar de mio Cid. But it’s the movie (an epic that does take itself a lot too seriously) and some of its sonorous lines that I seem to know off by heart, that has my lasting affection. IMDB says:

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Steve Smart · My Cid

“El Cid (1961) is curiously obscure compared to other classic sword & sandal epics, like The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960), but it’s just as great and on par with the more modern Troy (2004), not to mention superior to the overrated Braveheart (1995) and Gladiator (2000).”
IMDB user review

“Cid” comes to modern Spanish through Old Castilian (Çid) from Arabic (سيد sîdi), and means simply ‘lord’.  But why is the object that is the subject of this poem my Cid?

Well, it might be a little to do with its appearance, it does have a sort of brightly coloured heraldic aspect, and turned upside down it might make almost make a knight’s helm. Maybe it’s even an object that also takes itself a little too seriously. But more than that, there is something to do with long service and with unanticipated homage at the very end..

Oor Wullie’s throne set right-way up,
enamel skin no longer prone
to kicks from passing school class tikes.
The vacuum cleaner scuffs that remain
are testimony, witness to the years
before extinguishers, alarms or drills,
of waiting.

No step-by-step iconography here,
one word’s heraldic incantation:
function shouted stark and plain,
shielding scarlet pierced by black
in bold sans serif painted caps –
FIRE.

Never attendant-hurled, true-grit
flung to quench a nascent blaze,
so paintings, maps, ceramics, clothes,
stuffed ducks and wildcats all alike,
might float your worth aloft on
collective tides of gratitude.

Never hot fear dowsed in haste,
your sunlit cameo spotlight un-cast,
un-cued, you only stood and served
forever silent, winged un-flown,
though –

in a pre-vape century you knew
each hot fag-end meteorite tossed,
glowing careless in your sandy maw,
an arc of starry fate swallowed up,
burning treachery deprived of fuel,
a conflagration killed.

Too unhygienic to be preserved,
neither sand nor cigarettes are kept,
instead fake-grit – inert textured resin
sands, pass time without discarded stubs,
nor burnt-salt reek, nor bygone hopes
of film-star cool.

In afterlife now you have stepped up –
out of the corner, round but full-square,
polished and red and standing proud,
clearly numbered, at last within the lists
of newly minted relics.

Object made artefact:
you are centre stage, safety
safely tucked behind sheet glass,
ephemera cast from immortal steel,
you’ll ride through local history’s gates
into legend.

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Repeat prescriptions 3/3

This is the third in a short series of poems that first appeared in an anthology called The Prescription from a writing group of the same name working at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

Special thanks to Gillean McDougall for her invaluable input.

<- Repeat prescriptions 1/3
<- Repeat prescriptions 2/3

I’ve included “item details” with each of these poems. These are not the exact catalogue texts for each item, but all the information present is correct. These details seemed to me like the basic dimensions of sculptures, while the poems that follow them are my visceral reactions to the objects themselves. I think the restraint of modest catalogue listings invites imagination, much as sculpture so often invites our touch.

listen to this piece:

Steve Smart · Repeat prescriptions three: Bycatch

Repeat prescriptions three:
Bycatch

Though now beautifully curated, Dr Harry R Lillie’s bag and contents remains a somewhat unruly heap of objects. Something about the incongruity of an ordinary box of matches rattling amongst all the medical kit reached out, signalling what so much of the entire collection does: there are medical stories here certainly, but that’s not all.

item: ship’s surgeon Harry R. Lillie’s medical bag
date: c1950s
notes: the canvas tool-roll with Lillie’s surgical dissection kit is very similar to one a medical student might encounter today. Witnessing scenes such as the use of explosive harpoons led to Lillie campaigning for changes to whaling legislation as early as the 1950s

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Bycatch

The strand-line of your care buttoned-back in a canvas maw.
Something of a bourach: tagged, bagged and curated now.
A lucky dip of sharps and scissors, no sealing wax or string,
an auriscope rattles against 50 grams of Anaesthetic Chlorethyl
for easing hypodermic needles through whalers’ tattooed skins.
The familiar dissection roll, the hidden pressure gauge underneath,
but your Bryant-and-May’s something less expected from the trawl:
that man fished from whale’s jaws moderately crushed – doctored,
back on deck in weeks – God knows, you’d need a smoke at least.

Guddling deeper breaches wet last-straw memories, sounds
of pineapple-scaled harpoons blooming in cetacean flesh.
You heard the gunner’s words before any dreams that whales might sing
No man alive could stand to hear the sound, and all this industry
would surely stop – if they could but only scream.

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more about this object

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Repeat prescriptions 2/3

This is the second of a short series of poems that first appeared in an anthology called The Prescription from a writing group of the same name working at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

Special thanks to Gillean McDougall for her invaluable input.

<- Repeat prescriptions 1/3, Introduction & Points of entry
-> Repeat prescriptions 3/3, Bycatch

I’ve included “item details” with each of these poems. These are not the exact catalogue texts for each item, but all the information present is correct. These details seemed to me like the basic dimensions of sculptures, while the poems that follow them are my visceral reactions to the objects themselves. I think the restraint of modest catalogue listings invites imagination, much as sculpture so often invites our touch.

listen to this piece:

Steve Smart · Repeat prescriptions two: Waiting

Repeat prescriptions two:
Waiting

The simplicity and looseness of David Warrillow’s painting draws you in. I tried to keep its spirit and texture in my poem. The subject is at once abstract, intangible, and universal. Patient, relative, doctor, or friend, we’ve all lived these achingly slow, nervous moments.

item: a painting by David Ross Warrillow
date: C21st
notes: oil on canvas, a monochromatic suited figure, standing back to the viewer

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Waiting

So, waiting’s pretty easy –
you just hang about
put one hand in a pocket,
or a hand in each,
breathe in and out, repeat,
and time should pass.

You might take a step –
before stepping back,
or sit, then later – stand again.

Maybe a pace or two 
to ease the wire twisting
between your shoulder blades,
stiffening your neck.

Buy tea from a hospital machine.
Sit and sip and drift and realise.

That more minutes passed.
That this unwanted drink is tepid.
That something might have happened.
That you feel a little sick.

You check your phone,
your watch, study a clock that
does not tick but sweeps and swims,
a shark in silent four-four:
Slow. Slow. Quick-quick. Slow.

If only you smoked, you might 
leave this place, go outside
for ten minutes. Take a drag.
Except while you were away –
someone might come.

Until then hope and fear
can continue to roll dice
in uneasy superposition,
each preparing by turns,
each placing their shaky bets.

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more about David Ross Warrillow
more about this painting

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Repeat prescriptions 1/3

In 2023 I was fortunate to have three poems included in a beautifully produced collection inspired by objects and texts from the archives of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. The Prescription anthology came from the work of a writing group of the same name that was organised by the marvellous Gillean McDougall. Gillean also masterminded and edited the anthology.

Unfortunately as this publication happened the College was undergoing some staff changes and after the launch the anthology seems to have vanished somewhat. Certainly there doesn’t appear to be a clear pathway for anyone who might want to lay hands on a copy.

To let my three published but invisible poems see a little light of day, I decided to post them here as a short series. Special thanks to Gillean McDougall for her invaluable editorial input.

I’ve included “item details” with each of these poems. These are not the exact catalogue texts for each item, but all the information present is correct. These details seemed to me like the basic dimensions of sculptures, while the poems that follow them are my visceral reactions to the objects themselves. I think the restraint of modest catalogue listings invites imagination, much as sculpture so often invites our touch.

you can also listen to this piece:

Steve Smart · Repeat prescriptions one: Points of entry

Repeat prescriptions one:
Points of entry

I love tools, and the resonances they hold of the hands and skills of previous owners. In the case of nearly all of the surgical tools in the Royal College’s collection, my feelings of respect and curiosity are tinged with the strong and distinctive metallic tang of plain, blood-in-your-mouth fear.

item: trephine set in a case
date: C18th
notes: case materials: mahogany, velvet and brass, ‘trepan’ from Greek and antique French: to bore

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Points of entry

Larger than a burglar’s kit
smaller than the stone mason’s,
A socket-set for the box garage
where you park your thoughts.

Picks to unlock your sterner stuff,
braced awake in trepidation,
uncertain of tradecraft or assault,
of the carpenter, the butcher, or the bill.

Green plush codes faint impressions,
pale sonograms tracking the bulb and heft,
burr and spike, the very pike and halberd
press of those absentee devices

you find knolled on the lower stage,
ten miniature besieging tools,
old steels, perhaps now lacking purity,
complete with a neat cleaning brush.

Found gadgets seen and held and
in imagination afforded application –
this turns so, clicks here, connects,
and this, all together, twisted – cuts.

In the theatre boxed inside your head,
music strives, your pulse rate quickens,
devices coupled with expert hands
tooled-up for an impossible mission.

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more about this object

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