Light shines through the banner so that you have to stand back and take time to read the words printed in white.
Big words. Spiral, by Elizabeth Burns, is “perhaps the UK’s largest printed poem”, and here it hangs, stirring slightly in the breeze on a building site in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.
Spiral
From the spin of the wheel
comes a spiral
threading itself up through the vessel
until it reaches the rim
where this twist in the clay
slips into air
then travels on invisibly
beyond the turning earth
and up into the whirling stars
The poem was chosen by popular vote in the competition run by the Scottish Poetry Library for National Poetry Day. As the competition was the subject of the last Sceptical Scot poetry blog I came to see it shortly after the unveiling. The words are undoubtedly big and beautiful – the banner is 25×8 metres – but, as I stand on the pavement trying to avoid passers-by, the words of the poet’s husband are also hanging in the air.
“To come and see her words shouting out to us was a really poignant and emotional moment,” Alan Rice told the Press Association at the public unveiling. Elizabeth Burns died in August at the age of 57 after living with cancer for many years and Alan had travelled with her mother, Muriel, and sister, Alison, for the public announcement of the winning poem which was to be read by the Edinburgh Makar, Christine de Luca.
He was also sure she would have been pleased: “To have her poem amongst the buzz of the Royal Mile would have been very special for her.” His moving comments are a reminder that public works can have their own very private and personal significance. The banner in front of me is more than just smart cultural marketing, it’s the work of a self-effacing artist who nevertheless delighted in the “coming together of art and poetry” and she thought of her words in visual form.
According to friends and family, Elizabeth Burns was a quiet and gentle woman; ‘quietly fearless’ is how the Scottish Poetry Library describes her. The poet saw her own work as a way of exploring “what’s hidden and unseen – in the landscape, in history, in people’s lives.”
This banner, hung across scaffolding on the New Waverley redevelopment site, not far from the Scottish Poetry Library, now makes poetry itself visible to passers-by who have time to stand back and look up. It fits the style of a poet who – in the words of one obituary – “liked to collaborate with other makers (basket-makers, potters, painters).”
It’s also a kind of homecoming. Having spent many years in Scotland, Elizabeth moved to Lancaster where she brought up her family and taught creative writing but she wrote that Scotland had left its mark on her. During her time in Edinburgh she was an early member of the Pomegranate Women Writers Group and in Lancaster, where she taught poetry in the university and community groups, she was closely involved in “women’s ways of writing and seeing” and was “interested in writing about the unseen… giving voice to people who may have been silent, and making what was invisible, visible through words – and things.”
All of which gives extra weight to the large banner which will remain visible until next summer. Yet it’s just a fragment of a lifetime’s work. There are many books and pamphlets of Elizabeth Burns’ poetry. The most recent collection being Held (Polygon 2010); her most recent pamphlet Clay (Wayleave Press).
Exploring Elizabeth Burns’ website, I am caught by the first lines of a poem:
Held
One year old, and he’s discovering the river,
dropping stones in at the edge, retrieving them.He loves containers, says his mother,
then wonders, is a river a container?
The words find echoes with my own newfound pleasures. As a fairly new grandmother I am rediscovering the joy of seeing the world through fresh, unweary, explorers’ eyes; discovering how things…
are held by other things: milk in a cup,
food in a bowl, a ball in his hands,
a stone in water, water in a nest of stones.
A poet’s words can touch the lives of many readers – how each reader responds is always personal.
PS: having said that, this Sceptical Scot poetry blog is not about me! Your contributions are welcome.
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