Poems The Hugh Miller Writing Competition - Hunor Deak poems
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| James Hutton (1726–97) and Joseph Black (1729–99) (From J. Kay, A Descriptive Catalogue of Original Portraits, Edinburgh, 1836) |
Poems
The Hugh Miller Writing Competition
From time to time I still scribble down poetry. In March I entered the Hugh Miller Writing Competition with Poems of my own. I entered 3 pieces, all 3 about special geological locations within Scotland. The first one focuses on Siccar Point and James Hutton, the second ones looks at the Devonian cliffs of Arbroath and the third one looks at the GeoPark in Assynt.
The Hugh Miller Writing Competition 2019-2020
I didn’t win the competition, however on the prompt of a journalist friend, I submitted the poem in the middle, to the Courier Newspaper for publishing.
The poems can be read bellow:
The Friendship of David Balfour and James Hutton
The reason for writing this poem
James Hutton’s understanding of Scotland’s geology couldn’t have happened without all his friends in Edinburgh and wider Britain. People like Joseph Black and James Watt introduced Hutton to basic concepts in the sciences of the 18th century from the laws of heat to a scientific understanding of energy. This poem is about a fictional friendship between the hero of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped, David Balfour and James Hutton.
Poem on the fictional friendship
The Friendship of David Balfour and James Hutton
My name is David Balfour you see,
I am the laird of the House of Shaws,
Along with Alan Breck I ran the Highland Line,
As pursued by the red coats for the Appin murder,
I was kidnapped to sea,
By my wicked uncle and his fiendish friend, the Captain,
The ship crashed and I was wrecked off the coast of Iona,
Alan gave me a silver button, which was my passage through the Highlands,
Until I came upon great misfortune at Appin,
He saved my neck from the gallows, as we scrambled up into the heather at Kinlochleven,
I and Alan hid on the rocks of Glencoe and jumped the great waterfall,
As the King’s men pursued us like a red fox, the fowl,
We ran up Schiehallion to find the Clan Chief, Cluny Macpherson, in hiding,
We came down from the mountains at Callander,
Then we made the run for the auld Stirling Bridge,
Cross we could not, so a fair maiden sailed us across the waters of the Tay,
I managed to reclaim my fortunes in the burgh of Edinburgh,
But this story is neither here or there for the day!
With my fortunes reclaimed,
I married Catriona after a brief stint in France and the Netherlands,
Across the water,
I came to know many figures of the Enlightenment with the strangest of being,
James Hutton himself,
Hutton is a brilliant mind, a breaker of rocks,
Peering into the past,
Opened up an entire new science across the deep time of clocks!
But he is not exactly a fine gentleman…
He is known as an old riotous bastard across Edinburgh,
While his mind is fine,
Peering into the crystals of granite,
He knows his way around the ladies,
And with a drink, he is fast!
He was a while, exiled to the farms of Berwickshire,
For which you should not dare to ask!
While he is famous and infamous across the county,
My friendship with him is special indeed!
Out on a day, with a late boat ride, we managed to discover a now famous site,
A weird contortion of sandstone and sediment of the deep sea,
Siccar Point, lying across the bay of the blue creel!
A walk along the Seaton Cliffs
Explanation of the poem
I wrote the poem based around the idea of geological time and how long it is compared to human time and historical time. The geological history of Scotland stretches back to 3 billion years to the earliest rocks in the North-West Highlands, while the Arbroath Abbey was finished in 1197 AD. One man’s life time is just a few blinks to the other. I liked the idea of that contrast. I included it in the poem, it starts out talking about the geological age of the area (Ice age and the Devonian period), goes back in time billions of years, than suddenly it drifts onto the topic of human history from Agricola’s Caledonian campaign from 83 AD till the theft of the Stone of Scone in 1951 AD. I included the concept of the fleeting moment where the observer from the poem goes through the change of time as well, by starting out his walk at late afternoon and getting to Auchmithie at pitch black probably by 9-10 pm.
I seek to convey images, sounds and smells through the piece.
Inspiration for the poem
Three main things inspired me. The album Slipway: An Arbroath Song Book, the music album contains several songs about the coastal formations, pirates and the fishermen’s struggle against the sea. The geology of the landscape as it developed through Scotland’s journey on the shifting plates. Sir Walter Scot’s novel, The Antiquary where the story takes place around Angus in the 1790s. There is an extensive chapter on a cliff rescue in the middle of the novel. The perils of the sea are perfectly described in that novel.
The poem seeks to provide a nice overview of the history of the cliffs and the history of the area.
Launch of Slipway: An Arbroath Songbook
The poem is all about movement: the sun is travelling across the sky, the narrator of the poem is walking from Arbroath to Auchmithie, the narrator is time travelling as it goes through geological history than the history of Arbroath and Scotland, the rocks are on the move as the geology of Scotland comes to be, the poem has an assortment of historical characters who march in a line next to the character.
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| Seaton Cliffs, the Needle E’e arch; unusual in being parallel to the coast but still representing the remnant of a collapsed cave. Cut in Lower Devonian sandstones and conglomerates, the arch aperture is above modern tidal reach but storms allow access of gravel through it. Image: Mike Browne. |
The Poem on the coast
A walk along the Seaton Cliffs
I walk across the cliffs of Angus from the smokie town o’ Arbroath,
Towards the fishing cottages of Auchmithie,
In-between lie mighty cliffs,
Of sandstone and conglomerate adrift.
Great features litter the coast: Needle E’e, Mermaid’s Kirk, Deil’s Heid and The Sphinx,
With the Masons’ Cave hiding many a secret!
The wind howls through the caves and stone arches like a ghostly piper,
Labyrinths running out to the open seas for 15,000 years.
The ocean like a great mason carved out the cliffs,
Before hand, the ice shaped the coast,
When its miles tall blanket covered Scotland…
The Sun is sinking, quick, bellow the horizon where the water and the land meet.
The rocks are divided into the two, like the mainland of Caledonia,
The Lower Devonian is blood red, cross bedded sandstone, 410 million years old!
With the middle missing, an Unconformity! Millions of years cast into the wind!
The Upper Devonian is all conglomerate,
370 million years old when Scotland was at the equator under the tropical sun!
The nation was part of an auld continent in the name of Laurentia,
While England was part of the continent Avalonia,
Both nations an ocean apart,
Until the seas of the Iapetus closed under miles of grinding rock,
Giving birth to volcanoes, mountain ranges,
Beaches upon which life first walked,
Tiny little lizards, tetrapods,
Now little fossils in the river beds, hidden in Romer’s gap.
Trapping many little worlds of stone,
The multi coloured little pebble clasts, in the conglomerate contain many a wonder,
From Granites to the odd Metamorphics, years in the billions,
All from mountains as tall as the Himalayas,
Now long gone, carried away by mighty rivers.
Dusk has came, as the Sun is gone, with seagulls settling back into their nests,
Salty air tingles the nostrils with a bit of seaweed mixed in,
The gentle sounds of the ocean splash away at the feet of the cliffs.
Like an orchestra playing a tune, it is the song of the sea.
The cliffs play a testimony to the history of Scotland,
My mind’s eye fill with the spirits of the past:
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A Roman, in full armour just walked past, observing the fleet of Agricola as they sail up to Aberdeen.
…
A group of Picts are in a hurry to raise a tall standing stone with the Cross of St. Columba,
…
Viking armada, full of brave Danes, sails on the harbour, drums pounding, a guide through the cliffs.
…
Suddenly a monk shuffles past, rail lines run into the cliffs, as workmen cut stone for the new Abbey.
…
King Robert the Bruce, looks out onto the shores, as a boat, with a Declaration leaves for Avignon.
…
Ralph the Rover cuts down the Abbot’s warning bell over the Inchcape Rock, later, sealing his own doom!
…
A marry band of soldiers singing in Gaelic, clad in Tartan, march down the road for the rising of ’45,
…
Followed by Robert Burns as he profusely takes notes, grumbling about the weather in Scots.
…
Men with torches rush past me, as down below, screams, baskets lowered, to haul mariners to safety.
…
Sir Walter Scott rides past on horseback, as he is seeking the Inn Waverley, in Auchmithie.
…
Suddenly in the far distance, a blinking, pulsating light, the Bell Rock lighthouse rises out of the sea,
…
The Cutty Sark, the clipper ship, races across the waters, bringing tea from the Far East,
…
Sails give away to steam, as wood gives away to metal hull, a fishing fleet presses ahead,
…
The RNLI lifeboat speeds out onto open water, towards the souls, onboard the wrecked HMS Argyll,
…
In the sky, two Spitfires pursue a Messerschmitt, a kill shot, as the Iron Cross crashes into the fields.
…
As I walk ahead, a group of young lads carry the Stone of Destiny, as they disappear into the haar…
I am alone again on the wide-open coastal path.
The full Moon is up in the sky, reflecting on the tranquil ocean, as it lights my path.
As I head away into the night,
I hear the reverberation of a ghostly sound:
A native of Arbroath, the voice of Andy Stewart, echoing through the cliffs:
“But gin ye permit me, tae gang a wee bit-tie,
I’d show you the road, and the miles to Dundee…”
The Heavenly Twins, Assynt and Knockan Crag
The reason for writing this poem
This poem is related to my two week long field trip to the Assynt geopark in 2017. I found the sites and the sounds of the highlands very beautiful. Some parts of the trip were stressful. I was bitten by mosquitoes, doused with rain and even caught a hail storm. All this underlined the past struggles of geologists in the region. Like the geologists of today Peach and Horne traveled this landscape and slept in the hotel and lodgings geologists today use as shelter. The poem discusses the history of geological mapping in the region from the point of view of a European hiker.
Peach and Horne: the British Association excursion to Assynt September 1912
Reasons for writing the poem
What I find interesting is the stories of the people behind the geological discoveries. There is always an element of adventure, mystery or drama in the development of geology as a science in Scotland. The North-West Highlands are special as they play a role in the struggle of the little guy against the large establishment such as the BGS. Originally the idea of thrust faults didn’t exist in geology, therefore the geological structures of Assynt made no sense. Originally the BGS classified the metamorphic rocks as younger sedimentary rocks and got very annoyed when younger geologist disagreed with the status quo. Later on the idea of them being younger rocks was disproved but it took multiple teams and a lot of hard work to get the BGS to change its mind.
In the poem bellow I aim to capture that struggle.
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| Ben Peach (right) and John Horne outside the Inchnadamph Hotel, 1912 |
The poem about the Highlands
The Heavenly Twins, Assynt and Knockan Crag
I wonder down from thee hills of the Highlands,
Lost up north in the wilderness,
My guide is only a great loch, stretched across the valley,
As I march down to the cottages at the centre,
Next to the ruins of an old Scots clan castle.
The valley, painted blood red orange as I reach the coast of the loch,
The town, no, village, no, a collection of cottages just to my left, the Hamlet of Inchnadamph,
Past the church, the old telephone box, the Commonwealth cemetery, an old hotel.
As I wonder onto the yard, I see a small obelisc on the hill, caught in the last rays of sunshine,
I give it no more thought, I stroll into the lobby: I slump into the sofa in a large reading room for all:
When I notice an old, slightly faded photograph, hanged upon the wall.
On it, sits two man of old, on the photograph from the last century,
For all to behold, their solemn expression tickles me with questions,
The two of them sit there, with their brave Mona Lisa smiles,
With their large overcoats, suits and ties,
Funny to think they might have roamed the mountains!
An old man sitting in the opposite chair,
His beard grey, with a full set of hair,
He is the man of the mountains,
With lots of experience.
He narrates the story as I prompt him with questions:
“These two gentle men, the heavenly twins, who sit upon the bench, with canes in both hands,
They are a man of great fame, of great fortune,
As they uncovered great treasure hidden beneath the lands of the Kelpie,
What they found must have shocked most and lead to a Highland conspiracy!
They were geologists, Peach and Horne,
Came here to answer questions bothering young and old: How was it, that old strata laid on the new?
As when we travel down the way, time should be turned back from young to the old grey rock,
Some have seen this in the Alps, so they were out for a shock!
The Moine Thrust cuts this land up towards the sky, as in the past, the rocks moved miles by,
The land through a fault moved a lot of stock,
Schists upon the limestones and the Sandstone of the Old Torridonian,
Even today you can pay a visit to that holy site, you might even find some Mylonite!
They mapped every corner and pasture, from the old folds to the Mull of Kintyre!
Even today the BGS raises their blessed names!
An obelisk like a trusty piper on top of a’mountain keeps their fame!
Just look around the old photograph, it covers all the walls, at the maps, aerial photos and charts!
These mountains tell a great tale, you just need to be more attentive than Murchison or Geikie of the past!
Now if you pour me another glass of whisky,
I tell the tale in greater detail…”
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| Heim’s concept of the relationships between a NW Highlands basement and an Alpine superstructure in a typical Mountain Chain (redrawn from Heim’s 1912 black and white sketch). |
Song/Video
The History of Geology – Kate Tectonics
I decided that from now on, at the end of each blog I shall include a favourite song/video of something geology related that I liked.
This video goes through the history of geology from ancient Greece to Charles Lyell:
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