Literary Inspiration

Since 1992, we have introduced almost 30,000 people to the wonders of Noss and Bressay. Quite a few of them have been inspired to write about the experience. Here we reprint four poems written by our passengers.

Dunter

by Helen Kidd (1998)

Inspired by her first trip to Noss, the Oxford poet Helen Kidd wrote this in 1998:

Water breathes cool in sun-gilded
harbour skin. We budge and putter,
seaming it slowly, then a swing
to north and we butt round
where roman-nosed bull seals
snoop on the off-chance, bob and
vanish under the fish factory pier.

And we’re out and off skirting small
skerries, where the folk of the sea loll
and flipper, eyeing us warily, or roll
bullet and glide slip-easy through shoals.

Into the nudge and skim of wave backs
the thwack of the prow flying smacks
athwart ridged and furrowed folds, spume laces
round Rules Ness, the swamping and
singing salt of flung spray, a glittering
air-cut-with-curtains-of-wet of a day.

We dither and swerve by rock teeth for creels
and then off where peninsular keels
carve the sky’s surf, nattering cliffs
where gannets clack and call; dapper in Zorro masks, swoop, skim and
soar – circle, climb, stand then the dart-flight fold and fall, bursting the brim
and glint of swelling scrim, these amphibious arrows.
Light-dusted shore-side a scree flank
daunts and beckons and we lift and dip
through the Bardastrom’s breath-soaking douse
and plankton-starred caves. A cormorant
periscopes past, black guillemots whicker
“Keep back you Bonxies!”

Back home I hanker for this cold vast cradling.
Born with a water-noose round the heart
I starve, city-bound, for wide wild.
And the sea’s eye is the deepest eye
darkest eye
brightest eye.
Ocean’s eye is the oldest eye
the fickle spell-binding
imperative
dangerous eye.

Roond da wirld

by Christine de Luca

Roond da wirld as peerie bairns
wis roond da rods o Bressa:
da kent wirld circumnavigated
in tricycles an prams. Takkin
Da Dunter roond Noss an Bressa
is still a vaege apon a wirld scale.
Aert history lockit up in rocks:
deserts rear as saandston banks.
Dey tell der tale: foo dey aedged
fae a tropic an her dulskit airms
tae an arctic skurt; foo shö wrat
her ticht history on dem wi wave
an wind an ice.

Swall lifts wis in a cave.
A stour o Eden’s plankton shaas
in a blinkie’s licht, an da green-
black sheen o scarfs. Ledged high,
dey dicht der wings, stretch dem
ta dry. Dey live da quiet life, yet
aye riggit for a foy.

Oot on da banks, a high-rise life:
up, up, ledge apo ledge o solan,
maalies, a mafia o swaabies.
A callyshang: fast maet
an faerdie-maet;
a constant harangue.

At da nort end o Bressa
a raft o dunters bobs; selkies wait
fur a silent tide ta turn.
Anidder history is bön written here:
o cleared laand, vod hooses, fat sheep;
o young men press-ganged.

But still dere’s change: new hooses,
laand wrocht again. Bressa’s
on da move, stane bi stane.

Glossary:

da: the; peerie: little; wis: was, us; rods: roads; vaege: journey; apon, apo: on; aert: earth; lockit: locked; banks: sea cliffs; dey: they; der: their; foo: how; aedged: edged; dulskit: sluggish, torpid; airms: arms; tae, ta: to; skurt: bosom; shö: she; wrat: wrote; dem: them; swall: sea swell; stour: dust; shaas: shows; blinkie: torch; scarfs: shags; riggit: dressed; foy: celebration; solan: gannet; maalies: fulmars; swaabies: great black-backed gulls; callyshang: noisy dispute; maet: food; faerdie-maet: picnic, food for a journey; nort: north; dunters: eider ducks; selkies: seals; anidder: another; is bön: has been; vod: unoccupied.

At Noss

by Gordon Dargie, September 2007

The setting is the desert sandstone cliffs
that face the mathematics of the waves
where we float with our weight of narratives
each needed to account for this one place
below fine ledges on the layers of time
where gannets make their ritual displays
for exits and returns. We know not to
project our feelings onto birds, prefer
not to make up stories, but gestures
are made to be read, whatever we may
think we mean or not think, and we defer
to one another for unobstructed views,
a natural history of narrative
in the time when the tide came to the cliffs.

Snapshots from a boat

by Robert Sim, March 2008

i

our world
moves
each second

upon a
grey seal’s
back.

ii

drifting past
jellyfish drifting
past larvae

iii

we lower our underwater camera
and yellow-coated

figures lean
right and left

to catch the best view
of the undulating kelp

iv

Abandoned in 1811
the croft of da Veng
was never reached by road
or telephone or mail
but was a des-res in its day,

partly because it was close
to the Bressay haaf.
And under the surface now
we see a forest as rich

as any rain-forest.
And that is where our oxygen
is made by tiny creatures
such as the ones we hold

in our huge palms
on the dripping
sloping
sliding
deck

v

There is a balance here we
cannot see. We pass a lone kayaker

clinging to the grey skin
of the water, like a skier

upon drab snow, or a gnat
on an elephant’s back.