Robert Rendall

His poems are hard to find online, and I’m not up to paying for a book to be shipped from UK (yet), but here are a couple to remember meanwhile.

CRAGSMAN’S WIDOW

He was aye vaigan b’ the shore,

An’ climman round the craigs,

Swappan among the auks,

Or taakan whitemaa aiggs.

It’s six year bye come Lammas,

Sin’ he gaed afore the face,

An’ nane but an auld dune wife,

Was left tae work the place.

Yet the sun shines doun on a’ thing,

The links are bonny and green,

An’ the sea keeps ebban an’ flowan,

As though it had never been.

A cragsman is a skilled rock climber

CELESTIAL KINSMEN

The winter lift is glintan doun

Wi’ tullimentan stars besprent,

As were the very heavens abune

Clean gyte wi’ frosty merriment,

Their lowan e’en are taakan tent

O’ chiels like Mansie o’ the Bu’

Whase days upon the land are spent

Ruggan wi’ Taurus and the Pleugh.

“Iowan” means “gleaming”, “cheils” are “fellows” and Mansie is a ploughman from the farm called Bu. “Tullimental” means “мерцающий”.

ANGLE OF VISION

But, John, have you seen the world, said he,

Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,

Cities in lands across the sea –

Giotto’s tower and the dome of St Peter’s?

No, but I have seen the arc of the earth,

From the Birsay shore, like the edge of a planet,

And the lifeboat plunge through the Pentland Firth

To a cosmic tide with the men that man it.

The Orkney poet Robert Rendall (1898-1967) loved European travel almost as much as he loved his home islands. The antithesis of the parochial islander, he travelled extensively, sampling the cultures of Germany, France and Switzerland. He made no fewer than nine trips to Italy, and it was on one of these visits that he and a travelling companion stood on the Palatine Hill, surveying the glories of the city of Rome. ‘Hid’s bonny’, conceded the poet, ‘but hid’s no a petch on Birsay!’

Chiara, who told me about Rendall, considers him a modern poet. He died 58 years ago. He was a part of a strong circle of poets, which surprised me, as I thought those arouse only in large towns. Kirkwall today has a population of about 10,000, three times less than my own very small town. None of these poets are mentioned in Wikipedia’s list of notable Kirkwall residents.