Badenoch has its first 2023 Bard

The new Kingussie Festival of Words has produced its first Bard.

2023’s Badenoch Poetry Prize has been claimed by a Borderer whose work chimed with judges Hugh McMillan and Eoghan Stiubhart.

Pieces were invited which were linked to or inspired by immigration and emigration, in its ‘widest’ sense.

The £200 winner Craig Aitchison, of Galashiels, said: “I am honoured to win and delighted that a poem in Scots has been rewarded. Immigration and emigration is a theme which is, sadly, one which is vital to address.

“My poem seeks to link the plight of those who left Scotland during The Clearances on boats such as ‘Ceres’ to those who currently take to small boats in search of a better life.

“I hope that the poem provides a way for readers to reflect on historic and current emigration with empathy and understanding.”

Ceres

‘Mundus Patet’ (The Earth is Open)

Gin the folk’s grip lowsent on the thin sile,

Ceres liftit her white sails. New launds

were waitin. Gems on the shore, trees that gie

saip, beet, succar. Rowth and fouth. Sic braw baunds.

Awa ower the muckle murgeonin sea.

Watter bowies gizzent tae drouth, timmer

rottit an skelfs foondert. Keep an ee

oan the glisterin horizon, the glimmer.

Douce an rizzert thrapples sang in sweet souch.

Ch till mi tuille, we’ll return nae mair!

Till at lang and last, Ceres reached her hauld,

Piped ontae dour laund that wis cauld an bare

Even now, folk set sail, egglet bi air,

jawed waves tae pairt, in the wallie nieve

o slender howp, seekin a wuiven inch

oan a gouden sea. The boat will aye leave

the laund. Ceres will aye walk amang the shades,

hersel a shade, bravin the ferd, the nicht,

tae bring a dochter back from the deep daurk,

will aye cairry a torch, aye leam a licht.

Second was Mark Vernon Thomas who lives in Wigtownshire but is from New Zealand.

He said: " I'm delighted, and honoured, to be a prizewinner in the first Badenoch Poetry Competition”

Baggage

His grandmother’s old suitcase he kept in the loft. Battered and scuffed, it carried initials stamped in peeling gold letters, labels tracing ragged entry and departure points – Kraków, Munich, Paris, New York. Both the case and his grandmother remained securely locked and secret, never examined.

His mother’s dove-grey valise once nestled by the hat stand at the back door and carried its own flight paths - Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem. When asked, she would quietly move away.

His black holdall sat beside the coat rack, neatly stowed the way she’d taught him. The world is divided, she said, between those who keep their bags packed and always ready by the door, and those who do not.

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