Enough gems to create a crown

I THINK I’ve written about Andrew Greig in this column before, most notably in appreciation of his wonderful book, At the Loch of the Green Corrie.

The lyrical prose of that book recalls the work of the late Norman MacCaig and his challenge to Andy to try and catch trout in a high mountain lochan in Assynt.

Billy Connolly, himself a keen angler, recognised the worth of the book on several levels when he wrote: “If you have a desire to luxuriate in the most beautiful use of the English language borne along by the love of one gifted poet for a recognized master of melancholy, then this is the book for you. It most certainly is the book for me.”

I guess most folk who have a taste for contemporary Scottish writing will know of Andy’s work, and mountaineers and hillwalkers like myself will appreciate his climbing books, notably Summit Fever, an account of a successful ascent of Mustagh Tower and Kingdoms of Experience, the tale of an unsuccessful attempt on Everest.

But few readers will know of the poem that led to his introduction to mountaineering.

Published in 1977, the saga of Men On Ice became something of a cult read amongst climbers, and encouraged the late Mal Duff to invite Andy on his Himalayan expeditions – the genesis of a love affair with the big mountains of the world.

That poem, and a more recent follow-up, Western Swing, feature in Andrew Greig’s latest collection of poetic works, Getting Higher, an unashamed celebration of hills, both big and small, and the effect such places have on us.

While the two epic poems contain enough gems to create a crown – ‘This salted road’s a black tawse

I particularly enjoyed Knoydart Revisited, and Tom Ban Mor, with its resonances of mountain vision that lives permanently in our mind’s eye.

The main poem of the book, Men On Ice, is modernist and metaphysical, a tale of three Himalayan climbers, Grimpeur, Poet and Axe-man.

The poem is dedicated to the late Dougal Haston and I wonder if a part theme of the poem, a spectral fourth climber, is a throwback to Haston and Doug Scott’s ascent of Everest when both climbers were convinced they were sharing a close-to-the-summit bivouac with another climber?

In their case the hallucination was caused by altitude, in the case of Men On Ice, I suspect other hallucinatory factors may have been at play!

In the other epic poem, Western Swing, the characters of Men on Ice have morphed into Ken, Stella and Brock and represent Greig’s growing experience as a climber and world traveller.

The poem contains a process of layering, what the author describes as ‘sampling’, old voices that could well be the echoes of romanticism that nevertheless mix well with the pop and rock culture of the poem, or the glimpses of sunlight into the dark masculinity of the main protagonists.

Getting Higher is a surprisingly diverse book, much more than a book of poems that connect with your spirit.

Together with the illustrations by James Hutcheson and the little imprints of notes, aide-memoires and doodles, Getting Higher offers an almost transcendental insight into the mind of one of mountaineering’s most perceptive and intuitive authors.

Getting Higher, by Andrew Greig is published by Polygon at £12.99

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