Monday, 27 April 2020
Poetry from the Backroom 43 : Jim Carruth, the Pig Whisperer.
Lovely little poem here from Jim Carruth, one of Scotland's leading poets and the Makar for Glasgow since 2014.
Jim Carruth was born in Johnstone in 1963 and grew up on his family’s farm near Kilbarchan and his poetry reflects that background, and an increasingly disappearing way of life in the countryside. He has been described as 'Scotland's leading rural poet', though whoever said that can't have read my last book which would have brought tears to a glass sheep. His first collection 'Bovine Pastoral' was published in 2004 and was runner up in the Callum MacDonald Memorial Award. Since then he has brought out a further five collections. In 2009 he was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and was the winner of the James McCash poetry competition.
He is one of the founders and current chair of St Mungo’s Mirrorball, the Glasgow network of poets and poetry lovers and is a committee member of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival. The Mirrorball provides, I know from personal experience, a vibrant, warm and enthusiastic forum for visiting poets and is one of the gems in Glasgow's literary fundament.
The Pig Whisperer Here:
His website here: https://www.jimcarruth.co.uk/
His SPL Profile and more poems here:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/jim-carruth/
Farm Sale
Everything is numbered and must go
so he sits at the back of the shed
while the crowd picks over the final lots.
He lays his cap flat on his knee,
slowly stretches stiff finger
to find the faded cross hatch flecks
tracing each tweed field on his bonnet,
whispering their sweet names to himself,
walking the boundaries of his lost world.
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