Thi clock jimps back

Awful week at work, I'm feeling battered by the whole thing, but it's the weekend, baby, so I can forget about it for a while. 

And have an Empire Biscuit for breakfast just because. 

I did a short reading this week at an anniversary event for Global Art Point. GAP supports non-Finnish speaking artists in Finland. My writing group, the Helsinki Writers Group uses their premises for our weekly sessions.  The event was an oasis of hope and happiness in the middle of everything else going on right now. All the speakers made me tear up with their performances and stories. It was nice to be in such a positive atmosphere connected to the arts, even for an evening. Unfortunately, I had such a rough couple of days, I left early. 

It made me wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed in Scotland and continued teaching creative writing and focusing on my own writing. It's not a realistic pipe-dream, as I am so bad at networking and self-promotion.

The reading itself went well, I think from what people said. I was so blinded by the spotlight and stress that I don't remember much, except changing one of the poems mid-reading as I felt it needed something. I had decided to chuck another poem from my reading list in the car before going to the event and then added something things as I read. Which worked according to my writer friend who was there. 

I'm always editing.

I haven't done any Scotstober writing over the week, so need to try and do something this weekend. 

Day 21 birl - to spin around

mah heid is birlin

whit tae dae

wi yer wirds

an mah birslin anger

Day 23 scunnert - fed up, disgusted

ahm scunnert in thi wey

we tramp ower thi warld

lik it awes us sumthin

how we tramp ower ithers

Day 25 jimp - to jump thi clock jimps back an ah wake wi a gift an oor untrauchled bi mah wirries

And with that I'm done. Back to life, back to . . .

Scotstober 2026

Last day of the autumn holiday and it's glorious blue skies and gold light. But there's frost on the porch after yesterday's rain and a harsh chill in the air since I refuse to turn all the heating on. I used the leaf blower on the worst part of the front yard, but the leaves are still dropping. 

Raking leaves always reminds me of when the current US president came to Finland and told the world we raked our forests to keep them looking nice. Idiot. At the time, there were tons of memes, showing Finns out raking the forests, hashtagged Rake Finland Great Again. Funny thing is, Finns do love their forests and some are a bit obsessed with perfect, leaf-free lawns, but ne'er the twain shall meet.

I've enjoyed my week off. A couple of friends from Scotland came over and we went to dinner, wandered around town, went to a public sauna and dipped in the sea, but mostly chatted. They used to live in Finland so it was nice to reminisce and catch up. 

But tomorrow is back to the grind. I need to get out and enjoy my last bit of freedom and finish tidying the garden. I have apples to collect, a compost bin to empty, my allotment to tidy. The leaves will be left for the kids to do. There has to be some recompense for having four kids.

I forgot about Scotstober for the first 10 days. Though I think I might have not done it at all last year. It's a shame as I do love the language and trying to figure out how to write in it. The Scotstober 'creator' Dr M Dempster also seemed to forget or has gone offline for whatever reason, but another poster on Bluesky came up with a list of words for us to use. Sorry about the quality, you'll just have to read on. 

I have tried various things for Scotstober over the years including finding the words used in other poets' work when I didn't trust my own attempts. The past couple of years I try and write a wee poetic snippet using the word each day and then try and knit them together into a poem at the end of the year. Sometimes it works, sometimes, no. I can see a glisk of something coming.

No apologies for my use of Scots. I'm not a native speaker, but I do my best, trying to use the language as I've heard or read it in Scotland, usually Glasgow. I'm just having fun.  

Day 10

girse - grass thi scrab aiples rottit oan thi girse birsin unnerfit thi juice av October

Day 11 jalouse - to suspect, to think few wad jalouse thi mirk in me tae bite doon on its cauld steel expectin tae taste licht

hinnied-sweet

Day 12 thrawn - very stubborn ah ken theres a hoolin o wind ootside but ahm tae thrawn tae switch oan thi heatin hap yersel wi stockins an woolen blankets jist coorie in

Day 13

stroop/stroup - a spout thi cauld leavin mah banes lik thi hush frae thi kettle's stroup

Day 14 - deave/deeve - to annoy, to deafen murrin at mah feet ah can maistly forget she wis deavin me fur fuid i thi wee oors

Day 15 - quine - a young woman or girl ahm no a quine no a carline no a wifie naebody cries me hen or missus ahm a wummin an auld soul a new soul

a body in mah ain body

Day 17 - flech - a flea or a restless person flechin - to be restless mah hert unsattelt flechin at thi sicht of thi sun trinnlin doon yer jaw ah mind yer wairmth

Day 18 - wrang - incorrect, wrong

smitched wi autumn amh drawn wrang i thi city av gowd and crisp-blae ahm thi shaddae-hauf

Enjoy autumn.

The Gods in the Undergrowth

Autumn has hit Finland, hard. I've learned a new Finnish word, ruska, which indirectly translates to the colours of autumn, the leaves changing. Most of the trees around southern Finland are birch so this mostly means yellowing, but there are a few lovely areas in Helsinki with maples that have gone red and gold this weekend. I drive through them on the way to the cafe I visit on Sunday, knowing their splash of colour is finite, next week the leaves will be ground into the road and pavements

Arriving in October turns my thoughts to the dark, the shortening light, the cold. The turn of the seasons. Samhain just around the corner, I've also been writing about my gods treading the world. I loved the Greek myths as a child and rediscovered them after I lived in Greece. I continued to explore older gods from Viking and Celtic myths through my time in Norway and Scotland. The Odyssey and a recent visit to a Viking village have also reawoken my interest. On cue, sunrise this morning was a vibrant purple with rosy pink fingers. IYKYK

I'm not religious but I like a sense of the spirit behind the natural world and our interactions with it. The Finnish concept of väki encapsulates this; everything, living or not, has an energy or spirit and it impacts our lives as we come into contact with it. My poetry has been bringing all these influences together recently.

The wet dark, the thick gold light, the spiral of leaf fall, the gods in the undergrowth, creeping age, desire. Though I try to vary what I write about these are popping up again in my poetry at this time of year.

In a strange coincidence as I've been reading Sappho, connected to those last two themes, Anne Carson arrived on my radar and on my Substack feeds. I love some of her Sappho translations, so I bought Autobiography of Red a couple of months ago though I haven't read it yet. I've read some her own poems and essays and she kept showing up. I clicked more links. Last month, I wrote a poem inspired by her and Sappho which starts 'she keeps arriving in worn stone and sandals' trying to capture this sense of the two of them stepping into my life now.

And then to hear she's won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Do we shape the algorithm or does it shape us?

I wrote algorhythm at first which must be a poem.

Enjoy the last of the light.