Radio Orkney

In 2015, Rachel Mccrum was appointed BBC Scotland’s first Poet in Residence. Over three months, she was despatched to a number of locations with a view to writing a poem about where she’d landed, later to be broadcast. She found herself at St Mirren’s football stadium, in the Cairngorms and, as the poem below suggests, in the Orkney Islands. ‘Radio Orkney’ is taken from Mccrum’s debut collection, The First Blast to Awaken Degenerate Women (Freight, £9.99). She is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 13 August. ■

The sea, trailing white ghost hair, shivers home in waves, to a population modest, low voiced, unfixed in stone.

A surge of Old Scotia that foams and waves from south and west, the incomers in.

The join where Balfour’s whitewashed roof braves the ossuary absent of bones, the fingers of the setting sun.

A groundswell sweet and low as local airwaves flies like a crow between dry walls and standing stones.

A surge along the lengths of waves. Maxwell’s sums still standing strong.

The island living new tradition. Soundwaves longer than light and nothing’s set in stone.

No tick needed, nothin missin here. Lambs shiver and brave standing tall. The rise and fall of speech. Nothing’s set in stone.