Description
Kenneth Steven takes us on Columba’s difficult journey from Ireland to the west coast of Scotland. He takes us on many other journeys too – both real and imagined, ancient and modern. Columba’s journey becomes a metaphor for embarking on journeys of many sorts and from many kinds of shores.
Simple, Powerful, Spiritual
EXTRACT
September
The fields lay white beneath a snow of sun
And birds were restless underneath, they rose and wheeled
Like silver leaves. The skies were more than blue;
Burnished and beaten with a strange brilliance.
The angels are coming, I thought;
The angels will come in the night
When a huge moon ovals through these bright and cloudless skies;
They will come to bind the sheaves
While we are fast asleep.
They will work the fields, their wings tight-folded,
All through the white night of this September,
The moon gliding high like a balloon
Over the glazed harvest of the world;
Nothing moving except the angels and the wind, until the task is done
In the warm stillness of the dawn.
© Kenneth Steven
Meet the Author...
At the 2006 Sony Radio Academy Awards, the UK's most prestigious radio accolades, Kenneth won the Gold Award for Radio Features for his BBC Radio 4 programme, A Requiem for St Kilda's.
‘enjoying [Kenneth Steven’s work] intensely – style and subject.’
Ted Hughes
‘this poet is a worthy successor to such greats as George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith and Norman MacCaig … he celebrates Scotland past and present without the least trace of sentimentality.’
The Scots Magazine