The Wrecking Light – Robin Robertson
(These notes are by no means comprehensive - they are notes that I made to use with my own reading group, please feel free to use them and add to them - and let me know if you like them or spot any glaring errors)
Robertson, a native of northeastern Scotland, has said "I grew up with a very strong sense of place, in a landscape that seemed freighted with significance, mystery and power. Everything since has seemed a displacement, a deracination."
(Adam Newey, The Guardian)
deracinate - to remove or separate from a native environment or culture; especially : to remove the racial or ethnic characteristics or influences from.
Notes about the poems:
(page numbers refer to Picador paperback version)
By Clachan Bridge (p.6) - Alasdair Roberts is a Scottish folk musician.
The Plague Year (p.9) - A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722.
Strindberg in Berlin (p.20) - Johan August Strindberg (22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist.
Venery (p.22) – practice of hunting game animals or the practice and pursuit of sexual pleasure.
Leaving St Kilda (p.25) St Kilda is the remotest part of the British Isles, west of Benbecula in Scotland's Outer Hebrides.
Kalighat (p.34) is a locality of Kolkata, India. One of the oldest neighbourhoods in South Kolkata, Kalighat is also densely populated and vibrant - with a rich history of cultural intermingling with the various foreign incursions into the area over time. It is also the name of a temple in this district.
(The word Calcutta derived from it)
Kalighat home for the dying is a hospice for the sick, destitute and dying established by Mother Theresa.
Pentheus and Dionysus (p.37) - Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Semele – he is the only god to have a mortal parent.
Pentheus banned the worship of the god Dionysus (his cousin) who was the son of his aunt Semele, and did not allow the women of Cadmeia to join in his rites.
An angered Dionysus who caused Pentheus' mother and his aunts, along with all the other women of Thebes, to rush to Mount Cithaeron in a bacchic frenzy. Because of this, Pentheus imprisoned Dionysus, but his chains fell off and the jail doors opened for him.
Dionysus then lured Pentheus out to spy on the rites. The daughters of Cadmus saw him in a tree and thought him to be a wild animal (a mountain Lion). Pentheus was pulled down and torn limb from limb by them causing them to be exiled from Thebes.
The Daughters of Minyas (p.46) - Ovid Metamorphoses - THE MINYADES were daughters of King Minyas of Orkhomenos who scorned the worship of the god Dionysos by refusing to participate in his orgies. As punishment for their crime, the god inflicted them with madness causing them to dismember one of their sons and then transformed the three into bats and owls.
Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market (p.53) - Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. He was exiled to Greece.
Albatross in Co. Antrim (p.57) - Charles Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
The Great Midwinter Sacrifice, Uppsala (p.58) - Uppsala (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɵpsɑːla]: older spelling Upsala) is the capital of Uppsala County and the fourth largest city of Sweden with 144,839 inhabitants.
Calling Home (p.72) - Tomas Tranströmer (born 15 April 1931 in Stockholm) is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world. Tranströmer suffered from a stroke in 1990 which affected his speech and left him partially paralysed on his right side.
Ictus (p.73) - ictus, in music and conducting, the instant when a beat occurs.
ictus, in poetry, a way of indicating a stressed syllable.
The Unwritten Letter (p.74) - Eugenio Montale (October 12, 1896 — September 12, 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.
During Dinner (p.76) - Santa Maddalena is a writers’ retreat, about 30km south east of Florence in the Tuscan hills. It has been the home of Beatrice Monti della Corte and her late husband, the writer Gregor von Rezzori, since the 1960s. Santa Maddalena’s mission is to support poets, writers of literary fiction and writers on botany. They do this by offering free writing retreats to selected authors.
Easter, Liguria (p.81) - Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and food.
At Roane Head (p.87) – John Burnside is a Scottish poet.
Roanhead – is a real place on the Cumbrian Coast.
Selkies (also known as silkies or selchies) are mythological creatures that are found in Faroese, Icelandic, Irish, and Scottish folklore.
Selkies are seals that can shed their skin to become humans. The legend apparently originated on the Orkney and Shetland Islands, where selch or selk(ie) is the Scots word for seal (from Old English seolh).
Selkies are able to become human by taking off their seal skins, and can return to seal form by putting it back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea.
There is a film about Selkies called “The Secret Of Roan Inish”
Words
Hirpling – limping (to hirple)
Chittering – shivering
Beglamoured – to impress or deceive with glamour.
Smoor – to suffocate or smother.
Questions (you can ask these when the conversation dries up - it helps get things going again)
- Does anyone have any thoughts on why the book is divided into three sections and what the titles of these sections might mean?
- How do you feel about the violent elements of the book? (for example in the poem “Law of the Island” a man is tied to a raft with fish on his eyes for the gannets to peck)
- Was there too much violence/just enough/too little?
- Several of the poems were retelling of the Greek Myths – how did you feel about these poems? Were they successful? Engaging?
- Robertson uses quite a lot of Scottish colloquial and unusual words – does this add to or detract from your enjoyment of the poems? Does it make the work less accessible?
- Does anyone have any opinion on the form of the poems?
- Robertson has addressed several of the poems to other people – did this add to or detract from your enjoyment of them? Did it make you feel differently about them?
- Some of the poems are new translations of or written in the style of other poets – would you have liked to have known more about the originals?
- Does anyone have a particular favourite or poem they disliked? Why?
- The book is quite dark (some might say depressing) does anyone have any thoughts/opinions on this?
