HERALD SCOTLAND

Jean Atkin reflects

on the necessary involvement of humankind in keeping the countryside from chaos. She grew up in Cumbria next door to a farm, with a semi-feral outdoor life and a bookish indoor life, and now lives in Dumfries and Galloway.

(Lesley Duncan)

MARKINGS 30 You believe in Jean Atkin's geese, who wavered the stone roads slow as sun struck bees because you believe in Jean Atkin. She has a marvellous dreamy rhythm to her work and an eye for a powerful image.

(Hugh McMillan)

NORTHWORDS NOW The Treeless Region is a small book but a fine one. What impresses is not just the skill of the poet but the integrity she shows in putting her craft at the service of a world that includes but is, ultimately, wider than herself.

(Chris Powici, Editor)

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Recipe from a Crofter Still Resident in the Treeless Region


This is Bessiewalla Yow - a sheep’s cheese
from the Treeless Region, which
will last you through
the end of winter and provision
the hungry gap.

Take a gallon of four day old milk
and sieve through muslin in a cold dairy.
It’s bad luck to turn away strangers
while the cheese is dripping
into stoneware.
On the fifth day turn out the cheese,
and wrap in nettle leaves.
Bury the truckle for six weeks.
Choose your receptacle cautiously:
by April the rats are hungry.
Best has been a tin trunk
with luggage tags from Warsaw,
Dublin and Guernica.
The receptacle should be dug shallowly
into stony ground in rain.
Keep a count of the worms. It may be
that they’re recovering.

Peel off only enough leaves
to cut the cheese
at any one time.

Eat sparingly.
Spring may be late.

 

 

Some of the poems in this collection have appeared in Acumen, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland, Northwords Now, The Eildon Tree, Southlight and the website of The Wordsworth Trust. Coppice won first prize in the Ways With Words Poetry Competition at Dartington Hall in 2008. The sequence The Byre, The Horseman, The Letter won 2nd prize in the Kirkpatrick Dobie Competition in 2008. Stations of the Corpse Road, Grasmere won joint first prize in the Torbay Open Poetry Competition 2009. Not Lost Since Last Time was highly commended in the Mirehouse Poetry Competition 2010.