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The Grey Coast (poem) - Live

from The Grey Coast (Live EP) by Hamish Napier

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about

'The Grey Coast' by Hamish Napier

A poem that explores the region of Caithness, where my father's side of the family hail from.
It is performed live here with an improvised piano and harmonium accompaniment - never to be repeated the same way again. I'm glad we captured this particular performance of it.

This is my first every published poem, from 'The Darg' - a celebratory poetry anthology for Hamish Henderson’s Centenary, published by Poets Republic Press and edited by Perthshire poet Jim Mackintosh.

lyrics

THE GREY COAST

Caithness: headland of Picts.
Momentarily their cat’s eye peers
Through the hue of murky centuries;
Their presence barely visible
On the farmed surface;
Their lament lost
Amid the prevailing gale.

The Norsemen
Brought their nets and swords
And hauled their long boats up the beach,
Or skirted beneath the cliffs
Searching for an inver
Where the land exposed an open flank,
Drawing them inland
Upriver ...
To trade or take,
Sew and crop.

Now a lone lobster fisherman
Motors just beyond the breakers.
Inshore waters flash like cuttlefish;
Further out
A spread of rigs and turbines stands
Where the dark brow of the horizon frowns.
Clouds smear in sedimentary stripes
With an infinity of grey shades
Masking where the sky stops.

Here, in the land of my father,
The towns have tired
Of vast rafts of herring boats
Fleeting in and out
Of the North Sea Holes:
Over time they drifted away, forever.

Heading north,
Rock, rail and road
Pleat and twine
Along the eastern shore,
Fringed by patches of crofts and woods.

To the West
Three dark giants break the rule of the sky
As they rise up from the interior,
Their feet hidden
Behind the miles of sliding fields and tumbling dykes.

Locals chatter
In tongues akin to Armagh and Antrim,
Roughly Ross-shire
Waltzing to an Orcadian lilt.
High above their daily voices
The sun keeps a distance.

In the dim twilight
The eastern sky cumulates
Like a vast shore of pale blue pebbles,
Rounded on their rolling
Up and down the waterline,
Forever colliding,
Clocking and cracking
With the push and shove of the moon.


HGN,
September 2018

credits

from The Grey Coast (Live EP), released August 31, 2023
Recorded live by sound engineer Alan 'Dinner' Mackinnon at Gairloch Community Hall, June 2023.

Mixed and Mastered by Andrea Gobbi at Carrier Waves and GloWorm Recording, Glasgow.

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Hamish Napier Grantown On Spey, UK

Hamish is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from the Scottish Highlands.

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