figures of stone

Precise and mature, the language here is sound as granite, and these twenty-three poems are laced with sunrise, sunset and seasonal hues. For the most part Gerard Rochford weaves the pastoral and elegiac, flavoured throughout with a sense of belonging; at times becoming a hymn to nature and existence itself. Indeed, the tapestry of his landscapes are crucial to the poem unfolding, when ‘motor cars bleed into the moor’, or ‘the rabble of invasive fern’. Centre stage, though, is the creation of a headstone and a poignant observation of the stone circle at Midmar, Aberdeenshire. Flesh and blood finds a foothold, too, and a bow is given to the passing of lives, or to boyhood observations. Moreover, in the cycle of cradle to grave - in the late autumn of the book, so to speak - lies ageism and the taking of one’s own life, swiftly followed by a clutch of poems, celebrations of the gift of birth, though it’s an image, a phrase from those earlier times that grabs attention, like the crying of babies.

Funeral at Tigh-na-dig

for John Mackay

We wind our way to your croft like evening cattle.

Upon your land,
in sight of the house,
a hole has been dug.

It is beneath a hawthorn.
White roots had to be severed,
boulders grubbed out;
they lie there scattered
like bones and skulls of war.

The ram which broke your hip
grazes beyond the fence;
nothing has changed
in the turn of its day.

Rough cuts of rope
lower you into the ground;
we wait on your widow
to chuck her fist of earth
upon the drum of wood.

Your son, autistic,
edges to the grave
and looks into the darkness.

He bites his knuckles, draws blood.

Bio: Gerard Rochford’s publications include Eating Eggs with Strangers, The Holy Family and Other Poems (Koo Press) and magazines in Britain and Canada. Anthologies include Erotica (Ascent Aspirations.Canada.2008) and Silver (Polygon — ed. Spence and Hutchison, 2009).

He is included in Janice Galloway’s selection of Best 20 Scottish Poems of 2006, for the Scottish Poetry Library. A featured poet on Poets Against the War, principal guest reader at Planet Earth, Victoria B.C. and at the launch of the Cromarty Film Festival, 2008.

His next book will be Al Fresco (published by Embers Handpress — Roy and Eve Watkins editions). Also planned: Of Love and Water, a collaboration with the Canadian artist David Ladmore.

“I was born in England of Irish and Yorkshire stock, have lived in Hong Kong but spent most of my life in Scotland where the best footballers leave and the best poets stay. It is good to be near them. I have many children and grandchildren who give me great joy.”