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Praise for Kenneth Steven

Evensong (2011)

‘This collection of poems by Kenneth Steven isstunning. There is a grave beauty in these lines,

revealing a poetic voice of great sensitivity. Thesepoems are, quite simply, wonderful’

alexander mccall smith

‘For those of us who know Scotland, though not as natives,and for those of us who are forever attempting to knowourselves, Kenneth Steven is another inner voice, and

never more so than in this collection of his work.Evensong is intimate and beautiful’

ronald blythe

The Ice and Other Stories (2010)

‘Beautiful, enchanting, heartbreaking’chris dolan

‘The Ice is an atmospheric, wintry tale of fragile humanrelationships set in a beautiful but unforgiving landscape’

james robertson

‘The Ice comes straight out a tradition running through NeilGunn and Robin Jenkins – precise, sweetly written, slow-moving and with a melancholy air in an uncontrived style’

des dillon

‘A wonderful short story writer – a very beautiful, enjoyablecollection from a multi-talented writer’

osprey journal

Imagining Things (2005)

‘Enjoying your work intensely – style and subject’ted hughes

‘Strong and impressive work’a. j. alvarez

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A Note on the Author

Kenneth Steven was born in Glasgow in 1968 andspent his schooldays in Perthshire. He has studiedin Norway and translates from both Norwegianand Sami. A widely published poet, novelist andchildren’s author, his most recently publishedcollections of poetry include Evensong, Iona andWild Horses. His translation of Laars SaaybeChristensen’s The Half Brother was a finalist forthe 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Hetravels widely to give readings and writingworkshops for both adults and youngsters. He livesin Dunkeld with his family.

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A Song among the Stones

KENNETH STEVEN

A Song among the Stones

KENNETH STEVEN

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First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Polygon,an imprint of Birlinn LtdWest Newington House

10 Newington RoadEdinburghEH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © 2012, Kenneth Steven

The right of Kenneth Steven to be identified as the authorof this work has been asserted in accordance with

the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, orby any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying,

recording or otherwise, without the express writtenpermission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 84697 7 212 6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on

request from the British Library.

Typeset in Great Britain by Antony GrayPrinted and bound by XXX

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for my mother,

and to remember my father,

who taught me to walk on Iona

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Preface

In the sixth century, Celtic Christians monks are likelyto have made the journey from Iona to Iceland and theFaeroe Islands. In later centuries, the Norse settlers whomade their homes in the Western and Northern Isles ofScotland found evidence of stone chapels and cross slabs;the Christian hermits who built these were known to theNorse as the ‘papar’.

To this day, the papar presence is remembered in thenames the settlers gave to the islands, such as Pabbay,Papadil and Papa Westray. The early Celtic churchappears to have been accepted without any real resistanceby the people of Ireland. When the Christian gospeltravelled across the water to what we know today asGalloway and Argyll, the story was the same. But theCeltic monks were well aware that the first Christianshad suffered all manner of persecution for their faith;they knew that faith had gone hand in glove withsuffering, and often with martyrdom.

Setting out on journeys of faith to reach the wild coastsof Ireland and Scotland, to build chapels there and toseek God in the very teeth of the storm was a kind ofmartyrdom. While these places had neither deserts norroaring lions, there were tempestuous seas and seeminglynumberless dangerous rocks and small islands tonavigate.

Iona was the heart of the Celtic Christian world in thesixth century. Columba had made the island his home

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and his abbey had been build there. At that time, Ionawasn’t remote in the way we might consider it today; itlay in the middle of the sea roads, and in Columba’s dayit was a busy, vibrant hub of religious teaching andthinking, likely to have been the place where the Book ofKells, the great treasure of the Celts, was begun.

Perhaps in the end, it became too loud and clutteredfor the hermits, who yearned for solitude and completewilderness in their search for the divine. They wentfurther and further into the sea ‘desert’ to find the emptyplaces for which they longed. On the east coast ofIceland, there is a tiny island by the name of Papey. TheNorse settlers believed that this was a place visited by theCeltic hermits. Indeed, to this very day, Icelandicarchaeologists continue to scour Papey for proof of somekind of early Christian settlement. All it would take toconfirm this would be a single cross-marked slab.

What I love about this story is the absence of writtenhistory: time allows the imagination freedom to moveand breathe. In so many places, the human storyencompasses every footfall and sentence; Papey’s historyoffers the possibility of an extraordinary journey, neithermore nor less. It is an elemental story, as sparse andweathered as one of those last poems by the greatOrcadian, George Mackay Brown.

It is my intention and hope that the following sequenceof poems be read as one unbroken piece, in a re-creationof the papar journey itself, from the west coast ofScotland to Iceland. I have sought to give the sense ofthe fragments of some lost manuscript, found perhapscenturies later on Iona, and now nothing more than thelast worn-away stones of the story.

KS

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a song among the stones

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the water lilies pearling the lochsruffled in the tugging of the wind

the sunlight comes wild and strongin gusts like bunches of blown daffodils

this northernness novembered in a momentdriven slate-grey in a suddenness of storm

yet this is the place they came to findan island thin to the divine

on the edge of the worlda beauty brittle as a bird’s egg

larks spinning songs out of sheer skyorchids blowing in hidden glens

and sometimes, just sometimesthe glory of God in the morning

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the light lay in all the fieldsand the curlews wept in the blue wind

they walked in rhythm through the fieldsas though hearing a song that was not there

a man kissed his son’s headand led him slowly, slowly home

and the bell held in the still airslow and long in evensong

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up in the winds of the towerall day, all nightpen and nib and inkyellows and reds and bluespoured into every pagethis gospel of love of God

outside, the bones of winterrattle all night longthe sea strugglingrolling in its sleep, feveredas the waves break in shiningon this shattered western edge

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in the small hours they gatheredup under the roof of the towerthere where the book was being broughtbeautiful, out of nowhere

they watched him, wary, wondering –I am going further north, he saidI do not know what I will findperhaps I will not come back

all I know is that I must seekthis somewhere with all my soul

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