Translating Mountains

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Friday Poem – ‘On the Alaskan Peak We’ve Never Climbed’, Yvonne Reddick

Yvonne Reddick Friday Poem Alaska

This week our Friday Poem is ‘On the Alaskan Peak We’ve Never Climbed’ by Yvonne Reddick, from her debut pamphlet Translating Mountains.

Yvonne Reddick Translating MountainsChosen recently as one of Leaf Arnuthnot’s favourite twenty poetry pamphlets in The TLS, Translating Mountains is an emotionally rich and memorable selection of poems that recount the disappearance and death of a beloved father, and the grief felt for a close friend, who both died in mountaineering accidents. These poems are also hymns to stunning scenery, with mountains and place names often in a craggy, atmospheric Gaelic. Full of tension, emotion and action, the poems grip our attention. The author searches for ways to grieve and come to terms with the trauma of her father’s death, whilst echoing his love for adventure, and imprinting his memory upon newly discovered or imagined landscapes, as in ‘On the Alaskan Peak We’ve Never Climbed’.

 

 

Yvonne Reddick Alaska

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translating Mountains is available from the Seren website: £5.00

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Friday Poem – ‘Translating Mountains from the Gaelic’, Yvonne Reddick

Friday Poem Translating Mountains from the Gaelic Yvonne Reddick

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘Translating Mountains from the Gaelic’ from Yvonne Reddick’s Mslexia Poetry Prize-winning pamphlet, Translating Mountains.

The difficulty and occasional humour of translating language is at the forefront of this poem, yet alongside this we see a daughter contemplating how she will take her lost father on one last memorialistic mountain trek.

The poems of Yvonne Reddick’s prize-winning pamphlet, Translating Mountains, are all multi-layered compositions. They tell of grief for a beloved father as well as a close friend, who both died in mountain-climbing accidents. These poems are also hymns to stunning landscapes, with mountains and place names often in a craggy, atmospheric Gaelic. Full of tension, emotion and action, this writing grips our attention.

 

 

Translating Mountains from the Gaelic

A pebble on the tongue –
my clumsy mouth stumbles their meanings:

I mumble Beinn Laoghail to Ben Loyal,
Beinn Uais to Ben Wyvis,

humble Beinn Artair
from King Arthur’s Hill to The Cobbler –

turn Bod an Deamhain
from Demon’s Penis to Devil’s Point,

stammer on An Teallach
with its rearing anvils and impossible spelling,

my throat a stream-gorge
where quartz chunks chatter against each other –

my English rolling off their sharp consonants.
Next summer, I’ll shoulder my red rucksack,
a Platypus bottle, and a vial of Dad’s ash

up Schiehallion –
Fairy-Hill of the Caledonians –
via the less-worn path.

A deerfly, its eyes peridot ringstones,
will pincer my skin for blood,

my voice a trespasser,
echoing charred moors and razed crofts.

Dad, I’ll pour your English dust
for the hungry roots of the hill’s oldest pine –

a speck of you will lodge in a walker’s boot-tread,
the breeze catching a mote of your collarbone,

the rain will seep through you,
mingle you with Aonach Bàn,
Loch Teimheil, Sìdh Chailleann.

 

 

Translating Mountains is available from the Seren website: £5.00
Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for a 20% discount every time you shop with us