Review: Mapping the Contours by Nimue Brown

January 14, 20194 Comments

mapping the contours by nimue brown There’s something old about the poems in this book, a bone-deep knowing, a merging of self and land which is reflected in the cover image. It speaks of a time when the hills were the contours of giantesses, the curves of beautiful goddesses, a time that still is and is not with us now.

‘Walking myself into the landscape, and walking the landscape into myself’ is the way bard and druid author Nimue Brown describes the process behind her new poetry collection Mapping the Contours. In the poem that provides the title she says ‘Human bodies are much like landscapes.’

In ‘Raised upon these hills’, one of the most beautiful hymns to a landscape I have ever read, Nimue evokes her lifelong relationship with the Cotswold Edge:

I was raised upon these hills,
My bones are made of limestone,
Sweet Jurassic limestone,
Grown from ancient seas.
I was raised upon these hills
My body made of fossils
Where the Cotswolds meet the Severn,
And the Severn seeks the sea.

She, land, and goddess are inseparable. In ‘Seeking Goddess’ Nimue speaks of going to the forest, rooting with the boar, sleeping with the lynx, making love with the trees, becoming ivy-templed and bird-haired, sharing milk and giving birth to bees. Inseparable too are the local animals and plants: urban foxes, an otter on a bus station, wild swans over the Severn, brambles, orchids, fly agaric. And most strangely a lonely ‘telephone bird’ ‘Outside my window impersonating / A ringing phone.’

There is a lot more uncanniness in this collection encountered in both the seen and unseen worlds. Trolls long to drink ‘the elixir of your terror’ and ‘dead things’ fall from the mouths of the dark siblings of the Shining Ones. In ‘Granny’s house’ ‘All chicken magic and bones’ Baba Yaga

…bears the knife
Opening bone truths
My shoulder blades
My wings
Beauty never dared
Whilst living.

As well as engaging with folklore Nimue provides a more homely and nourishing alternative take on old British myths originating from the Dark Ages of warlords and shining-browed bards. Her cauldron does not brew potions for ‘blinding flashes or ‘burning heads’ but ‘soil food, soul food’, ‘everyday gifts’. Her thirteen treasures are not weapons but a loom, a log, a seed, a cup, a candle…

Tongue-in-cheek she speaks of becoming ‘indigenous English’, a ‘Dirty Briton’, claiming back soil and soul. This act of reclaiming forms the heart of the book. I’d recommend it to all poets, Pagans, and nature lovers as a paradigmatic record of recovering an ancient way of being that lies within our bones and the bones of the land.

You can buy Mapping the Contours H ERE and read Nimue’s blog, Druid Life, HERE.

Caer Wydion

January 11, 2019January 15, 20192 Comments

‘I go to the fortress of Lleu and Gwydion.’
The Dialogue of Taliesin and Ugnach

I.
Beneath
the mountain
there is a fighter jet

emblazoned with the name GWYDION.

On the passenger seat
there is a single
mushroom.

EAT ME it says.

I’m a sucker for a trick.

A one-way flight to Caer Wydion.

II.
I take one bite.

It’s enough –
the plane dismantles
and the bonds of my atoms break.

Whatever is left is hurtled through space
to a fortress in a woodland
where trees bow down
to only one.

III.
In a giant’s crown
Gwydion holds court
with the eagle-headed Lleu

and his three animal children –

Hyddwn, Hwchddwn, Bleiddwn,
fawn, piglet, snarling wolf-cub
polite in their bibs.

Gilfaethwy sits beside him –
brother and bride and groom
with sow’s ears and a snout.

Gwydion wears polished silver antlers
and a wolf-skin coat studded
with stars on the inside.

He throws down his wand.

At the look on my face his courtiers
laugh until their sides split
and their insides

fall out and roll about the floor
like jellies still trembling
with laughter.

Of course I can’t help but step over
the wand of the enchanter
then watch helpless

as my insides fall out –
an hysterical woman clutching
her wandering womb.

IV.
Two men with pencils
in the pockets of their lab coats
and long silky ass’s ears

take me down to the basement

where homunculi with eyes
in their foreheads are singing
eerie prophecies in glass jars:

a dozen miniature Taliesins
with tiny imperfections like
missing ears, fingers, toes.

V.
Along an endless corridor
are countless doors opening
into rooms where hybrid plants
turn toward fluorescent lights
to the pulse of a water pump.

“Gwydion will never create
the perfect wife for Lleu.”

A feather light voice in my ear
then talons grip my shoulders

and bear me back to my home.

Fly Agaric, Coed Felinrhyd

Afagddu’s Sorrows

December 7, 20183 Comments

I.

Oh bone bird mother
do you not see my skeleton on the beach?

Do you not know which cormorant I was?

Do you not know how many stones I ate?
Do you not know of the sorrow of plastic I choked on?
Do you not know how I swallowed enough poison
to save the world but it was still not enough?

Whatever I did I could never gain perfection
with my oily wings, my puddling feet,
my shuffling look of misery.

II.

When I fought I flew into
a blind unchannelled rage like a primeval bird
and no-one could bring me back, could call me back again…

thus I was better as an attendant demon believed malevolent.

I could have been a bard if I had not sung the wrong songs –
the antithesis of the music of the tongue, disharmony, un-cynghanedd.

If my words had not creaked like a broken wing beating and beating
up above as I went about picking up loose pieces of words
that had been discarded like the limbs of dolls
and sad squashed teddies.

III.

In my childhood I had no hug, no cot, no mobile, no talking abacus,
and my mum did not leave the television on.

I didn’t really get to know the village where I was born
down beneath Lake Bala from which only
a harper and robin escaped.

I was more interested in the secret tunnel
between the worlds into which I could drag my ‘belongings’
and keep them safe – the rubbery Wellingtons,
the scribbly marker pens and notes.

Bala has always led to Tryweryn –

to the sunken villages and the empty beds
into which I climbed longing for mum and dad,

to the empty post office, school, chapel, chapel house,
to the cemetery and the new memorial chapel.

IV.

Black, ragged, bloated on November nights
I cannot remember my birthday but only the birthday
of my sister and how this was celebrated with whistles and balloons.

I instead was tarred and feathered and pecked to death

until I was rags and banners of intestine
and of course the cold dry bones,

until the door was opened
and I was bidden go.

Oh bird bone mother
if only you could see me now –

I am flying high beyond perfection.

Shattering the Nunnery

November 9, 2018March 24, 20207 Comments

Somewhere between here and Annwn

a part of me is cloistered

thinking already
about the spring flowers

as she paints another saintly visage.

In another life she has been drinking
the truth from a forbidden cup.

The saints no longer look the same:

their hands are red with blood and filled
with splinters and chips of stone
from shattered pagan idols.

The stained glass is blood stained.

Her voice catches on the songs and tears
as if upon nails – she SCREAMS

and the stained glass shatters.
The nunnery falls down.

This poem, which is based on a spirit-journey, signals my release from a malaise I have been calling ‘nun envy’. Although I realised Christianity was not for me when I experienced its dull and stuffy sermons and the patriarchal presence of the Christian God in my local C of E church as a Brownie at church parade a part of me has longed for learning and ritual and shared devotion in a religious community.

I have been deeply jealous of Christians because they have a system of support for people who have a sense of vocation. For those who are called to serve God there are ways of living by this calling. Vicars and priests receive an education and a salary for their work and nuns and monks lead lives of dedication to God based around prayer, manual labour, and artistic and intellectual pursuits without worrying how to pay for housing or food. When I hit thirty-five I realised that was the last chance I would have of becoming a Christian nun and living what looked the ideal life except for… the Christianity.

Of course, I decided against, because I did not want to betray my god to the God and saints of the religion that destroyed the pagan traditions and, in particular, demonised him and the Otherworld he rules.

Yet, still I kept yearning for what Christian monastics have. Researching local monasteries and abbeys. Finding myself drawn to Preston’s Carmelite monastery.

Visiting the Tabor Retreat Centre, which was once a Carmelite nunnery but is now run by the Xaverian Missionaries (this provides regular meditation classes, Lectio Divina, short courses and even a book club as well as retreats which I’d have loved to go to … if only I was Christian!).

Wanting to go back to the ruins of Fountains Abbey (which I visited every weekend when I worked at the Yorkshire Riding School) to sit and mourn something I will never have.

Fountains Abbey II
A strange impulse I believe may be rooted in a past life as a nun. A few years ago when I read in a biography about the ritual burial of Julian of Norwich – entombed like Christ to become his bride and an anchoress who would never see the outside world again I felt like I was being buried alive. As if I’d experienced something similar before. I flung the book into my wardrobe, slammed the door, and went for a walk feeling immensely grateful for my freedom to see trees and taste the fresh air.

I’ve always had a push-pull relationship with Christian mysticism, art, literature, and song. A yearning for its richness and beauty but a dislike of its unhealthy obsession with suffering and punishment.

As a consequence of years of learning about how nearly every splendid church and cathedral is based on the takeover (violent or non-violent) of a pagan sacred site; how nearly every haloed saint is associated with the defeat of a pagan mythic figure or with the slaughter or conversion of pagans; how the Christian tradition is founded on the death of paganism, it has finally lost its fusty-fingered hold on me.

Being an awenydd attempting to reweave the ways between Annwn and This-modern-world isn’t easy. But I think I will be able to do it better and more happily now my yearning for what Christians have and my nun envy is gone. From the ruins of the shattered nunnery may new shoots and tendrils grow.

Fountains Abbey

A Great Scaled Beast

September 24, 2018September 24, 20184 Comments

‘Gweint mil mawren
arnaw yd oed canpen
a chat erdygnawt
dan von y tauawt
a chat arall yssyd
yn y wegilyd’

‘I pierced a great-scaled beast:
there were a hundred heads on him,
and a fierce battalion
beneath the roof of his tongue;
and another battalion is
in (each of) his napes’
The Battle of the Trees

A great scaled beast sees
wars across the worlds: these
last days of Empire’s fall
beautiful, terrible…
Heads burn East, West, North, South.
Everywhere a Hell Mouth.

On the howl of Dormach
fierce battalions march
forth from beneath the rooves
of his tongues sent to prove
the world’s end to itself
and lead each frightened self

into the great beast’s maw.
Entering his gaping jaws
every step is further
down his throat – surrender
would be bliss if it weren’t
for regret, guilt, the hurt

of leaving all we loved.
Our work was not enough.
This is a night of tears.
This is a night of fear.
This tongue a road we must
walk – perfect faith and trust

keep us strong as we go
where only the gods know
splitting East, West, North, South –
all into the Hell Mouths.
In the maw of the beast
will we relearn to speak?

Will we each be reborn?

A Great Scaled Beast Black, White, Red Final Sml

‘A great scaled beast / there were a hundred heads on him’

A Black Forked Toad

September 17, 2018September 24, 20182 Comments

‘Llyffan du gaflaw
cant ewin arnaw’

‘A black forked toad:
a hundred claws upon him’
The Battle of the Trees

As dusk darkens the skies
a black forked toad will rise

from his underworld throne
beneath a cold dark stone,

slow, ponderous, alone,
napes filled with poison,

his long and roving tongue
seeking souls old and young.

His hundred trailing claws
with shrieks like owls will score

the black and tarmaced roads
that killed a hundred toads –

green, brown, grey, mottled, black,
males riding piggy-back

in a sacred parade
plodding to pools to mate.

He will trawl the cracked roads
where cars crash and explode,

movement drawing the lick
of his lips before the flick

of that forked tongue lashes
whip-like, savage, catches

the fleeing souls. No-one
will escape his mouth – run

hide, stand, fight, parry, miss.
One gulp they will be his.

When falls the last swallow
toothless he will swallow

everything that moves.

‘He will trawl the cracked roads / where cars crash and explode’

A Speckled Crested Snake

September 11, 2018September 11, 20181 Comment

‘Neidyr vreith gribawc:
cant eneit trwy bechawt
a boenir yn y cnawt.’

‘A speckled crested snake:
a hundred souls, on account of (their) sin,
are tortured in its flesh.’
The Battle of the Trees

A speckled crested snake
rises, falls, slips, like heartache
through ashes in the wake

of worlds that rise and fall.
Handless, legless, she crawls
writhed by agonised calls

of a hundred doomed souls
that hang like birdsong – whole
legions swallowed in halls

where the live can’t follow
where they’re pierced by sorrows –
sins lined in endless rows.

They drown in her venom
which sears, abrades, strips them
of skin, flesh, bone, wisdom

of pain making them one
with her: scaled, speckled. None
escapes as she writhes on.

She seeks a hundred more.
Feeds, grows, fattens, on war.
No-one can stop her maw

devouring what we’ve left.
No spear can bring her death.
No word can end her breath.

We’ll be inside her soon.

‘A speckled crested snake / rises, falls, slips like heartache / through ashes in the wake / of worlds that rise and fall.’

The Forest at the Back of the World

August 31, 2018August 31, 20182 Comments

Leaning Yew

Yng nghysgod yr ywen wyrol
saif y goedwig yng nghefn y byd.

In the shadow of the leaning yew
stands the forest at the back of the world.

***

Easeful
easeful the forest.

Easeful
easeful its mansions perfected.

Where we grow
where we grow
where we grow
and decay no longer.

Easeful
easeful the forest.

***

Fairy Lane August 2018

Do you remember walking or riding through a forest
down a path that never ends with sunlight dappling the shade
and crunchy leaves and woodland winds
and a feeling of infinite freedom?

Do you remember sleeping beneath the boughs
on summer nights or watching the passage of the stars
whilst the blackbirds continued to sing past midnight
into the early hours never ceasing at dawn?

Do you remember the feeling of unease,
as if someone was trying to shake you awake from a dream,
turning back over, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming on?
Does it trouble you that these memories are not your own?

***

Easeful
easeful the forest.

Easeful
easeful its mansions perfected.

Where we grow
where we grow
where we grow
and decay no longer.

Easeful
easeful the forest.

***

Branches Fairy Lane

In the perfection of memory they walk
through the infinite houses
room for everyone

the clatter of factories forgotten
the feuds between families and gangs
the arguments of politicians.

In the perfection of memory they walk
through the infinite houses
room for everyone

the hours behind glass and bars forgotten
free as gods or ghosts drifting
like pollen or birdsong.

In the perfection of memory they walk
through the infinite houses
room for everyone

until the butterfly on the shoulder
or the lizard emerging from the mouth
calls them to move on.

***

Easeful
easeful the forest.

Easeful
easeful its mansions perfected.

Where we grow
where we grow
where we grow
and decay no longer.

Easeful
easeful the forest.

***

Yng nghysgod yr ywen wyrol
saif y goedwig yng nghefn y byd.

In the shadow of the leaning yew
stands the forest at the back of the world.

Leaning Yew

***

*The song repeated three times is based on lines from ‘The Birdsong of the Wayreth Forest’ by poet Michael Williams in the Dragonlance series, ‘Easeful the forest, easeful its mansions perfected / Where we grow and decay no longer, our trees ever green.’
**With thanks to Greg Hill for the Welsh translations.

Caledfwlch

August 29, 20181 Comment

‘He got up with Arthur’s sword in his hand and the image of two golden serpents on the sword. When the sword was drawn from the sheath, it was like seeing two flames of fire from the serpents’ jaws. And it was not easy for anyone to look at that, because it was so terrifying.’
Rhonabwy’s Dream

On the edge of Celyddon two serpents
danced, ziz-zag bodies tumbling, twining, jaws
bared, jets of fire
hissing from their sword-
like tongues as they rose and fell in terrifying
splendour beneath the golden

sun competing for the favour of a golden-
eyed female. Arthur followed the serpents’
tracks to behold the terrifying
sight. His jaw
dropped as their sword-
like bodies intertwined in deadly combat; fiery

and tempestuous as the fires
of Hell. From the burning undergrowth a golden
lizard scurried to avoid their sword-
play – a flash in a serpents’
eye before jaws
closed over him and a terrifying

darkness. Remembering the terrifying
battle between gods of ice and fire;
Flame-Lipped and Wolf-Jaws,
white and golden-
haired interlocking like serpents
wielding flaming and ice-rimmed swords,

Arthur decided he wanted a sword:
sharp-edged, cloud-lit, to tame those terrifying
rivals. He grasped the serpents,
hissing and spitting fire
in his golden
gauntleted hands beneath their jaws,

took them to the forge of anvil-jawed
Gofannon. “I want a sword
of purest gold,
beaten into the most terrifying
form; living, breathing two flames of fire,
harnessing the strength of these struggling serpents.”

Gofannon plunged the serpents, flickering-eyed, wide-jawed,
into his fire, skins sloughing, blackening, goldening,
intertwining as one terrifying sword.

Caledfwlch

*This is one of the poems that didn’t make it into Gatherer of Souls, but relates to the theme of Gwyn’s opposition to Arthur. The form I have used is the sestina.