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Christie Williamson - Growth

17th November 2014

This poem is by Christie Williamson, now a very well known poet of the highly distinct Shetland dialectChristie Williamson is from Yell but is now settled in Glasgow

Growth is from the new issue 84 of Poetry Scotland, the result of a call for poems written to seek a way forward after the Referendum. It's another fourteen-liner, such an ideal length of poem for a single argument.

Christie Williamson's publications include Da Sang o da Rider, translations of poems by Garcia Lorca into into Shetland Scots 

Growth

If dud a delled da grund, pickit oot
da cuttins choost richt fur da spot
an wattird an fed an pruned an spokkin up
da bush a by dy sel, wha could blaem de
fur grabbin on wi baith haunds
haalin hit closs tae dy kjist, an plantin
a muckle, weet Yis kjiss on da lips o cheenge.
I dunna hae ta tell de fu hit swees,
canna pit wirds tae da dl o de hale bein
bein rived, canna keen fu lang de scarsll bide.
My dear freen, keep growin. Hae patience.
An mind, da presence o thorns da day
doesna mean da absence
o roses da moarn.

Christie Williamson