The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford

 

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Early in the book Rachel Anne tells us that “My Mother hates to have the island pulled about by visitors and tourists in the books they write.”, and we repeatedly have attention drawn to the islanders mixed emotions about the tourists, needed for money but resented for their fetishising of the islands “primitive charm”, which creates a tension as reader – how are either we or Gifford different from those tourists. There is a mystique around St Kilda – we might try to be enlightened observers – but I don’t think Gifford referencing the tourists as she does is sufficient to stop us falling into the same traps.

But within those constrains Gifford sets up a compelling love story – one which holds it power in separation for which its happy ever after ending is a little flat.

The Character of Virtue, Letters to a Godchild by Stanley Hauerwas

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I remain in two minds about this book…

The introduction by Sam Wells, in which he sings the praises of Stanley Hauerwas, feels like it is mostly there to remind us how clever Sam Wells is in selecting someone of the standing of Hauerwas to be Godfather. And there is something about the whole project that is an affectation – I none of the letter Stanley (as this feels like a collection that puts you on first name terms), Stanley notes that his wife has asked if he is writing the letter with the intension that they will be published – a question about who he was writing for – and you wonder how much of a say Laurie Wells had in the decision to publish “his” letters – it would all feel more authentic if they were being published by Laurie in later life having treasured them.

As the letters go on Laurie as a particular person being addressed begins to emerge, a little, and I think that helps to ground the collection. It also helps to give that sense of Stanley writing as an old man speaking to Laurie’s youth – that intergenerational dialogue is so rare, and it feels very precious.

There is also an unease that this is a conversation taking place very much in the context of privilege, something that Stanley acknowledges – but it doesn’t manage to break out of this.

These are nevertheless strong reflections as one would expect from Hauerwas. In the letter on Kindness I found these word stand out “To be kind is to know when not to speak because nothing can be said that is not false.” and the way he draws out kindness and constancy seemed to be the core for me.

And toward the end of the book, in the letter Faith, a longer quote (as it is not a book that offers up quotes easily – ideas are shared across the whole of a letter not a sound-bite)

“Which finally bring me back to the world you’re confronting in boarding school. Not too long ago, to be English and to be Christian were assumed to be pretty much the same. To ‘be of the Christian faith’ suggested a status rather than a virtue that was the result of habits acquired by undertaking an arduous task or journey. You didn’t need to be on a journey because it was assumed you had arrived. Happily, that world, the world in which being English and being Christian were assumed to be equivalent, is now gone. So to be the son of a mother who’s a bishop means you had better have faith in God because, in no doubt very different ways, God has found a way to make your life odd. I think you’ll discover that to be odd and to be a person of faith may be different ways of saying ‘I’m a Christian.’ But I think you’ll find nothing is more important than you ability to say ‘I have faith in God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit.’”

The Forward Book of Poetry 2017

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Some poems that particularly spoke to me…

Kathryn Maris “It was discovered that gut bacteria were responsible”

Ron Carey’s “Upstairs”, which concludes

“And she says nothing she says, nothing.

Leaving me, afraid

That everything might be said and done and said

And she has taken all the cold of the earth into herself.”

Kate Dempsey reads her poem “While it Lasted” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZfTLCnxhOg

Andy Fletcher “the atlas”

we used to read the atlas together

you said

‘an atlas can take you anywhere

the more you look the more you see’

you pointed at a river

a frontier

a peninsula i’d never heard of

sometimes you’d lean closer to the pages

and i’d feel your breath on my hand

occasionally we’d make a few notes

at some point

we must have closed the atlas

not realising

we wouldn’t open it again

the furthest you move now

is from one side of the bed to the other

a peninsula everyone knows about

as the nurse

writes on a sheet of paper in a file

your breathing is shallow and fast

and more i listen the more i hear