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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2025: August in Orkney
by Biljana Scott
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2025: August in Orkney
After Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Graze-green and crop-gold
quadrilaterals, not one of them
a tidy square, framed by brown.
The fields tell an understory
of runrigs and mergers
of patched up efficiency.
The browns link ploughed furrows
to peat hills as yet unclaimed.
No salient features anywhere
other than this three-colour pallet
and the diminishing fall of the hills.
Yet I stop and stare
and even as I stop, I know
that I will never unsee
this switch of ground.
What I’d dismissed as a surplus
of boring browns
(brown peat, brown sod)
is offered here
as bookends
to the nitrate brights
of our sharp-
elbowed tight-
packed jostling,
jostling for what
we’ve already claimed
and what’s yet to be.
Bookends
to steady us
and bring us back
to common ground:
there’s only so much
of it. No surplus.
A special thank you to our WordView 2025 poets.
Hear from some our winners this year on what the Archive and winning has meant to them:
"I feel deeply grateful to be taking part in the chorus of voices honoured by PAN Worldwide 2025. Leonard Cohen famously sang that “every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.” For me, the same might be said of poetry. I came to the writing of it late, and thank The Poetry Archive for providing the encouragement to continue being brave in sharing it." - Michelle Robin Visser.
"I think it shows the importance of live spoken word to share poetry as equally as the printed word for some audiences." - Steve Harrison.
"Being part of the PAN Worldwide 2025 collection alongside 17 incredible poets from across the globe is both an honour and a reminder of the unifying power of poetry. Moving forward, I think this experience will stay with me, it has encouraged me to continue writing with honesty and openness, and to remember that my voice is part of something much larger than myself." - Panya Banjoko.
See the collectionWatch the full Wordview 2025 playlist