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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: How to Distill a Guid Scotch Malt
by Maggie Mackay
My poem is inspired by my mother, her strength and wisdom. She is not here to witness the pandemic but her voice tells me to keep faith and believe that science and its wonders will break through to an answer, not unlike the miracle that is the distilling of whisky, the water of life.
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: How to Distill a Guid Scotch Malt
Wrap yourself in Mum’s dressing gown, its envelope-hug,
pour a dram of uisge beatha, sip peppery Talisker peat.
Hear the barley grain grind in the mill, conjure a mash in the steel tun,
a flow into the wash, stroked by hushes and baloo baleerie.
Gloamings on salty coastlines, sweet kiln smoke, skin oil grams,
cloud the floor of the tumbler, climb the sides, pull you into the cask.
Acids blend with ethanol, transform into esters, fruity and aromatic.
A Hebridean sunset copper-pots your tongue, biscuit-beaches rise in your throat.
There’s a nip in the air, a lifetime of goodnights fermenting in a kipper fire.
Her arm entwines in yours. She comes home, full flavoured.
Task begun, the heart of the run is now, my middle years of fear and longing.
Recording provided as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020. Used by permission of the author.
A special thank you to our WordView 2020 poets.
Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: “The hundreds of entries we received blew in to the Archive like a breath of pure, unpolluted air from all over the world, revealing something of the time we are living in, some telling it straight, some slant. It was exciting to check in to the Poetry Archive’s Youtube channel every morning and come upon one unexpected voice after another."
See the collectionWatch the full Wordview 2020 playlist