Some Huts
Waiting for Spring, Carl Erik Strom, 1970
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what is a hut?
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a hut is
four thin walls
nailed around a stove
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a hut is
set in the fret
of green woods
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a cabin is
spied
on the wild-hills-
///ide
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a hut is
a shed
& a bed
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a hut is
a few planks
nailed to some
peeling doors
kept out the back
in some folks’
///gardens
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a hut is
make-do-&-mend –
it grows
in an organic fashion
as a collage of accretion
///& borrowing
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a hut is
a second home
which there is
no shame
///to own
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a hut is
centred on
square windows
each of which
is taken care of
by a spider
& cobweb
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a hut is
a sounding-
board for rain
which will do you
no harm
if you remember to
spoon out
the guttering
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a hut is an
ante-garden
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a hut is
framed wilderness
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a hut is
tree high dissension
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in Norway
it seems
each field
is anchored
by a hut
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in Scotland
where we are so proud
of our welcome
huts have regrettably
///not been …
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Carbeth, Gerry Loose & Morven Gregor
poem-label AF, photograph Morven Gregor, 2011
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Carbeth
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‘A place of solitude set among trees.
Things come to rest here.’
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///– Gerry Loose
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just a wee felt-roofed hut,
a shame to stay inside
but there is rain
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wisps of white smoke
rise straightforwardly
from the chimley,
yaffles try to laugh
their way in
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there’s lovage and angelica
too strong tasting
for deer or rabbits
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last year’s tansy
buttons that fashion
this spring’s brown
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Dumgoyach seems
a few steps away
but I’ll just sit
on this handy log
drinking smoky tea
and wait a while
for the windfalls
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composed after a visit to Gerry & Morven, for the road north; Gerry & Morven are contributing their own post on hut culture and wild food, to be published shortly on Bothan Shuibhne. Carbeth: www.carbeth.blogspot.co.uk. the road north: www.the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/10-carbeth.html
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Prospect Cottage, courtesy of Ron Strutt
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Prospect Cottage
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Jarman’s neat hut
on the borderless
shingle jut
of Dungeness
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in the shadow
of the power station
in the knowledge
of death
Derek began
to garden
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each summer that passes
teaches which flora
will endure
biting northerlies
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sea kale & sea thistle
horned poppy, night-
shade & valerian
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lavender & santolina
nodding their colours
amid the salt-
tangle of wire, rust
bloom & flint
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Derek is gone
his garden
is growing
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hut of shadows, Chris Drury, 1997
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hut of shadows
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in the hut of shadows
one whitewashed wall
reveals the slow
flicker of the sea’s
everyday beauty
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the construction enacts
a great leap back,
circling through 6,000 years
of human consciousness
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we enter a darkness
that we recognize
from the chamber
at Bharpa Langais
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this poem was also composed, with Ken Cockburn, after a visit to North Uist, for the road north. Bharpa Langais is a Neolithic chambered cairn, similar inside to Drury’s construction. http://the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/49-eiheiji.html
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Suibhne
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A full house couldn’t
be more lovely
than my little oratory
in Tuam Inbir
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Where the stars are
set in their order
together with the sun & moon
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A house where the rain
does not pour in
a place where spears
are no longer dreaded
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My wee hut’s
as bright as a garden
but there’s no wall
to fence me in
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after ‘The Pity of Nature’, from a version of the Suibhne Cycle by an Irish Monk of the 12th century, published in A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry; the oratory is Suibhne’s tree, in which he sleeps
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Harmonicabin, collage, AF, 2011
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Han Shan’s hut
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I cut some thatch
to roof my hut
dug a pool and runnel
for the spring
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now I’m an old man
alone on a dim ridge
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settled in my hut
I sigh for the tide,
today, yesterday,
all the years
///gone by
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these lines are composed after Gary Synder and Burton Watson’s translations of the famed Chinese mountain hermit, Han Shan, ‘Cold Mountain’, whose poems live with the small Bothan Shuibhne library. http://www.gatliff.org.uk/?page_id=9
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Outlandia, conceived by London Fieldworks, designed by Malcolm Fraser, built by Norman Clark, 2010
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Outlandia
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clear a stand of spruce
to make a hut of larch
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this building is a window
with surrounding walls
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this hut scrapes
carousel clouds
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for all those who
take the path
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what lies before you
is silence
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what comes after you
is silence
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Ken Cockburn and I chose Outlandia as one of our locations for the road north, pairing it with the Japanese mountain temple of Ryushakuji; it is one of the key representatives of the hutopian movement, an avant-garde version of hutting.http://the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/34-outlandia.html
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Tigh nam Calliach, Glen Calliach, photograph Norman Shaw
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Tigh nam Calliach
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a hut may also be a rite
as each May
when the turf is laid
and the stone family
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Cailleach
///Bodach
//////Nighean
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are washed and set
before the doorway
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this little hut, in remote Glen Calliach, is re-thatched each May in an ancient ritual; the votive stone figures are from the River Lyon
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(AF)
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Inshriach Bothy, The Bothy Project, 2012
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Bothan Shuibhne | Sweeney’s Bothy
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Alec Finlay & The Bothy Project
commissioned as part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Year of Natural Scotland 2013’