#  Rachel McCrum, 2013 Recipient 

 



 Rachel McCrum is originally from a small seaside in Northern Ireland and has arrived in Edinburgh via Oxford, New Zealand and Manchester. She is Broad of Rally & Broad, Edinburgh's most wonderful cabaret of words, music and lyrical delight; and Stewed of Stewed Rhubarb Press, Scotland’s. Her first pamphlet *The Glassblower Dances* won the 2013 Callum MacDonald Award, as a result of which she was the Michael Marks Poet in Residence at the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies in Nafplio, Greece in the summer of 2013, and she travelled to South Africa as part of the Scottish Poetry Library/British Council Commonwealth Poets United project in spring 2014. She likes red wine, dark chocolate and once, she went sailing.

##  Publications

 *The Glassblower Dances* (Stewed Rhubard Press, 2012), winning pamphlet of the Callum MacDonald Award

##  Selected Poems

###  The Glassblower Dances

 The words first appeared on a lamppost  
on a dirty road between a chip shop  
and some tired Turkish Baths.

 They nestled amongst fat careless splurges of paint  
and the neon screams of *get tae fuck*  
and *nae future.*

 Reading the phrase, passersby smiled  
briefly  
and thought no more about it.

 But the words tucked themselves  
into the minds of the people  
on the bus.

 Two days later, the handwriting was seen again  
on a wall along a cycle path  
and beside the hospital for sick children  
and in a cafe toilet  
and down near where the ships no longer came.

 And people began to repeat it to themselves  
in the early morning on the streets.

 The phrase swirled out.  
It appeared on the back of schoolbooks  
and on library desks.

 It moved beyond the city

 was seen written on a rock  
on a beach full of leaving birds  
and on a bench  
beside a bus stop  
in a small grey town.

 It was seen carved down the curve of a mountain

 *the glassblower dances.*

 As the words swelled  
people began to talk.  
A feature was broadcast on the local news.

 And some were curious  
and searched for understanding  
on YouTube

 removed

 but enough to understand  
the rhythm that came through the feet  
from earth to breath to arm  
the flow of skill  
the exhausted dogged passion  
that was required for the alchemy of changing  
dirt into something fluid, strong and beautiful.

 The words grew.  
And the City Council talked  
of the cost of cleaning  
but they could not calculate it accurately.

 And well heeled sorts on a late night sofa  
spoke of the shallowness of modern culture  
and lamented the loss of the canon.

 (but the thing about a scratch  
is that you feel it  
and sometimes it lets things in  
and they incubate  
and fester)

 And some academics wrote a paper  
on the sociocultural intertextual significance  
of urban public expression

 but it was rather long  
and only read by eight people.

 And linguists spoke of sibilants,  
how they trace the brain with fingers of smoke.

 And historians expounded on the history of glassmaking  
how China, ignoring it until the Seventeenth Century,  
invented fireworks instead of windows.

 And the phrase didn't stop any wars  
or bankers -  
there were other words to try that job  
and it was beyond this writer's ability  
at this time.

 But people smiled  
and for a moment felt something in their chests had loosened  
and wondered about things  
that did not touch their lives.

 And all this happened  
because once a time  
someone thought to write  
upon a wall with joy

 *the glassblower dances.*

###  I Go Sailing

 *For Margarida Jorge.*  
*\[August 2012\]*

 Last summer, my father and I made the North Sea crossing.

 Inverness spat us out the Moray Firth  
crested by bullying dolphins.

 The first day saw us breathless over swift clean waves  
Racing beneath oil platforms because we knew  
how to ride the wind.

 The second day,  
our stomachs dropped  
as the sea rose up to meet us.  
  
A heightening gale  
and the pitch and maw of big water.

 I held the helm for ten hours  
cold, wet and muscles biting.

 He, sixteen stone of bad hip,  
lumbered under oilskins,  
did what he had to.

 Tying and retying salted sheets  
reefing canvas pulling fat with windv

 And with one brief lifeline  
straining him to the foredeck.

 Never so glad to see the sea  
give up a sullen coastline.

 In the harbour, we shoved  
cheese rolls in our mouths sideways, apples,  
and did not mention the crossing.

 But after, ravelling up again  
the family knot

 I heard him tell my mother  
‘She kept her steady’.

 Months later, landsick and hung  
tethered to the corners of my bed.

 Fretting disappointment over  
another wayward change of course.

 He sent a message.  
Signed off ‘your proud da.’

 And I  
like any daughter would.  
Like any child would.

 Cried

 in the rented privacy  
of my lurching room.

 Learn more on [Rachel McCrum's website](https://rachelmccrumpoetperformer.wordpress.com/about/).

##  A brief comment from Rachel McCrum about being in Greece, in 2013

 The heat. The sun. The cicadas. Iced coffees during the day when it is too hot to eat anything, replenishing water and salt levels with cucumber and feta once the sun had gone down. The conversations, politics, poetry, everything, long into the night. The sheer sensory experience fed so much into my poetry, and then deeper into the levels of ancient history, myth, archetype, and the interplay between those. A moving away from the personal. The warmth and hospitality and honesty I was shown will never be forgotten. Thank you.

 Cover of the awarded pamphlet *The Glassblower Dances*:

   ![A red umbrella broken by the wind with a grey hand extended in an effort to catch it.](/sites/g/files/omnuum7151/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/chsgreece/files/mccrum.png?itok=NSAnDcW3)