The Shell of Stone
()
About this ebook
The author also touches on the inevitable passing of time and his own ageing, which he addresses with some mischief and fun. While there is always a presence of nostalgia, sometimes sadness, White balances this with poems about the joy of having grandchildren, observations of wildlife and the ever-increasing amount of time he is spending in his garden.
The reader is left with feelings of respect for the past together with hope for the future. White’s poetry is laced with warmth and humanity, not to mention a good helping of his native Scottish humour. The experience gained in a four-decade-long career in community service has given the poet a priceless knowledge and understanding of the lives of
ordinary men and women, who will be able to relate to these poems and enjoy them.
Ian Nimmo White
Ian Nimmo White was born in Paisley in 1948. He served Fife Council as a youth and community worker for 35 years before retiring in 2008, and much of his poetry reflects this long experience of working with people of all ages. His verse, in both English and Scots, has appeared prolifically in literary magazines throughout the UK. Two previous book-length collections have been produced, Standing Back (Petrel Publications) in 2000 and Symmetry (Trafford Publishing) in 2007. He was editor of Fife Lines poetry magazine from 1998 to 2005.
Related to The Shell of Stone
Related ebooks
Tinker's Leave Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsListening to The Elders: A Global Quest for the Secrets of a Long and Happy Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHotel Tiberias: A Tale of Two Grandfathers Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Tales from the Coast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Easternmost House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Settlement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssential Novelists - Thomas Wolfe: original and impressionistic prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow the Light Shines Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe English Humourists: "A good laugh is sunshine in the house." Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feathers in the Well Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Carpenter from Montreal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAutoFellatio: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetjeman: A Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coleshanger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems of the Past & Present: “Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHackney Memories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPennine Childhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo America with Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crossing the Lagan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStanley Cook: Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFootnotes: A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People and Places: A Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Picket Duty, and Other Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/552 YA Books Every Book Lover Should Read: A One Year Recommended Reading List from the American Library Association Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollected Poems: 1950 - 2002 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeasons of Hope: Memoirs of Ontario’s First Aboriginal Lieutenant Governor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hallam Succession Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boy in the Green Suit: a memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knock Knock: A Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Poetry For You
The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Shell of Stone
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Shell of Stone - Ian Nimmo White
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following bodies for the encouragement and support which has helped him to reach this point in his poetry, specifically this publication by Austin Macauley:
The Scottish Poetry Library, The Scottish Book Trust, Chapman Publishing, New Writing Scotland, The Scots Language Society, the Glasgow Herald newspaper, the Dundee Courier newspaper, and the Glenrothes Gazette newspaper.
Foreword
by Tom Hubbard
These are poems marked by a blend of compassion for forgotten folk and protest at those who forgot them. Ian Nimmo White devoted his working life to public service and his leisure to celebration of the natural beauty of his adopted Fife. Prior to his retirement, these commitments came together in his championing of other writers as a magazine editor and organiser of a book festival. In his own poetry we continue to encounter a unique synthesis of practicality and vision. Here the small Fife town of Leslie, where he lived for many years and raised a family with his wife Janice, opens up into European history. Here is the expansiveness of the Lomond Hills and its hinterland, the delight in place names such as Croftouterly and Kirkforthar. Nearby Loch Leven, to the west of the Fife boundary, is famed for the incarceration of Mary Queen of Scots in its island fortress, and this is memorably evoked by Ian in the lines ‘The wind soughed and wound itself / up and around the shell of stone.’ (That’s up there with Charles Dickens’s response to the same time and place: ‘with the rippling of the lake against [the castle-prison], and the moving of the shadows on the room walls.’)
Read Ian’s ‘A Train Driver and a Poet’ and you’ll not fail to be moved by