Jan 1st, 2025: Day 1
The blinking cursor. the blank page. the blank canvas.
They all ask you the same thing.
Who are you? What are you here to do? What do you want?
I now know the answer to these questions.
I am an artist. I am here to make art. I want the freedom to do that.
Forty-odd years it took me to figure this out.
Fuck ups and cul-de-sacs galore. A wake of annoyance and bewilderment from myself and others behind me. So much wasted time. So many squandered opportunities. So much unlearned craft.
They say the best time to plant a tree is 200 years ago, and the second best time is today. So, on this day - the 1st Jan 2025 I commence my artistic recovery.
My first offering is auspicious. I wrote it some months ago in one go. It is a poem for my daughter. She was born - into water - five days ago, at 3.22 pm, on 27th December 2024 at Armadale Hospital. She weighed 3770 grams and was discharged yesterday from midwife post-birth care. We took her out today into the world. A gorgeous day, at the enchanted valley in Araluen Estate. We saw a wild emu, koi in the pond, and ducklings in the lake. She is strong healthy and of a temperament so beautiful and alien to me. She is peaceful. I believe she was sent to her restless chieftain of a father to teach him how to be at peace. How to stop warmongering with himself. How to lay down his rusty and battle-worn sword and come into the village, into the circle. At long last.
I did not dream of her. I sensed her. I knew she was going to be a girl. I had not a shadow of a doubt. I knew what she would be like. I knew her mother would be surrounded by nothing but competent and caring females throughout the birth itself. I will name them here because I will soon forget (Rochelle, Kendra, Molly, Brooke, Annette, and all the midwives who visited our home in the last few days). Thank you. I knew she would be a water birth as her mum wanted, and I knew that both mum and baby would be strong, and safe throughout. I also knew her name would be Iona. I do not know how I knew all of this, but I did know. This poem is simply an eyewitness report of what I already knew.
A poem explained is perhaps not a poem at all - but it is the calling card of the amateur to hide amateurish techniques behind impenetrable phrasing and then blame the reader’s lack of comprehension as an indication - not of their own lack of craft - but the reader’s lack of sophistication. I will explain the guts of the poem here, and then write it out for you.
If you are thinking of having a child, then I think you should. If you have given birth to a child, just know that any man who has been lucky enough to witness you do this (and if he has some ultimate sense about him) does not think you - or any female for that matter - is a member of the weaker sex. We men all strive I think, to emulate this courage and humility you display at some point in our lives, in the service of our families and ourselves. We worry we will never even come close. The bar is set ridiculously high.
Iona’s mother was born on the Island of Mull, her uncle was delivered on the ferry to the Scottish mainland, and I proposed to Hannah in the bay where she grew up on the island. Iona is named after the nearby Island off the West coast of Scotland, a sacred and beautiful place, of some religious significance. I was struck by stories of people attempting the swim across the strait to the isle of Iona. The open water swim that every baby makes to get to us is beyond our conceptual understanding. Language does further violence to this violent act, makes a haims of it, but poetry is the least-bad use of words we have to talk of the ineffable. It makes me glad to think that we as a species go through this process of birth. We are brought to our knees and our senses by this inexplicable act of courage and sacrifice.
One day I hope I will take Iona, her brother, and her mother to the Island she is named after. This poem tells the tale of me, waiting fecklessly - in the bay. Awaiting this beautiful and strident little girl from the other side, making her liminal solo swim (from who knows where) to our dimension. She is here now, and so the poem is a fitting start. I will give up everything I have to be her support craft for the open water swim that is life. I cannot promise a family inheritance, but I can promise a family heritage. today is the fifth day of your life Iona, and the first day of my honest life. I will promise you one thing, sweetheart. When you are my age, and speaking of your father, I promise - among the likely macro and micro mistakes I will make on an almost daily basis, amongst all the disappointments and let downs and failings that I know I will make, I promise to you that it the privacy of your own heart, you will posses the knowledge that you watched a man - who just so happened to be your father - give it a red hot go. This will be your family heritage. So even if fail, I want this to be deeply instructive to you. This is how you live an honest life. I do not plan to fail, but I may. But I will just keep swimming. I dedicate this poem to your mother Hannah Courtauld, a queen this chieftain did well to land. God bless you, and all the children you bear.
I love you.
Iona
Adnexa.
Not a word I’d heard
or seen before.
Blinking on screen
IN CAPITOL FONT.
Your perfect little lips kissed the X
“X marks the spot…” as Leo would say
Tied together already
I knew you were a girl (strong and steady),
from the get-go.
So quietly certain
of both your ultimate existence
and parochial goodness.
Never a spot of bother did you give us.
Seal like, on your mother’s shore of Mull
contesting the cold
taking the measure of it;
a tempting swim.
Clear hearted, from the yew-place
free of all distortion
bound for an island out of all proportion
The watery field bears down upon the
sound of Iona
Oh the sound of Iona!
wailing tears to fill the heart-shaped well atop my highest hill.
Tobar ha H-aoise.
I shift weight against the cold
and await - hands outstretched
pathetic and ridiculous
knees in the surf
and smell the glowing turf
from a hearth I will never understand.
My first act - severence and malificence
I am so sorry.
weak broth from the bay for you
but it was made with love (and the best that I could do)
Your mother’s screams now spent,
summons me from my mother’s tent
and here we are.
Tied together again
I feel your pull and catch
and the water flowing aft
forever now your support raft.
Oh, Iona!
What covenant can you make today,
with this monk in the bay?
And what promise can I make
that I could keep?
To talk of the deep
(and let you sleep)
and assign all stolen valour to the heap.
And with every chance,
Escort you - my sweetheart,
In the general dance.
Niall Campbell