The April launch of our New Poetries VII anthology draws ever closer, so today we are pleased to introduce Katherine Horrex with her poem from the book, 'Goat Fell'. Scroll down to watch a video of Katherine reading the piece.
Katherine Horrex was born in Liverpool, grew up in Hull, and lives in Manchester. Her poems have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Morning Star, Poetry London, Poetry Salzburg Review, and others. She currently works as a potter, selling online and at markets, and occasionally releases albums of rock music onto the internet, some of which has been heard on BBC 6 Music and XFM.
When Goat Fell was chosen by a group of friends and acquaintances as the destination for a sponsored walk, I found it difficult not to think of shepherds on the one hand, and a vast herd of demonic, Bacchic ruminants on the other. In name alone, the Isle of Arran’s tallest peak seemed to me to be established along bucolic and otherworldly lines.
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When Goat Fell was chosen by a group of friends and acquaintances as the destination for a sponsored walk, I found it difficult not to think of shepherds on the one hand, and a vast herd of demonic, Bacchic ruminants on the other. In name alone, the Isle of Arran’s tallest peak seemed to me to be established along bucolic and otherworldly lines.
At 874 metres above sea level Goat Fell’s summit is a somewhat humble objective, though it dominates the view from the nearby town of Broddick, and lends a certain wildness to the region, with its gorse-strewn outcrops rising from out of the surrounding forest.
An interesting name and beautiful scenery might be inspiration enough for writing a poem but it was not until the death of a friend I made during the trip to Arran that I felt a need to do so – perhaps because the hill’s apparent timelessness, when set against the transitory nature of human existence, provided enough conflict to make it especially worth exploring via language.
Goat Fell’s history as the scene of a murder in the late 1800s (the murder of Edwin Rose) meant that it seemed all the more apt as a framework for elegy. The idea that the hill might be haunted in some way meant that the otherworldiness of its name and setting could be explored via psychological and spiritual phenomena, rather than the plainly pastoral.
My aim with the piece was to put language in the foreground, to create shifts in register and movements towards dialect that might resonate with shifts in geography, altitude and mental state, in relation to the overcoming of an obstacle, physical or otherwise.
Goat Fell
Only after living in its shadow for a month
can I say that its attraction has worn off,
that I went there once or twice
seeking a river locals mentioned
not long after I arrived,
nose raw with the churchy strangeness
of water underfoot and the valley
closing over like a hand. My boots
were sucked by moss and a slip in the mud
nearly had me kneeling
as if I were a pilgrim at the island’s altar.
More like it was the butcher’s block
in the craggiest backstory of this particular ayr
and what I’d heard before meant that halfway up,
when the wind ran round a slate grey howff,
it seemed to whisper ‘Rose, Rose.’ The way a boiler
in an old, old house takes on the voice
of someone who’s not there. Now I do not want to go
into that cold mountain dream with feet scrying
for the summit in the screes and murder in the fellside’s bones.
An interesting name and beautiful scenery might be inspiration enough for writing a poem but it was not until the death of a friend I made during the trip to Arran that I felt a need to do so – perhaps because the hill’s apparent timelessness, when set against the transitory nature of human existence, provided enough conflict to make it especially worth exploring via language.
Goat Fell’s history as the scene of a murder in the late 1800s (the murder of Edwin Rose) meant that it seemed all the more apt as a framework for elegy. The idea that the hill might be haunted in some way meant that the otherworldiness of its name and setting could be explored via psychological and spiritual phenomena, rather than the plainly pastoral.
My aim with the piece was to put language in the foreground, to create shifts in register and movements towards dialect that might resonate with shifts in geography, altitude and mental state, in relation to the overcoming of an obstacle, physical or otherwise.
Only after living in its shadow for a month
can I say that its attraction has worn off,
that I went there once or twice
seeking a river locals mentioned
not long after I arrived,
nose raw with the churchy strangeness
of water underfoot and the valley
closing over like a hand. My boots
were sucked by moss and a slip in the mud
nearly had me kneeling
as if I were a pilgrim at the island’s altar.
More like it was the butcher’s block
in the craggiest backstory of this particular ayr
and what I’d heard before meant that halfway up,
when the wind ran round a slate grey howff,
it seemed to whisper ‘Rose, Rose.’ The way a boiler
in an old, old house takes on the voice
of someone who’s not there. Now I do not want to go
into that cold mountain dream with feet scrying
for the summit in the screes and murder in the fellside’s bones.
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Watch Katherine read 'Goat Fell' here:
New Poetries VII is available to pre-order here, and will be published in April 2018.
