Caithness woman's verse inspired by Clearances among winners of Poetry Society contest

A Lieurary woman has been chosen as a winner in the Poetry Society's spring 2022 competition for a poem inspired by the Clearances.

Harriet Torr had her poem Clearance Village selected as one of six winners from hundreds of entries.

The verse was inspired by the Clearance villages in Strathnaver.

Harriet, who has been a member of the society for more than 20 years, said: "It is many years since I visited the Strathnaver site but have never forgotten the feeling of great sadness for the people who lived and worked there which inspired me to write the poem Clearance Village."

The Members’ Poems competition sets Poetry Society members the task of writing a poem or poems on a theme chosen by a leading poet.

The spring contest was judged by Sheri Benning on the theme of "solastalgia" – the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.

Clearance Village by Harriet Torr

There are no workers

honing down,

no hands swinging

the scythe, no seabirds

weeviling the flail

in the tractor’s wake

yet still I feel them

homing in the dusk

their tools hung to rest,

brass and dust,

a century’s windlass

circuiting the pores

of old saddles,

wrinkled leathers breathing

horse dung and sweat.

I drink the stars

in the water’s face,

hold in my mouth

the small legends,

my tongue ploughing

the sky’s ruck and fold,

the nudged summits

of a trough’s granite

where a universe

has drowned.

(Copyright Harriet Torr)

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