Caithness writer's poem in new book on vintage tractors
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A POEM by Caithness writer George Gunn is featured in a new book by an award-winning photographer.
Vintage Tractors is the latest project undertaken by Allan Wright, who previously worked with Gunn on a book about oil rigs.
They have teamed up again for this venture which includes over 70 images, a lengthy poem by Gunn and the personal reflections of retired Ayrshire farmer Russell McNab.
Gunn is delighted to be involved in the book which was published this week. "It is a subject very close to my heart," he said. "My father's people were farming people and crofters before that. Old tractors are a kind of emblem of our civilisation. If you look at a tractor you are looking at a chronicle of history. It meant life and was a tool to get us out of poverty.
"There's always an old tractor somewhere and always a story behind them. The poem I wrote is a long one and explores man's relationship with technology. It is also about the landscape, cutting peats and ploughing and things we now take for granted."
Gunn, whose association with tractors goes back to when he was a young boy, added: "The best thing that happened to crofting after the war was the Massey Ferguson tractor. It was a utilitarian thing and almost indestructible."
Wright's images reflect on the role of the tractor and how it has shaped Scotland’s agricultural history, heritage and landscape.
To get the pictures he roamed the country's coastal and rural landscape with his camera – the result is a series of images that capture "a lost army of vintage tractors".
Wright, who is based in Dumfriesshire and has been a professional photographer since the 1980s, said: "My principal occupation is as a landscape photographer, but during my working travels I unwittingly developed a particularly sharp eye for a tractor, abandoned or partially obscured at the back of a barn or in the far distant corner of a field. I felt a strange magnetic draw each time I encountered one of these ‘noble beasts’.
"With some imagination, there can be true poetry in each of their journeys, as very slowly over years these ‘beasts’ are quietly absorbed back into the land they have worked all their life."
Wright, who has travelled widely, commissioned Gunn to write the poem which appears on the centre pages of the book.
Vintage Tractors is published by Lomond Books Ltd and costs £9.99 in paperback.
