Read Kathleen Jamie’s contribution to Edinburgh’s Message From The Skies
Seascape with WEC, by Kathleen Jamie
Those five cardinal wave-rider buoys
-yellow and black-
visible from the clifftop,
transmit back
-in real time-
a live data stream: wave height, period,
direction, etc.
They mark a deep-water
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now riding high, now
lost in a trough, a single
yellow-hulled prototype WEC
is doing ok – surviving
even 18-metre waves
as it generates
its mite of electricity
for our all-consuming grid.
-But oh, to be tested so!
Pitched out there alone
against the wild Atlantic!
Oh to be so appraised!
And when you fail,
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loving you like a child.
Devised by Edinburgh’s Hogmanay in partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, this year’s Message From the Skies is subtitled Shorelines and marks Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters 2020 with texts by five leading writers reflecting on our relationship with our coasts, waters and maritime heritage projected onto buildings around the city. Produced in association with Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust and supported by Creative Scotland through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund, these literary illuminations continue until Burns Night on 25 January. For more information, visit www.edinburghshogmanay.com