Poem of the week: Robert Rendal – ‘Orkney’

Published on 23/02/2013 00:00

BORN in in 1898, Robert Rendall lived most of his life in Kirkwall. A man of many interests – art, archaeology, Christianity, travel – his reputation rests upon poetry: his own and that of fellow Orcadian George Mackay Brown. The author of four collections of poetry, Rendall died in 1967.

His Collected Poems (Steve Savage Publishers, £25) distils his poetic passions, with a number of poems returning time and again to the matters of spirituality and landscape.

This is the land whereon our fathers wrought

Year after year, feeling scant need to clutch

For distant gains, since, with little or much,

They tilled their scattered fields as they’d been taught,

Or tried the sea to find what might be caught

Of fish or crab. This was their land, and such

Their joy therein, seeing the sunlight touch

Its evening hills, no other land they sought.

This kingdom, too, is ours, and in our blood

Its passionate tideways run: its moorlands fill

With peace our casual eyes; and the wild flood

Of winter haunts our ears with spells that bind

Sea, sky, and earth in one. Each cliff and hill

Lies like a shadow on the brooding mind.

• You can borrow Collected Poems from the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. Tel: [phone], e-mail [e-mail] or see www.spl.org.uk for details.