Love and Revolution - Poetry of Alastair McIntosh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Forge  

 

What is the point of land reform

so that remote communities

can be preserved

as threatened cultures

at a massive social cost

to the nation as a whole

of teachers, doctors, police and ferry services

when most of those raised native from such soil

are now so few and only have two kids

who’ve mostly moved elsewhere to stay

their burns and braes seductive now

to ever-higher bidders from away

with little thought or want for joining in

God’s rhythm of the crofters’ passing day …

and most who ‘ever mattered’ here

are dead or spread or going gone

the beauty of a people’s life

strewn like cemetery flowers

and even markings on the land

are fossils fading down the years

with only gales and rain to carve

a soaring waterfall, of tears?

 

 

Either we turn our faces to the wall

burn out, sell out

or jumping from the bridge

choose at least the honest statement of

heartbreak hotel’s check-out …

or else we muscle down

    roll up our sleeves

        and dig from where we stand

to shovel ruddied muddied ores of melded human sand

and stoke the glowing hearth anew to smelt and skim and pour

a precious shimmering stream refined by sense of place and ancient lore

(like hodden lead ripped off in time from round the ruin’s sill

and fired until it crumbles to a freshened mercurial rill)

then on the ringing anvil to a meteor shower of sparks

we strike the tempering ingot, dreaming new and old hallmarks

… and hammer out the beauty, of the braided crofting way …

which is our greatest export, to this world that’s gone astray…

and that’s the point of land reform

    in the politics

        of today.

 

 

(Also published in The Crofter, journal of the Scottish 

Crofting Foundation, No. 73, Dec. 2006, p. 5)

 

 

 

 

 

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Alastair McIntosh

 

Alastair McIntosh (born 1955) is a Scottish writer, academic and activist, his most well known work is Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power (Aurum Press, 2001). In 2006 he published his collected poetry, Love and Revolution (Luath Press).

 

His book on the psychology and spirtuality underlying climate change was published in June 2008 - 'Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition' - described by Michael Russell MSP, Minister for the Environment in the Scottish Government as "a profoundly important book, just as Soil and Soul was a profoundly important book." In autumn 2008 he publishes 'Rekindling Community: Connecting People, Envirnoment and Spirituality' as a Schumacher Briefing endorsed by WWF International.

 

He was brought up in Leurbost on the Isle of Lewis and is married to Vérène Nicolas. He is involved with Scottish land reform especially on Eigg and campaigned successfully against the Harris superquarry in Lingerbay. He is a fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, an Honorary Fellow of the Schumacher Society and helped to set up the Govan based GalGael Trust of which he is Treasurer and a non-executive director. In 2006 he was appointed to the honorary position of Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Strathclyde (Department of Geography & Sociology) - the first such post in Human ecology in a Scottish university.

 

He holds a BSc in Geography, submajoring in moral philosophy and psychology from the University of Aberdeen (1977), a financial MBA from the University of Edinburgh (1981), and in 2008 the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages (of which he is a Visiting Fellow) at the University of Ulster approved the award of PhD by Published Work based on a short thesis linking 'Soil and Soul' and twelve supporting publications presented with a short linking thesis, 'Some Contributions of Liberation Theology to Community Empowerment in Scottish Land Reform 1991-2003'. Parts of this will find publication in autumn 2008 as Schumacher Briefing No. 15 - 'Rekindling Community'.

 

Alastair also features of Nizlopi's mini album 'Extraordinary' on the track titled 'Homage To Young Men'.

 

 

 

Books

 

Healing Nationhood: Essays on Spirituality, Place and Community, Curlew Productions, May 2000, ISBN 1900259958

Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, Aurum Press, Oct 2001, ISBN 1854109421

Love and Revolution: Collected Poetry, Luath Press, September 2006, ISBN 1905222580

Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, Birlinn, June 2008, ISBN 1841586226

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.alastairmcintosh.com