Good Cause

Tessa Ransford is a poet, translator and literary editor. A cultural activist on many fronts for over forty years, she founded the ScottishPoetry Library. In 2001, she initiated the annual Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for publishers of pamphlet poetry in Scotland andhas held Royal Literary Fund fellowships at the Centre for Human Ecology and Queen Margaret University. Full details of her workare available at wisdomfield.com. Recent poetry publications include:Not Just Moonshine: New and Selected Poems (2008); Rug of a Thousand Colours (2012), a collaboration with Palestinian poetIyad Hayatleh inspired by the Five Pillars of Islam; Don’t mention this to anyone (2012), poems connected with India and Pakistan, with calligraphy by Jila Peacock; and Made in Edinburgh (2014),reflections on Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park, with photographsby Michael Knowles. A Good Cause offers a new selection of previously uncollected poems, the ‘good cause’ being ultimately the intrinsicgood of poetry itself.

• ContentsAcknowledgements 10A Good Cause 11 To remember or not 12A sign for our time 13 The Floating Iceberg’s Song 14 Dead statues 15 Crystal Ship 17 Belles Lettres 18Let it not be said 21 Collie dog among the books 23 Hear, O Israel 24 Midas 25 Stock 26 Things mustn’t go back to ‘normal’ 28 Is there a country? 30 The only 32 Cliffs 33 Religion among the people in Scotland 35 Religion in Scotland 37 Contumacious 38 The Cycle Path to Cramond 39 Deprived 41 The Enchanted Bridge 42 Mornings at Insh 44Women’s secret language in China 45Rune for him 46 Rune for myself 47 Sheer Life 48 Rossal, Sutherland, in the mists of time 49Disseveral Irish Couplets 51 Dundrennan 54 Pow Wow 56 Rescue Attempt 58 Glas fhairge 59 Not on the map 60 Camouflage 61 The Great Tapestry of Scotland 62Raise 63Epithalamion 64Girls’ song for counting cherry stones 65 Revelations 66As I trod those stairs 67Tea Ritual 69 beauty and freedom 70 Footlight 71 Adding to Favourites 71For my grandsons 72 Lily of Raasay 73 Flos Campi 75Barra 76 Chant, South Uist 77but still a bird 78 Sentience 79 Aberlady Walk 80December night, Edinburgh, 2002 81 Meeting of Gods 82 Rhymer’s Glen, Abbotsford 83 Stromness Stroll 84 An Exotic Sanctuary 86Turner in Cornwall 87broken and free 88 Poinsettia 89 Indian Leaf Butterfly 90Mantra 91 The Loving Spirit 92For Eric Wishart at sixty 93 Tribute to Duncan Glen 94 Poem for Zena 97 The Shortest Day 99Vale 100 Yeats’s Grave 101Marginalia 102A Tryst 103 Trees for YES 104 Hope 105 Endings 106

Tessa Ransford’s poetry is characterised by flexibility and lucidity - TOM POWTessa Ransford has never lost her faith in that powerful trinity – nature, love and, above all, poetry. EDINBURGH REVIEWRansford takes the reader on a journey to explore the differences between ‘then’ and ‘now’, linking the reader to a world now lost to most. These poems question what it is to be both British and Indian, drawing on the author’s memories and experiences to celebrate and uncover an ‘Indian’ self. SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS