IN THE HANGING VALLEY
Yvonne Gray
To visit Yvonne Gray's author page, please click here.
A collection of poetry by Orkney poet Yvonne Gray.
Praise for In the Hanging Valley
‘Yvonne Gray’s poems breathe with the air of Orkney, where she lives and works. She is a musician as well as a poet and one can detect the musician’s ear in her writing. Her poems stitch images into a fabric: one rich and textured but at the same time light and unshowy. They address the changing landscapes of a dear place, its rich history and wildlife. They pay homage to artists and musicians, to people of the past as well as those of the present. With words she paints the picture, the music.’
Christine De Luca
‘Yvonne Gray’s poems represent a taut lyric of images, people and places. The words are well-chosen; each phrase is apt to the sensation, the experience, to the driven-ness of the poem. Here is a poet who is aware of the tensions and nuances which make up the modern world, but behind it there is an awareness of a more ancient acoustic: one which makes us who we are.’ George Gunn
'Yvonne Gray takes her materials by right: land and its music, boats on water, flesh, yearning and mourning. She will dip her finger in cold salt and trace your life's horizon.' Todd McEwen
About Yvonne Gray
Yvonne Gray was born in Ayrshire and grew up in Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and Midlothian. She studied at Edinburgh University then worked in Angus as an English teacher and oboe instructor. In 1990 she moved to Orkney and settled near Stromness with her husband and three sons. She teaches English part-time and is a keen musician. She has been involved in several collaborations, including Rationed Air (with artist Carol Dunbar), Between the Terminals, a film for the St. Magnus Festival, Poetry in Place (Orkney Creative Writing Fellowship) and the exhibition Flows and Traces. Publications include Swappan the Mallimacks (Galdragon Press), Nouster and Clear Day on the Black Craig, Orkney (Braga Press). She received a SAC Writers’ Bursary in 2002. In the Hanging Valley is her first full collection.
An extract from In the Hanging Valley
Glencoe Spring 1692
I was there that night
stepped knee deep in the icy river
washing clothes in the pure water.
I watched it flowing over the stones
and winding out of the glen
to the land beyond, gleaming in snow-light
that fell from shrouded mountains.
You saw me there that night
as you crouched by the icy river
scooping the dark water.
You thought you knew who I was – you started
and turned away, arm shielding
your pitcher of water as you ran, stumbling
through snow, back to the village.
I was there that night
stepped knee deep in the icy river
washing soiled clothes in the pure water,
but I could not have stopped what was coming.
I watched you hurry through spindrift
seeing you fade as it soughed and shifted
in the gathering wind.
Long before dawn the spring storm came.
Bright suns burst on frozen roofs
and sudden red flowers bloomed in snow.
I saw your clothes rent with thorns
wreathed with heavy-scented roses.
I stooped and washed them in the pure water
of the icy river that wound on out of the glen.
