KENNETH STEVEN
UK
No stranger to the Highlands, Kenneth has been so inspired by the beauty of the 'wildscape' that he has written a number of books with Dan, the first of his Highland Trilogy series being nominated for a Saltire Award. Also a Gold Sony Award winner for his documentary work with BBC Radio 4, Kenneth is planning an audio piece created from the voices of Distillery workers and the sounds around them as well as a poem to celebrate Glenfiddich.
“Capturing stories is my trade, whether those stories are for adults or children, they take the form of poems, novels or short stories. Here at Glenfiddich in 2008 there is a new story to tell. Three men who have given their working lives to the company are retiring. The record of their days is priceless; the years they knew will not come again. For that reason I wanted their voices to be at the very heart of this celebration in sound, and I wanted those voices to be interwoven with the sounds of their workplace and the sounds of the natural world. I found a local fiddler too who would be able to play the tunes of this part of Speyside that reflect its uniqueness, past and present. My own poems are spoken carefully from the edge of this land and workscape; I am a stranger to this corner of Scotland and for that reason the poems that have flowed from the pen have been diffident and cautious.”
“My thanks to all those who have made this melding of sounds and images and words possible. Slainte.” Kenneth Steven, September 08
“I’ve always been interested in the chords that link people with their land, how local character seems defined by landscape and history. By the same token, water is given a uniqueness by the minerals washed with it out of the depths of the hills. I’m aware that three men will finish their working lives at Glenfiddich this year, men whose combined decades of labour and service total more than a century. I want to hear their stories and record their voices, to interweave the songs and tunes and sounds of the place with those voices - and those of others - to create a living celebration of an epoch. As well as recording all this in a miscellany of ways, I’d like to work towards composing something new that celebrates a whisky. I’ve long thought that a good lyric poem of a dozen or so lines was made for a bottle - an encapsulation, the expression or distillation of a single idea. The process itself takes time - a listening, a watching, a maturing.”
Kenneth Steven, June 08
VIEW WEBSITE
http://www.kennethsteven.co.uk
Audio
POEMS
SONG
The fiddle is a river that will never stop its running
Since the day that it was made it’s been alive with song and dance
And every year there are new tunes that are just waiting to be played
By the fiddlers of the Speyside hills that love them every one.
When the nights they draw at last to dark and wild the winds howl round,
And the rain has burst the burns each one, and more is tumbling down,
The folk of Speyside gather still and listen to the tunes
By the fiddlers of the Speyside hills that love them every one.
For this is what gives home a heart and sets a fire alight,
It’s what brings a place together through depression and through war,
It’s been just like this since time began and it isn’t set to change
For the fiddlers of the Speyside hills and their tunes each every one.
THE WHISKY RAIN
Yesterday I walked the old railway line -
A green corridor, a path paved with grass.
It felt odd, as though at any moment
A steam roaring might curl around the trees.
I wondered if after dark the ghost of it comes back,
Caterpillaring with light and fire the vanished track,
Flickering from nowhere into nowhere
The memory of a journey, the story of its day.
THE ANGEL'S SHARE
A poem drips word by word
From the slow pen, doesn not flow
In the night quiet when the moon
Ripples the barley’s gold.
No more the bottle’s fire
That ripens drop by drop
Deep in the quiet of the years
Until its time is right.
SALMON
The river pools black as cairngorm,
Deep as a dark night - Falls of whisky and ginger.
The fishermen were tweedy things with tweedy voices,
Who flicked the river with silvery whips,
Brought back photographs of fish to frame.
Just sometimes on a moon-dark night
The village boys gathered at the pools;
Bare hands muscled whole strong lengths of Atlantic.
They brought them back in silence and in secret,
Their own salmon from their own river - Sweet fish from the salt sea.