Only the most dedicated travel there. A man will take you in his red rowing boat. From the landing stage you’ll hear hammers – stones breaking. There’s distance in the eyes of each passenger. The boatman knows it. A toenail, beak, the tip of a wing is already formed in that other eye. Trees have long gone, cut for camp fires. Some stay months, digging, hammering, others summon storms, waiting for winter to bring cliffs down onto the beaches. They risk mud. There are no birds other than cannibal gulls. Waterproofs rustle, there’s occasionally a drift of coffee. In summer people bring tents, stake claims like fishermen. - He rings me on a phone that doesn’t work. Odd words, words blocked out. He talks in sentences I hear a third of, like someone’s jamming it, the frequency hijacked or squatted. It hurts my ears, as if we’re trying to talk with dust storms, electric storms, particles interrupting, as if between us are prairies, plains, continents where radio can’t travel, waterless, over ...
Six poetry collections by Jackie Wills since 1995 Powder Tower, Party, Fever Tree, Commandments, Woman's Head as Jug, A Friable Earth Poet Jackie Wills turned 70 last month, so it seems a perfect time to talk to her about her writing. I met Wills when she was looking after sheep in Mallorca and I was walking on a centuries old path through the land. She admired my hat. There are decades between us but we stayed in touch and as I read her work I appreciated its focus on womens' lives, the earth and felt the empathy her poems exude. Her work has been described as irreverent, bewitching, compassionate and surreal. Q: Jackie, it's great to reconnect. You've published six books and a pamphlet. Do you have a favourite? A: Each time a title comes off the press it's a favourite because most of them, especially the later ones, come from years of writing, thinking, discarding and editing. What I can say is that each book is delivered by a different era in my life - my first m...