Poetry review – TREMBLING EARTH: Jennifer Johnson is moved by Finola Scott’s gentle poetry full of concern for our threatened environment
Trembling Earth
Finola Scott
Matecznik Press
ISBN 978-1-9160847-5-9
30pp £5.00
Finola Scott started writing in retirement after what she describes as ‘a life at the chalk face’ in Glasgow. She has since then been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Trembling Earth is her third pamphlet, and its green cover is appropriate for a collection concerned with environmental issues. All the poems are agreeably succinct, each being under a page long. A few of them are written in Scots but most are written in standard English. Conventional punctuation is used in some of the poems while in others white space is used to indicate paises of varying length. The writing is assured with concerns about the environment being imaginatively set in diverse contexts. Above all there is in this collection the sense of a generous spirit at work. I will now look at a few of the poems in a little more detail to flesh out these points.
The first poem in the collection is entitled “Infrasound After W.S. Graham”. It begins with generosity
I bring you gifts
a curlew’s cry the plaintive
weaving of sky and grass
the shiver signal of bog cotton
the sudden weight of swans’ wings
beating down tired arctic air
hauling legends to the edge
of this blinkered city
This poem works well on one level without requiring knowledge of the W.S. Graham poem “The Beast In The Space”. In his poem there is one ‘great creature that thumps its tail/On silence on the other side’ who is a ‘terrible inhabiter/Of silence’ but ‘through Art you’ll hear it yelp.’ The title of Scott’s poem,” Infrasound” – meaning sound below human audibility – refers, I think, to the lone beast in W.S. Graham’s poem that can only be raised to audibility through Art. Scott invokes, by contrast, a rich environmental memory carried on the ‘swans’ wings’ that haul ‘legends to the edge/of this blinkered city’. Included in this memory are the high-pitched sounds of ‘a curlew’s cry’ and later ‘the high pipistrelle’ which makes use of high-frequency echolocation. The poem then turns to observing environmental damage:
that crunch heard and felt underfoot
as dried out sphagnum moss
struggles with cascading memories
of glaciers and healing wounds
The sphagnum moss, though, is interestingly given consciousness and memories of ‘healing wounds’ showing possible hope. Sphagnum moss, when not dried out, absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The possibility of a more hopeful future is also expressed in the last two lines
yes I know you’re listening
delighting in future dreams
The poem “I am that woman” is initially set in ‘the city’s Art Gallery’ where the poem’s narrator finds Nude Woman Bathing by Degas. In the second stanza, though, it is thoughts about water that take over and the water in the painting is transformed into the Scottish water more familiar to the speaker
I know such water, the hewn rock,
the loch at the source. There trout
and pike hunt the dark, while scoured
slopes remember glaciers’ savagery.
Abandoned char forget Arctic
origins, inhabit this southern body,
learn to call Scotland home.
Environmental memory is invoked here, as in the first poem, in the lines ‘while scoured/slopes remember glaciers’ savagery’. Recent environmental changes noted in this poem concern the char that used to live in the Arctic but now live in Scotland possibly due to changed feeding habits with more sea creatures moving north due to warming waters.
The theme of climate change also appears in “The blindness of prayer” in a wonderfully original context. This poem imagines how Saint Columba returns to Iona and ‘sings hallelujah to the rescuing gift/of this isle’ but
He doesn’t know
to pray against the warming
that will shift the Stream over time.
There are many other current environmental problems that the saint is unaware of such as ‘coral reefs dissolving’ and ‘plastics swirling’. These plastics appear again as microplastics in the poem “How to kill a whale” which begins with the familiar image ‘greedy harpoons’ before going on to say that microplastics in our seemingly innocent clothes and detergents are just as effective as the whaler’s weapons.. The poem ends with a list of the whales species that are in danger of being lost through ingesting harmful substances.
sperm gray minke fin
bowhead beluga blue
pilot humpback orca
This loss will not only reduce our diversity of species but ultimately result in an impoverished linguistic soundscape. The loss of the older Scots language might well have the same effect, reducing the variety of ways Scottish people can convery their experience their world. Interestingly, the Scottish parliament has recently voted to make Scots an official language.
The poem “Eediting the Oxford Dictionar” is written in Scots. This prose poem begins ‘Alike Robert Macfarlane, I walk the auld Ways’ adopting and translating the title of Robert Macfarlane’s book about ancient rights of way, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. In Scott’s poem we are told ‘The land is leed, speaks o loss in its ain tongue’. The drying out of peat mentioned in other poems is here expressed in Scots, ‘I note the saft spoonge o peat dryin unnerfoot’.
I hope that I have shown a few reasons why I recommend this imaginative pamphlet both to those concerned about environmental issues and to those who simply enjoy good poetry. I look forward to reading what must surely be a forthcoming full-length book in the not-too-distant
Jul 14 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Finola Scott
Poetry review – TREMBLING EARTH: Jennifer Johnson is moved by Finola Scott’s gentle poetry full of concern for our threatened environment
Finola Scott started writing in retirement after what she describes as ‘a life at the chalk face’ in Glasgow. She has since then been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Trembling Earth is her third pamphlet, and its green cover is appropriate for a collection concerned with environmental issues. All the poems are agreeably succinct, each being under a page long. A few of them are written in Scots but most are written in standard English. Conventional punctuation is used in some of the poems while in others white space is used to indicate paises of varying length. The writing is assured with concerns about the environment being imaginatively set in diverse contexts. Above all there is in this collection the sense of a generous spirit at work. I will now look at a few of the poems in a little more detail to flesh out these points.
The first poem in the collection is entitled “Infrasound After W.S. Graham”. It begins with generosity
This poem works well on one level without requiring knowledge of the W.S. Graham poem “The Beast In The Space”. In his poem there is one ‘great creature that thumps its tail/On silence on the other side’ who is a ‘terrible inhabiter/Of silence’ but ‘through Art you’ll hear it yelp.’ The title of Scott’s poem,” Infrasound” – meaning sound below human audibility – refers, I think, to the lone beast in W.S. Graham’s poem that can only be raised to audibility through Art. Scott invokes, by contrast, a rich environmental memory carried on the ‘swans’ wings’ that haul ‘legends to the edge/of this blinkered city’. Included in this memory are the high-pitched sounds of ‘a curlew’s cry’ and later ‘the high pipistrelle’ which makes use of high-frequency echolocation. The poem then turns to observing environmental damage:
The sphagnum moss, though, is interestingly given consciousness and memories of ‘healing wounds’ showing possible hope. Sphagnum moss, when not dried out, absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The possibility of a more hopeful future is also expressed in the last two lines
The poem “I am that woman” is initially set in ‘the city’s Art Gallery’ where the poem’s narrator finds Nude Woman Bathing by Degas. In the second stanza, though, it is thoughts about water that take over and the water in the painting is transformed into the Scottish water more familiar to the speaker
Environmental memory is invoked here, as in the first poem, in the lines ‘while scoured/slopes remember glaciers’ savagery’. Recent environmental changes noted in this poem concern the char that used to live in the Arctic but now live in Scotland possibly due to changed feeding habits with more sea creatures moving north due to warming waters.
The theme of climate change also appears in “The blindness of prayer” in a wonderfully original context. This poem imagines how Saint Columba returns to Iona and ‘sings hallelujah to the rescuing gift/of this isle’ but
There are many other current environmental problems that the saint is unaware of such as ‘coral reefs dissolving’ and ‘plastics swirling’. These plastics appear again as microplastics in the poem “How to kill a whale” which begins with the familiar image ‘greedy harpoons’ before going on to say that microplastics in our seemingly innocent clothes and detergents are just as effective as the whaler’s weapons.. The poem ends with a list of the whales species that are in danger of being lost through ingesting harmful substances.
This loss will not only reduce our diversity of species but ultimately result in an impoverished linguistic soundscape. The loss of the older Scots language might well have the same effect, reducing the variety of ways Scottish people can convery their experience their world. Interestingly, the Scottish parliament has recently voted to make Scots an official language.
The poem “Eediting the Oxford Dictionar” is written in Scots. This prose poem begins ‘Alike Robert Macfarlane, I walk the auld Ways’ adopting and translating the title of Robert Macfarlane’s book about ancient rights of way, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. In Scott’s poem we are told ‘The land is leed, speaks o loss in its ain tongue’. The drying out of peat mentioned in other poems is here expressed in Scots, ‘I note the saft spoonge o peat dryin unnerfoot’.
I hope that I have shown a few reasons why I recommend this imaginative pamphlet both to those concerned about environmental issues and to those who simply enjoy good poetry. I look forward to reading what must surely be a forthcoming full-length book in the not-too-distant