Flame

One day I
Lit a fire
At which I
Boiled eggs
Made tea
Dried my shoes
And I sat
On a stool
Watching
The stickes catch and flame
Quite a while
It seems,
Until the whole pile I'd gathered had all burnt away.

Flame
Is a thing I
Always wonder about.
It seems to be made of colour only.
I don't know what else it's made of.

Click here to listen to Margaret Tait's reading of Flame.

Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was a pioneering filmmaker for whom words and images made the world real. In 'documentary', she wrote, real things 'lose their reality ... and there's no poetry in that. In poetry, something else happens.' If film, for Tait, was a poetic medium, her poems are works of craft and observation that are generous and independent in their vision of the world, poems that make seeing happen.

Sarah Neely, Lecturer in Film at the University of Stirling, draws on Tait's three poetry collections, her book of short stories, her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to make available for the first time a collection of the full range of Tait's writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture, and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.

Acknowledgements
Foreword by Ali Smith
Introduction
A Note on the Text

Poems

from origins and elements (1959)

Elasticity
Reading about Rimbaud
‘It’s a mistake to write a poem that seems more certain’
Emily
Water
Carbon
Reputation
Storms
A Fire
Flood-water
Sleep
‘Protected in my little house’
To Anybody at All
Singularity
Four or Ninety or ∞ or what
Now
Lezione di Recitazione
‘ “Don’t meet,” they say to me’
The Unbreakable-Up
Litmus
Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea
Hooray, Hooray, Hoo Ray Ray Ray
Sprung Sonnet
Ay, Ay, Ay, Dolores

from Subjects and Sequences (1960)

Pomona
Bowery
Standing Stones of Stenness
Then, Oh Then, Oh Then
Edward Nairn, Poet
Kulgin the Helicopter
Alex
Allison
But why not try this method
A Poem for a Morning
Pavement Artist
from Short Poems on Blue Paper
Historical Sense
The Old Lady of Loth
Punishment
One World, One Sun
Epiphany
Northerner
Midwinter
You Heard What the Minister Said, Pet
‘The eyebright was for you’
Bushels
Mary, Queen of Scots
Secrets

from The Hen and the Bees (1960)

Hen
Dogs
Family
The Scale of Things
Locklessness
For Using
Light
Responsiveness
Trust
Spring 1958
Remains that Have Been Tampered With
Queen of Fact and Story
Story-telling Queen
Sea-going King’s Queen
The Queen and All the Children
A Queen in Prison
Belief
Other Gods, Other Ways
Loki Beside the Standing Stone
Thor
Freya
Baldar
By the Book
Sound of Children Sobbing
Face-kicking

Uncollected and Unpublished Poems

One is One
Studentessa (The Little Tourist in Rome)
The Window Boxes
Seeing’s Believing and Believing’s Seeing
Horses
Word Song
That’s Them off on Their Spring Forays
Drawing in Pen and Ink
The Sky of Your City
Why Did They Go?
The Raven Banner
Concha Orcadensis
This Now
Free for All
Flame
from a twenty-seven-page ‘Examination into the meaning of fire’
Il Mago
Materfamilias
Me
In Olden Days
Winter Solstice
What is it that’s wonderful about the photograph?
The Boats at Droman
Redefinition of a Lame Duck
Orquil Burn
Soon
Grove

SHORT STORIES

The Incomers
The Song Gatherer
Sixteen Frames per Second

WRITINGS ON FILM

Time
On Rossellini
Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress
Independence: Small Budget Production in Rome
On Throwing a Film Festival
Close-up of Rose Street
Two-way Drift
Colour Poems 1974
Film-poem or Poem-film: A few notes about film and poetry
from Margaret Tait
Video Poems for the 90s (working title)

RESOURCES

Works by Margaret Tait
Selected Bibliography
Selected Filmography
Archives
Index of Poem Titles
Index of Poem First Lines

Illustrations

The title page reproduces the heartbeat emblem which Margaret Tait used in her three poetry collections.
Margaret Tait at Slow Bend, Helmsdale, 1960s. Copyright © Alex Pirie
Gerda Stevenson as Greta in Blue Black Permanent (1992), Courtesy of BFI
Still from On the Mountain (1974), ‘Jungle Skins Rule’. Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie
Still from Orquil Burn (1955). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie
Stella Cartwright in Palindrome (1964). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie
Robert Garioch, Edwin Morgan and Margaret Tait, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh Arts, 1972. Courtesy of The Richard Demarco Digital Archives
Portrait of Margaret Tait by Gunnie Moberg. Courtesy the Orkney Archive / copyright © Tam MacPhail
Still from Tailpiece (1976). Copyright © Alex Pirie
Cover of origins and elements (1959). Design by Peter Hollander
Cover of Subjects and Sequences (1960)
Cover of The Hen and the Bees (1960). Design by Robin Philipson
Still from Where I Am Is Here (1964), ‘The Bravest Boat’. Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie
Cover of Lane Furniture (1959)
Peter Hollander and Margaret Tait, Perugia, 1952. Copyright © Alex Pirie
Still from My Room (1951). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie