31/05/2026
Please come to the launch of Seal Song today (The Record Factory, Byres Road, 3.30pm). Meanwhile, here's a poem from the collection based on a famous Hill and Adamson photograph.
FOUR FISHES
It is often said that there are many fish
in every sea, and here you stand,
splendid in your shawls,
facing an eternity of choices.
And here you are also, four little fishes,
elected from millions of millions,
bones, worms, guts suborned to your symbolic end,
silver darlings, sun-glinted like precious jewels.
And this silent momentary seed
will feed the cadence of coming days and years,
your children and your childrens’ children
cascading into futures outwith your ken.
And this genius of salt-sea passion
will last and last and last for
it is the crux of the photographic craft
to conjure the future as if it were the past.
