Billia Croo

This long poem features in Ebban an Flowan, the world's first poetic primer on marine renewable energy, by myself and Laura Watts, with photographs by Alistair Peebles, two of which feature here. The book focusses on the Orkney Islands. Billia Croo is a bay on the west coast; it hosts the main EMEC test site of for wave energy devices. 

Billia Croo test site; Alistair Peebles, 2009

(I)

after Barry Cunliffe

culture is richest where there’s

the greatest ratio

     land : coast

(II)

this patch of the western

ocean’s coruscating garden

recalls my favourite song

(mishearing) the sea’s very hum-

drum … – but no, there’s not

one ocean, not when such an

infinite mix of blues can

outshine the maps cerulean

(III)

the sea is there for a solan

to push his wings against

or plunge in, reinventing

the medium – when the light

comes right through them

the waves lets slip wrack

and tangle, pitching round

until they go breaking on

the boulder beach, crashing

under Row Head, hassling

brittlestars and urchins, or splash

near the shelduck’s dozing

on their green sun shelf –

there’s no need to worry

that any wave is wasted

when there’s all this motion

(IV)

along the bay there’s

the promise of a new world

from each new device connect-

ed to the cable that runs

out under the wild rocks,

into the diamond space

inside those three buoys –

this is where the metal

gets salt-wet : and that’s

the only true test – the problem

is elastic : what kind of roots

will grip fast with moorings

subject to ebb, flood, flux,

in a surge of such force?

(V)

what’s solid was once liquid

as with rock and sand

which nature divided –

like us – these waves were

tugged and formed, in

slowness, slowness that

we’ve lost, for there’s no

way to relearn the tide’s

happy knack of infinitesimal

growth, except by sloshing

around, or waiting, stranded,

on the heave of the moon

Oyster wave energy device, EMEC test centre; Alistair Peebles, 2009

   

ebban an' flowan

a primer for marine renewable energy

Alec Finlay and Laura Watts, with Alistair Peebles
pb, 56 pages, morning star, 2015; edition of 500 copies

10.00 GBP
13.00 EUR


ebban an' flowan can be purchased from our online bookshop
or from Amazon

Listen to the interview featured on Radio Orkney here, starting at 16:05 minutes.