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THERE must be something about the small village of Carradale that inspires residents and visitors to spring into verse: Carradale sometimes Rhymes is the title of a newly-compiled booklet (on the market for £2) containing 21 poems written by 14 local writers or visitors.
With poets’ ages ranging from 11 years to over 70, and subjects including fishing and fishes, horses and porpoises, haggis and heather, picnics and pink worlds, and telling of glens, burns, bays, reefs and, always, the sea, which dominates all.
Among it all, old men talk of the old days in a poem written by a schoolboy, Jim MacKinven, who, at 18 was killed in an air raid in Clydebank Blitz.
While reading the Carradale newspaper, the Antler, over the last eight years, Chris Mears, who compiled the booklet, was surprised so much verse was written about Carradale. Perhaps Naomi Mitchison’s life in the village for 62 years, including the war years, left something in the air. As well as Naomi, several other published writers figure in the anthology, and subjects may call up many memories for former residents.
Chris has recently published Goodbye Rhodesia (about 25 years of living in what is now Zimbabwe), and having lost some of the fears of self-publishing, she saw an opening for the collected sometimes-rhymes about Kintyre’s enchanting stretch of east coast.
The opening of the Kintyre Way this year has brought more visitors, and she hopes that these hikers, while resting their sore feet and tired limbs, will be entertained by the 16 pages of rhymes, and take them home as a souvenir.
Carradale sometimes Rhymes is printed in Campbeltown and is available from Campbeltown bookshops and the tourist information office, and at all Carradale shops and hotels.
