It's not often that I'm moved to tears by life, let alone literature. And I can literally count on one hand the number of writers who have made me cry. Literally because it only comes to four. And before last week it was only three.
Of the four writers who have managed to reduce me to tears no fewer than three are Scots. The exception is the Canadian Lucy M Montgomery (and looking at her antecedents I reckon she had more Scots blood in her veins than any other sort). I defy anyone with a spark of feeling to read the death of Matthew Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables and not at least want to cry even if they manage by a huge effort of will not to do so.
Dorothy Dunnett and Nicholas Stuart Gray both managed it twice, but particular kudos to NSG who made me cry when I was 20 and a very tough nut.
But last week was a first because the writer who made me cry, as well as being a Scot, was a poet. To be exact his name was Henry Marsh and he was speaking and reading at the World Congress which I attended last week.
He writes poetry about history and about the effect huge historical events have on the people who are caught up in them. Last week he was reading from his book A Voyage to Babylon , which includes a sequence on the fate of some of the Scottish Covenanters sent to the New World. I'm aware that sounds as though it could be very dry, but in fact it wasn't. There were two beautiful poems about the death of a new born baby and of its mother several days later of puerperal fever. I'll never look at a speedwell in the same way again.
Poetry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you dip your toes in it now and again can I recommend you give Marsh a go? Out loud, and with due weight given to the silences between the words.
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