Katharine Macfarlane’s lyrical poetry is rooted in the history and landscape of Scotland. Katharine has recently performed with Flint & Pitch and Sonnet Youth and hosted her first solo show, Home Words, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016. Her work has appeared in Untitled, The Grind and The Ogilvie and has been translated into German as a feature piece in the novel Die Rückkehr der Wale by Isabel Morland.
St. Andrews
I held on to relics;
An arm turned to bone by my heart,
Pearls at my throat
The virtue of St Margaret
And scallop shells, pressed to each palm:
Imprint stronger than divination
Replacing head, heart, life, fate.
Yet, when I see you on the road
I think that maybe
You have always been in my heart,
Even before it was beating.
The weight of the ancestors is at your back,
Their breath warm on my cheek.
I lay down arms
And smiles pour from my eyes.
Katharine can be reached via her Facebook page, Home Words. More of her poems are accessible here.