On Sunday 27 September Writing Orkney launched our first publication, Weathering: postcards from the storm islands. We were delighted to be able to hold the launch in Stromness Books & Prints, by kind permission of bookshop owner, Sheena Winter, who hosted the event and provided refreshments.
The pamphlet marked the culmination of a six month’s Community Climate Fellowship awarded to Pam Beasant by Arizona State University, coordinated by Joey Eschrich, managing editor at the university’s Center for Science and the Imagination.
The poems in the pamphlet were written during three poetry sessions led in Kirkwall and Stromness by Pam between January and June 2026. The core aim of the sessions was to reflect on the present and consider the future for Orkney in the face of so many uncertainties. The pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Orkney Voices member Kathryn Sclater who died not long after taking part in the renga with Orkney Voices that forms part of this pamphlet.
For those who don’t know what a Renga is – it is a Japanese group poem, based on the haiku, where each verse follows from the previous one, linking it and shifting the imagery, and the Renga Master chooses which of the verses offered by group members should come next. There are two renga in Weathering, one from Orkney Voices and one open one held in Stromness.
This was followed by another session and a different kind of group poem. Participants were also invited to write some cinquains, a verse form which follows the syllable pattern, two, four, six, eight, two. Here’s one by Yvonne Gray, referencing Scotland in the recent Football World Cup:
Bagpipes
blare in Boston.
George Washington wears
a traffic cone hat. Saltires criss
and cross.
