Every Friday, Huffington Post Culture picks a poem for your weekend. Today: Fiere by Jackie Kay.
One of the UK’s most prolific poets and authors, Edinburgh-born Jackie Kay released Fiere in 2011 - her 16th publication in twenty years. Described upon its release as ‘very much her best collection’, Fiere is the lyrical accompaniment to Kay’s memoir Red Durst Road and was nominated for the Costa Best Poetry Award. It missed out to poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who once named the Kay's poem as one her favourites.
Born in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Kay was adopted by a white Scottish couple and brought up in Glasgow. She released her first collection The Adoption Papers in 1991 and in 1998, her novel Trumpet won the Guardian prize for fiction. In 2008 her epic poem about slavery, The Lamplighter, was successfully adapted for radio and stage.
Fiere
If ye went tae the tapmost hill, Fiere,
Whaur we used tae clamb as girls,
Ye'd see the snow the day, Fiere,
Settling on the hills.
You'd mind o' anither day, mibbe,
We ran doon the hill in the snow,
Sliding and singing oor way tae the foot,
Lassies laughing thegither - how braw.
The years slipping awa; oot in the weather.
And noo we're suddenly auld, Fiere,
Oor friendship's ne'er been weary.
We've aye seen the wurld differently.
Whaur would I hae been weyoot my jo,
My fiere, my fiercy, my dearie O?
Oor hair micht be silver noo,
Oor walk a wee bit doddery,
But we've had a whirl and a blast, girl,
Thru' the cauld blast winter, thru spring, summer.
O'er a lifetime, my fiere, my bonnie lassie,
I'd defend you - you, me; blithe and blatter,
Here we gang doon the hill, nae matter,
past the bracken, bothy, bonny braes, barley.
Oot by the roaring Sea, still havin a blether.
We who loved sincerely; we who loved sae fiercely.
The snow ne'er looked sae barrie,
Nor the winter trees sae pretty.
C'mon, c'mon my dearie - tak my hand, my fiere!
In Scots dialect ‘fiere’ means ‘companion’ or ‘mate’, and friendship is the core theme of this breezy, optimistic poem that also deals with nostalgia and age with the lightest and deftest of touches.
Speaking to an unnamed lifelong friend, the poet starts by recalling standing at the top of a snowy hill where they ‘ran doon… sliding an singing oor way tae the foot’ as children. The poem is also about aging, and their downward run through the settling snow serves as a metaphor for how fleeting our childhoods seem in retrospect.
The second verse fast-forwards to the present where the poet and her friend are ‘suddenly auld’, but like the first section, the tone doesn’t dwell or get melancholic. The description of them both as ‘a wee bit doddery’ is teasing and affectionate, while the last two lines, “But we've had a whirl and a blast, girl, / Thru' the cauld blast winter, thru spring, summer”, picks up the pace of the poem again.
In old age, the poet seems to be saying, friendship is the thing that keeps us young. In the final verse, the focus shifts to the nature and importance of their companionship: ‘I’d defend you’ she says, “we who loved sincerely; we who love sae fiercely”. The similarity between the word ‘fiercely’ and the slang word of the title invites us to see friendship as a passionate, energetic, sometimes even tempestuous commitment that doesn’t dim over time.
The cheerful message in Fiere is not especially ground-breaking, but the melodic rhythms, the whirlwind rhymes and the relish Kay takes in mingling old Scots dialect with new seems to encapsulate many of the qualities of a good friendship - predominant among those being having fun, which, for a while at least, can make growing older seem irrelevant.