Astrid has the shutters down and sun-lamps turned off. Under her blanket, too thin, she’s trying to hold the shakeragethrobbing parts of herself together.

This morning she buypayed her ticket back from home to home, to leaveflyescape as soon as the next morning, and she hasn’t told another soul. She doesn’t have

to go. Her people are here. Darling is here. There must be a way to waitstaylive. She doesn’t have to go, but that was the last of her credit from Mars in the ticket.

She’s stuck leaveflyescaping or stuck here: yes, she’s fairly stuck herself in the same bed she’s wept in since she was six years old. It doesn’t know

the answer either. Maybe she’ll plan to jumpspringvault from ship to ship and quit this ideaexperimentinvention of home, loosefree herself into leaveflyescaping, find another

station, a few other planets, a galaxy. Thinking this pauselullsecretsilences her skin for a little while. She rememberknowreflectwills then that even a comet

is ripbreakwrenched by the weight of what it passes, and when it’s chuckthrowfired across the stars, the stars are turntwistspinwhirled by their own wheel, and that wheel turntwistspinwhirled in another wheel

until every escape is another orbit, and every orbit another pauselullsecretsilence, and every pauselullsecretsilence forever making the promise that with a turntwistspinwhirl you’ll reachtravelachieve free.

Notes and Thanks

The language here is a poetic register of the Orkney tongue. I tend towards North Isles pronunciation in my spelling, and borrow more from the broader stream of Scots than is common for Orkney. Alongside my own life and listening, my approach is built on Hugh Marwick’s study, The Orkney Norn, Gregor Lamb’s lexicon, The Orkney Wordbook, and grammar, Whit Like the Day?, as well as the Orkney Dictionary, written with Margaret Flaws. Important guides are the Orkney Sound Archive, the Orkney Reevlers group, and the canon of Orkney language literature, in particular C. M. Costie, Robert Rendall and Walter Traill Dennison. The page-foot prose translation method is learned from Robert Alan Jamieson and the combinatory translation method from Rody Gorman. All mistakes and inconsistencies are my own.

Versions of some poems have appeared in Orkney Stoor, Multiverse, Shoreline of Infinity, The Scores, Poetry Wales, The Bottle Imp and Makar/Unmakar.

Initial research was funded by a Creative Scotland Open Project Fund grant, the bulk of the writing was funded by an AHRC studentship via the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, and the editing was supported by a Scots Language Publishing Grant with Stewed Rhubarb Press. The Shetland Amenity Trust and the Sumburgh Head puffins hosted me in a residency at a vital stage.