Sharing our Horizon: A Journey Through the Scottish Highlands with Two Adopted Whippets

By Xenia Tran

Welcome to Sharing Our Horizon, a selection of poems and photographs from the popular blog Whippet Wisdom that capture daily moments in the Scottish Highlands with our two adopted whippets, Eivor and Pearl.

 

Like most dogs, Eivor and Pearl love spending time in nature. They have taken us to places we had never

• Language: English
• Publisher: Holistic Linguistics
• Release date: Sep 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781916470408

Xenia Tran

Xenia Tran was born in the Netherlands in 1962 and began writing and journaling at a young age. She enjoyed reading poetry in Dutch, French and English, and English soon became her language of choice for writing poetry and short stories. Her early studies were interrupted by a desire to travel and explore different cultures. It wasn't until she was happily married and settled in London that she decided to return to study as a mature student. She studied for degrees in French Studies and in Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck College, University of London, whilst working full-time as an administrator in a research centre and running her own holistic therapy practice. In 2002 Xenia and her husband relocated to Kendal. There she joined a women's writing group, and her passion for creative writing was reignited. She worked as a volunteer in a local animal shelter and later did voluntary work for a foster-based rescue organisation. After attending a summer school at Queen's University Belfast she enrolled at Newcastle University, where she completed a postgraduate course in Creative Writing before relocating to the Scottish Highlands in 2010. The beauty of the Highland landscape and the quality of its light inspired her to invest in a good camera and take photographs to accompany her writing for her blog Whippet Wisdom. The blog was a place to record the walks she and her husband took with their adopted dogs in images and words, and a stimulus for developing her writing and photography. It quickly gained a loyal following. She met and connected with poets, fiction writers and photographers around the world, and in 2018 she started a second blog, Tranature, to share her personal observations on nature. Her poems have appeared on television, in online poetry journals, print magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, Sharing Our Horizon, was published in September 2018.

Book preview

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SHARING OUR HORIZON

This is a work of creative non-fiction. Some parts have been fictionalised in varying degrees, for various purposes.

Poems and images © 2018 by Xenia Tran.

All rights reserved.

First Edition.

Print Book ISBN: 978-1-9164704-2-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-9164704-0-8

Kindle Edition ISBN: 978-1-9164704-1-5

Front Cover Design by John Hubbard/emks.fi

Ebook Design by Darlene Swanson/van-garde.com

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical or other – without the written permission of the author except for quotations in a book review. For permission, email: [e-mail]

Published by Holistic Linguistics, Nairn, U.K.

Sharing Our Horizon

A Journey Through the Scottish Highlands with Two Adopted Whippets

Poems and Photographs by

XeniaTran

Contents

SHARING OUR HORIZON

INTRODUCTION

Before the Daffodils

That Moment

When Nature Gives Us Poems

A New Season

Spring Me Happy

A Glimpse of Spring

When Stillness Runs Deep

Hazy Moon

A Loving Gift

A New Breath

Highland Breeze

Evanescence (I)

Evanescence (II)

Poems in Your Eyes

Dream Waves

Call of the Wild

A New River

Spring Me Blue

Mountain Path

Dancing Leaves

A Painting from the Sky

Joie de Vivre

Heart of the Glen

Moon Blessing

The Silver Cloud

Peaceful Waters

Journey in Time (I)

Journey in Time (II)

Tidal Eclipse

Changing Seasons

Komorebi

September Green

Sapphire Blue

Magic Light

Silence

A Fairy Tale

Writing the Stones

Stairs of Nature

Shifting Sands (I)

Shifting Sands (II)

A Glimpse of New Tomorrows

Transformation

A Peak into Winter

Autumn’s Voice

First Snow

Acceptance

Where Frogs Are Sleeping

Low Sun in Bent Grass

Winter Solstice

Warm Path Through Winter

Song of Life

Bothy Tales