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    No Ruined Stone
    No Ruined Stone
    No Ruined Stone
    Ebook98 pages50 minutes

    No Ruined Stone

    By Shara McCallum

    ()

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    About this ebook

    No Ruined Stone is a verse sequence rooted in the life of 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns. In 1786, Burns arranged to migrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation, a plan he ultimately abandoned. Voiced by a fictive Burns and his fictional granddaughter, a "mulatta" passing for white, the book asks: what would have happened had he gone?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlice James Books
    Release dateAug 10, 2021
    ISBN9781948579438
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      Book preview

      No Ruined Stone - Shara McCallum

      NO RUINED STONE

      SHARA McCALLUM

      NO

      RUINED

      STONE

      © 2021 by Shara McCallum

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc.,

      an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington.

      Alice James Books

      114 Prescott Street

      Farmington, ME 04938

      www.alicejamesbooks.org

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: McCallum, Shara, 1972- author.

      Title: No ruined stone / Shara McCallum.

      Description: Farmington, ME : Alice James Books, [2021]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020045538 (print) | LCCN 2020045539 (ebook) | ISBN 9781948579193 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781948579438 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Burns, Robert, 1759-1796--Poetry. | Slavery--Jamaica--Poetry. | LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3563.C33446 N63 2021 (print) | LCC PS3563.C33446 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045538

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045539

      Alice James Books gratefully acknowledges support from individual donors, private foundations, the University of Maine at Farmington, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

      Cover art: © Calum Colvin

      CONTENTS

      No Ruined Stone

      Primer

      Dramatis Personae

      THE BARD

      Ae Fond Kiss

      Voyage

      Another Life

      Landscape

      Dear Gilbert,

      River Ayr

      The Hour Of Dream

      Dear Gilbert,

      For Promised Joy

      Bard

      Douglas’s Reply

      Dear Gilbert,

      Tam O’ Shanter

      Augur

      Crumbo-Jingle

      Fate

      Rising

      Springbank

      Genealogy

      Tutu Gbovi

      ISABELLA

      Memory

      The Bard, Edinburgh,

      Story, The First

      Springbank

      Woman in an Edinburgh Drawing Room

      Husband,

      Passing

      Chance

      Husband,

      Ae Fond Kiss

      Husband, The Truth Is

      Inheritance

      In the field

      To a Mouse

      At the Hour of Duppy and Dream, Miss Nancy Speaks

      Holyrood, 1826

      The Choice

      Voyage

      The Prophet and God’s Complaint

      No Ruined Stone

      Author’s Note

      Timeline

      Acknowledgments

      Bibliography

      For my foremothers and for my daughters

      There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined stones.

      —HUGH MACDIARMID

      NO RUINED STONE

      May 2018: to Robert Burns, after Calum Colvin’s Portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid

      You saturate the sight

      of those who come after, poets

      and painters alike. Your words invade

      my mind’s listening, manacle

      my tongue when I try to speak

      on all I backward cast my eye

      and fear and canna see.

      Who would I have been

      to you, what stone

      in the ruined house of the past?

      In this world, I am unloosed, belonging

      to no country, no tribe, no clan.

      Not African. Not Scotland.

      And you, voice that stalks

      my waking and dreaming,

      you more myth than man,

      cannot unmake history.

      So why am I here

      resurrecting you to speak

      when your silence gulfs centuries?

      Why do I find myself

      on your doorstep, knocking,

      when I know the dead

      will never answer?

      PRIMER

      Ayr Mount, Ayrshire, Atlantic, Akan,

      Backra, Bannockburn, Burns, Bairns,

      Caledonia, Cuffee, Coromantee, Culloden,

      Douglas, Duppy, Debtor, Dream,

      Empire, Exile, Economics, Emancipation,

      Freemason, Fortune, Feared, Freed,

      Greenock, Gambit, Glasgow, Greed,

      Hadrian, Hero, Highlands, Home,

      Island, Inalienable, Insurrection, Independence,

      Jamaica, Justice, Jacobite, Joseph

      Knight, Kilmarnock, Kingston, Kin,

      Lowlands, Leeward, Liberty, Lies,

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