Brian Lavelle's Blog

west of the spillway
a tribunal of clouds overhead
there are no winners here

���

Harlaw reservoir, 9 September 2025

I. early January

the thaw had not reached Bavelaw yet
the castle uncaught
hidden still in silence
the deer at the trees��� edge
alert, watches me

I walk away

the Red Moss inaccessible
ice and sleep weigh down its paths
who dares disturb
the frost���s dominion?

I walk away

an empty field���s perimeter
so many makeshift shelters of branch and board
in one an overturned chair
and spent shotgun cartridges
lying in drifts like the snow

the day now feels much colder
the day now feels so much darker
and I walk away

II. mid-March

an invitation to linger
among the mounds and grasses
the sun breaks the clouds
breaks bread with me
as birds punctuate
the Red Moss

the silence here
is not no sound
no gate
a breaking branch
a branch broken
in a state of breaking

no gate

Scots pine stretching out
birches filamenting upwards
lichen mantling brittle trunks
the treeness of it all
this wildness
a place of forgetting

on the hill to the castle
by the path to the hide
right-angles of grace

look up���
the rain approaches
look up���
a hawk���s hazelling contrails
look up���
the rain is here

I'm very pleased to have another two small poems���one visual, one a little less so���in the new Winter issue of aswirl: the minimal quarterly. Thanks again to Robin Boothroyd for selecting some more of my work.

You can buy a copy at this link.

turn up and on
the light
in waves
from a buried sun

December���s sea returns again
across the bay
and slowing shadows
pulled from stones
poured from the circle
fall alone at dawn
in Maeshowe

I have a tiny little poem, Threnody (guitar), published on the dadakuku website today.

The link to it is here: https://dadakuku.com/2024/12/05/threnody-guitar

With warm thanks again to the editor, Robin Boothroyd, I'm pleased to say I have another very small (untitled) poem in the latest number of aswirl: the minimal quarterly. aswirl is an eight page poetry zine printed on premium recycled paper. Each copy folds out to reveal an A4 poster on the reverse.

(photograph by Robin Boothroyd)

This is, as the image above shows, the Autumn issue of the zine and it's for sale at this link.

As always there's really fantastic work within: small moments of wonder by Julia Biggs, Robin Boothroyd, Angus Carlyle, Sarah-Clare Conlon, Alec Finlay, Cliff Hight, Charlotte Jung, Stephen Nelson, John Newton, Alastair Noble and Romany Stott.

Here are some reflections on last night's performance by Maggie Nicols and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra at the Reid Concert Hall in Edinburgh.

This was a free concert (in more ways than one) thanks to the generosity of the Reid School of Music at the University of Edinburgh, and was a truly glorious affair. Earlier in the year, the school put on a fantastic performance by Re-Ghoster Extended on a stormy evening in January. Last night's showing by the GIO displayed the full gamut of weather conditions under one roof, even if the Edinburgh skies outside were only ominous with smirr.

I am very fond of Maggie's work and that of the GIO so I couldn't miss this performance, despite the rain. What we got was captivating, playful, surprising, brimful of real warmth, participatory, appropriately spiky, but more than anything just absolutely joyful and inclusive: improvised music working for the good of the human soul and condition.

The core of the GIO was joined by teaching and student members of the Reid School of Music. A number of different pieces were on offer: some being properly the result of free improvisation and some more ordered, but still improvisatory, pieces, with homage at one point to John Stevens' approach to composition and improvisation. The whole things ebbed and flowed like an unstoppable tide, calm in places and at others alive with white horses racing for the shore. Raymond MacDonald and Una MacGlone gave lovely, insightful introductions to the various sections. What was clear throughout was the love and respect which the GIO has for Maggie, as a friend and a mentor, and for their shared work together over the last couple of decades

It was beguiling, from my perspective as an audience member, to see the performers at times lost in the moment of the music, a demonstration of that power which improvised music has to surprise and bewitch when the stars and "notes" align. None of it is pre-ordained and none of it can be orchestrated to produce that effect on demand. To see a musician pause, remain silent, and take the time to reflect and listen is so beautiful, and that seems to me to be a necessary fundament of free improvisation. The collaborative/communitarian approach���call it what you will���is one of the delights of the music, both in the hearing but especially in the making. On evidence so much of the time was that important sense of space which the best improvised performances have: some participants dropping out of focus, stopping playing altogether, and reinforcing the notion that sometimes the most important notes are those which you don't play.

Anyway, what an absolute joy to have the chance to witness this kind of music being created, and in such a sympathetic space. Onwards to the next GIO festival, which should be in November this year!

And congratulations, too, to Maggie on her honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, for her career���her life, really���in music, a live full and well-lived.

I wrote this short poem for the soon-to-be Dr. Nicols on returning home last night, alive with the wonderment of how moving the show had been:

for Maggie Nicols

o! to hear Maggie
talk tonight

sing sign
talksing
signs of life
intoxicating
sing of light

sineswave
bellsring
shinythings

tocsins everywhere!

moving through
the orchard
low birds flew
to another branch
old names in enamel
rusting slowly

are we walking together?
are we waking?

continuum of emptiness
a corridor
between apple
and plum tree
light amid leaves
in the midst of the mids
without high or low
and with no hard graft
for any future

I'm very pleased to say I have a short poem in the new, second issue of Password: the journal of very short poetry published today. My thanks to editor Mellisa Allen for including my work in this issue.

You can read the whole of Password issue 1.2 online at this link. There is a great deal of wonderful work there. My little 4-line poem appears on page 51 of the PDF.

I'm very pleased to say I have another short poem in the latest issue, of aswirl, the 'quarterly poetry zine celebrating brevity' edited and handmade by Robin Boothroyd. The poem appears in issue five: spring 2024. Thanks to Robin for including my work again in this lovely little publication. You���ll also find work by Alex Older, Olivia Guarnieri, Stephen Nelson, Julie Johnstone, M@, Tess Little, Laurel Moore, hen st leger and more.

aswirl can be purchased in paper and digital formats here.