Happy Rotuma Day
Today I discovered, more or less by accident, is Rotuma Day, the national day of Rotuma which is one of the dependencies of Fiji.
A quick google brought up several websites devoted to the day. Interestingly, many of them were for celebrations in places other than Rotuma – Australia and New Zealand in particular.
Like all peoples, Rotumans have their poets. To me Fiji is an exotic place and I wasn’t disappointed in some of the exotic imagery its poets use. I love this one from The Dew Eaters by Mere Taito:
… he catches shingles of moisture from
The ringlets of dawn …
and I really got caught up in this one from At the Othman Affan Ibn Street Lights by Maniue Vilsoni:
I thought of Rotuma’s sandy roads
where kids could eye-dee the bi-ki
by the sound of his engine’s vroom-broom;
Nostalgia is a subject that appears in a number of poems. I found the straightforward descriptions of what has gone and how the poet feels about it very close to my own feelings, but with the added savour of the, to me, unusual. The long poem, ‘Ahau Nostalgia by Harieta and Sylvia Vilsoni, gives a vivid example. It’s well worth reading in full for the description of Rotuma through the eyes of memory.
That lone hifau tree on the cliff edge
shaded the chapel on many hot Sundays;
to fight boredom we’d look to the east
ahhh, panoramic Mt. Sarafui on Uea
awesome sight in the shimmering light.
Nostalgia is one of those emotions that can be both pleasant and unhappy – a secret store of joyful memories to lighten dark moments or a heap of regrets. I wish all Rotumans a happy national day with good memories to buoy them up.
The Gleg Makars
Browsing through the web recently I came across this page on the Edinburgh Museums site. It talks about the appointment of a makar for Edinburgh in 2002, a position held first by Stewart Conn then Valerie Gillies and now Ron Butlin.
I’d never heard of this position before so googled it and as usual the trusty Wikipedia had an article. The makar is an ‘official’ poet, though some people seem to acquire the position just by being famous and brilliant.
According to Wikipedia:
The article then goes on to say that the Scots called this ability glegness (apparently more often used as an adjective – gleg). I’d never met this word before: it’s means brisk, adroit, skilful or clever.
Poetry has to be both brisk and skilful, or it’s boring, and it’s great to have a word that combines these ideas together into one concept.
Being able to name something makes it possible to think of it clearly – to study it, test its truthfulness, look for its opposite and create similes, among other mental manipulations.
I would love to see this word used in job ads: ‘… applicants must be well educated, enthusiastic and gleg’. Would it put applicants off? or encourage them to use a dictionary to expand their knowledge?
Share this:
Like this: