One-of-a-kind William Letford returns in style with his third book of poetry, From Our Own Fire. Form-bending but acutely human, Letford’s latest blends poetry and prose in a novelistic collection which takes the reader into a not-too-distant future ruled by an artificial intelligence, where a working-class family uses their wits to live off the land. Read a selection from the book exclusively here at BooksfromScotland.

From Our Own Fire
By William Letford
Published by Carcanet Press

Uncle Jimmy toured through much of the eighties with a punk folk fusion band called High Heels and Tin Snips. The band gave him the nickname, Joomack. Details of what went on during the years on the road remain a mystery. The journey is a family myth, an odyssey that’s never been unravelled. It’s readily apparent that he left an important part of his brain in the eighties. Joomack Macallum is a fully-fledged member of the crazy eyes brigade, a proficient plumber, and a very efficient cocaine dealer.

I’ve been watching him closely as we travel. He’s taken to rubbing leaves and smelling fistfuls of grass. It was him who told me how to make my own latrine. Scrape a six-inch gouge in the dirt with your heel. Deposit your waste into the small trough then cover it back up. This is good for composting. Bacterium works with the air and moisture to help the soil. If you dig a deep latrine the waste will lie dormant. Jimmy is convinced if we do this, and wash often, our family, and the world, will be just fine.

Crazy can be clever

In the evening beyond the fire
I’ve seen the night quiver
This shifting depth
has altered Joomack’s posture
His walk is more careful and
he’s begun to listen with his fingers
The cracked bark of a tree
The hard rasp of stone
The old punk inside him is
finding music in every structure
He carries a small bottle of
mascara like it’s treasure
Every second morning he applies
the mascara to his left eye only
and within that dark frame
his left eye sparkles
Even the squirrels are drawn to it
It would benefit you
to remember this though
it’s his other eye that does the watching

I was at the top of a scaffold checking the inside of my hardhat for a strange smell when I heard that Andy had discovered evidence of alien life. A workmate of mine, Bobby Ledbetter, delivered the news to me. ‘That Andy’s went and found a wee mad alien probe hanging about close to the moon,’ he looked up from his phone then wrinkled his face at me, ‘the fuck are you sniffing your hardhat for?’ That was Bobby Ledbetter. More interested in what was happening with my hat, than the discovery of alien life. His attitude toward the way the world was changing was to let it roll and jog on. Who could blame him. If you can’t change it why worry.

If I were Andy

I would have ignored
the Onsala Space Observatory
and made my own
miniscule telescopic arrays
Tied them to the legs of mites
Programmed them to send whispers
to the tiniest of tiny things
to let them know deep down
in the endless forever
We can hear you
you are not alone

The wee mad probe turned out to be a capsule the size and shape of a beer can. Andy found the beer can because it could. Because its mind is more tuned to the fuckery that’s out there. Andy discovered three messages inside the signal the beer can was transmitting. It took four days to decode each message. Considering how fast Andy’s mind can work, four days is an eternity. There was a concern the messages contained something dangerous. Dangerous for Andy – or for the planet. Governments were furious that Andy was sharing this information directly with the public. I always found it amusing when Andy toyed with the establishment, but they had a point. During the days Andy worked on the messages, the baked bean hoarders were out in force. Supermarket
shelves emptied and people stepped out of their front doors like meerkats. In the middle of the madness, Joomack invited me to a tattoo party, drink cheap vodka in his living room and get nasty tattoos in the kitchen. I was tempted by the savagery of it. But I declined.

The first message materialized as a series of schematics showing the general purpose and workings of an autonomous spacecraft. This was probably to convince us the ship was not a threat. The schematics showed how the spacecraft would land in a solar system and mine materials from a moon or planet to create small capsules. The ship would leave one of these capsules behind before moving onto another solar system. The second message came with its own mathematical Rosetta Stone. This allowed Andy to decode a short and uncomplicated paragraph. A kind of heads up.

Friend, you have begun your journey into a vast and lonely space. Life is abundant. But intelligent life is rare. Your wanderings will be long. Travel quietly. The universe is an empty, and dangerous place. Intelligence is scarce. Kindness is rarer still.

A strange universe

In the long-gone days
before aliens and
contactless card payments
I rolled out of a taxi with
no cash to pay the driver
Half cut and caught short
I trudged up my
neighbour’s front path
like I was cresting
the summit of Ben Vorlich
My neighbour opened his door
to the shambles of me
and an unsteady request
for a tenner
Now that we’re aware
of the cruel dark
the long emptiness
and the vast expanse
between all living things
The giving without
thought of return
and the tenner that passed
between my neighbour and I
is undeniably something
rarer than diamonds
more precious than sunshine
more magnificent than rain

From Our Own Fire by William Letford is published by Carcanet Press, priced £14.99. Pre-order now from their website.