Clashnettie Arts Centre
A Residential Arts Centre for Visual Artists, Writers and Musicians
in Rural Aberdeenshire.
Clashnettie is a restored house and steading set on a hillside in Deskryside, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. Remote in its location it is quiet by day, dark by night and filled with wildlife all year long.
It is home to artist Helen Denerley who lives and works there in one of the buildings. She welcomes artists of all disciplines to come and share the creative spirit of this unique and inspiring place.
The Arts Centre is a three bedroomed house with a large studio sitting room downstairs filled with light and suitable for many art forms. Looking across to Morven and down to the Deskry water, the views from every window are stunning There is also a purpose built painting studio on the premises.
Throughout the years Clashnettie has played host to many artists, poets and musicians.
WOODSMOKE
for Helen Denerley
I
I have just arrived and hesitate between
Water-sounds and your metallic menagerie.
I am lost among the pheasants’ heather stands.
A kestrel stoops as though you put him there
With the buzzards high on their thermals criss-
Crossing. Translations, Helen, metaphors.
The mare and stag you made from scrap metal
Are moving in slow motion across your land.
You filled the mare with air and the millennium.
The stag that flashes antlers and pizzle
Was conceived once you spotted in your heap
A tongue for him, a cobbler’s last: his tail
Is another cobbler’s last. Clashnettie means
(You think) the hollow of the juniper tree.
II
Among the pourers of the molten iron
Were the threatened and bereaved, disguised
In helmets and leather aprons, balancing
Buckets of terror as the furnace roared.
The Deskry’s meander does not require
An iron bridge: you and your friends put up
A black rainbow, a darkbow to reflect
The moonbow that shone the January night
A neighbour’s two boys were burnt alive,
A whitebow of snow and frost and moonlight
Supporting your cast-iron fourteen-foot span
Across the shallow water, snow water,
From soggy pasture to where rainbow ends,
Just there, among ragged robin and harebells.
III
You wanted the kiln to look like a cairn,
A hikers’ and lovers’ accumulation,
But inside is a clay-lined, bottle-shaped
Emptiness, a hole for the rainwater
And our pebbles. Can you hear them falling?
Whereabouts in your workshop at Clashnettie
Are the leather aprons ad gaitors, the boots
With steel toecaps that glint in the moonlight?
Fire splashing over into Deskry Water
Made pocketfuls of accidental scupture
For children from the glen. Smoke and steam.
You have left a scrap-iron golden eagle
On a boulder up the slopes of Morven
Where he rests in gales near a picnic hut.
IV
You pictured a heron feeding her mate
Or sipping at her own reflection, two
Heads, the bridges’ arc, a rainbow’s template.
It took ten tappings from the sparky kiln.
I picture a heron beneath the bridge
Or, where the boys lie buried, a motionless
Graveside sentinel waiting for ever
To regurgitate field-mouse and water-vole.
What bits and pieces would make a heron?
You put to use for the golden eagle’s wings
Tines from a harrow so rusted away
A horse drew it once, or the first tractor.
I am looking for a heron’s feather,
A crown-feather preferably, a black one.
V
You take me to someone else’s barbecue,
Strangers gazing at a bonfire, catherine
Wheels and roman candles among the pines
And, as though I am remembering it,
The scent of woodruff under woodsmoke.
Are there people here who are not your friends?
A mother who doesn’t understand, a sister?
I am with you. From among the shadowy
Mystifying voices I pick out yours.
We have to imagine one another
Quickly, and then go home, I to the town,
Clothes reeking of smoke and uneasiness,
You to your acre, the dark plantation,
The stream, the dipper bobbing on his stone.
