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Good morning.Ìý The writer, Andrew Greig, was a friend of the Scottish poet Norman MacCaig.Ìý Some months before MacCaig died, he gave Andrew a commission:Ìý to go fishing in a particular small loch in the north west of Scotland, where Norman had caught trout many times.ÌýÌý

At the loch of the Green Corrie is a captivating book.Ìý In it, Andrew Greig tells the story of his pilgrimage to this small loch high in the hills of Assynt, an area where MacCaig had spent all his summers since boyhood. The book is part journey, part poetry, part biography – and wholly absorbing in the way it weaves time and place, and words and memory.Ìý

Near the end of the book, Andrew has found the loch, fished there, met people and places from MacCaig’s past. ÌýAs he prepares to go home, he quotes these words from the poet, Rilke:

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Work of sight is achieved,

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý now for some heart-work

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý on all those images, prisoned within youÌý

Heart-work. Ìý‘My head and heart bulged with Assynt like an over-stuffed suitcase’, says Greig.Ìý Now it was time to write: Ìýto reflect on what he’s seen and felt and thought, to give shape to his experience.Ìý Words, poetry can do that: can capture the world, and make a mark in the sand.Ìý But only briefly, and never wholly.Ìý This life is too baffling to be understood for long, too fleeting to pin down, too solid to get past.Ìý

The poets of the Bible knew this: Ìý‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?’ÌýÌýÌý Amen.