The Cullen Skink
If the temperature's right
you might see him out
in a very fine suit
of the best bravado,
but skinking with caution
for his eyesight's poor
and he's all out of proportion.
Unshelled, in the buff,
his raw-pink skin
is prone to shrinkage
which is why he lets no-one in
and lives far north, alone
in a nest of coddled momentoes
kept on simmer. Some say
it's the Cullen Skink's nature
to shiver and to be perpetually
on the brink of some great thought
he never delivers.
He likes to drink.
He likes to look at the moon.
At night you can hear the clink
as he walks the jetty
trailing a kind of umbilical cord,
the dried-up remnants
of wings, fur, paws.
© Diana Hendry
*Cullen Skink - a Scottish recipe for smoked haddock.
I
wrote The Cullen Skink while I was living in Scotland. A
friend lent me an old Scottish cook book and one of the recipes was
for something called Cullen Skink. I really liked the sound of those
two words and I immediately thought that a 'Skink' was some kind of
strange creature, perhaps a cross between a skunk and something
slinky, like a snake. The word 'Cullen' is rather like 'sullen', so I
thought it might be a rather gloomy creature. Either that or 'Cullen'
could be a place. The Isle of Cullen perhaps.
From my friend's cook book I soon learnt that 'Cullen Skink' is actually a thick fish soup made from smoked haddock but by then my imagination was already at work on a strange creature poem.
One of the things I like about writing a poem is that each time it's like going off on a new adventure and I'm not sure where the poem will take me. If you're writing about a fantasy creature you can really let your imagination go. Where does your creature live? How many heads does he have? What does he (or she) eat? Does your creature have strange habits? Maybe he stands on his head in the dark.
There are a number of poems about strange creatures that I particularly like. One of them is Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. The Jabberwocky is a creature that:
'Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!'
What do you think a 'tulgey wood' is like and have you ever whiffled through one?
I'm also very fond of Elizabeth Bishop's poem The Man-Moth. The Man-Moth climbs the sides of buildings and thinks the moon 'is a small hole at the top of the sky'. He travels backward on trains and keeps his hands in his pockets.
Elizabeth Bishop - an American poet - got the idea for her poem from a newspaper misprint. The word should have been mammoth.
The Scots poet, Edwin Morgan, has written about the Loch Ness Monster and given him a splendid nonsense song. Another American, Delmore Schwartz, has written a poem called The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me. The bear is 'in love with candy, anger and sleep' and goes everywhere with his owner.
I think Delmore Schwartz uses the bear to describe a part of his own character and in a way that's what I've done with The Cullen Skink. The Skink feels like a very private me that no-one sees. I should tell you that I look perfectly normal. Honest! Though I do have poor eyesight like the Skink and when I'm out, meeting people, I too dress in 'bravado', though I don't have 'a very fine suit'. Also I hold on to memories and momentoes as the Skink does, and I keep them 'on simmer' (or warm) by thinking about them a lot.
If you want to try your own 'strange creature' poem there are a number of different ways of going about it. You can make your strange creature the secret you that nobody else knows. You can create a fantasy figure like the Jabberwock. Or you can choose an emotion - anger, for instance, or jealousy. A poet called Edmund Spenser did this many years ago and described feelings like despair and greed as rather gruesome people. Despair has 'greasy locks, long growen, and unbound' while greed or 'Gluttony' as Spenser calls him, has a belly 'up-blow with luxury'. I like 'up-blow' don't you?
Writing The Cullen Skink gave me lots of opportunities to play about with words which is what I like doing. I've no idea what 'skinking' is but I liked inventing the word. I think it's a cross between slinking and skipping. 'Skink' is a good word for rhymes too, so I've got 'pink', 'shrink(age)', 'brink', 'drink' and 'clink'. I'm quite pleased with 'simmer', 'shiver' and 'deliver' too.
It wasn't until I wrote the last verse of the poem that I learnt who the Cullen Skink really was and discovering this is, for me, the adventure of poetry. There are things you can know with your imagination but not with your mind. So, for instance, I didn't know the Cullen Skink lived by the sea, but my imagination has created a jetty, so I think he must do. And the last lines really surprised me. It seems that once upon a time the Cullen Skink had wings, fur and paws. Perhaps he was an angel, a bird or an animal. Maybe all of these. I like that.
I've dedicated the poem to Linda Taylor, the friend who lent me the Scottish cook book. A poem makes a nice present and this was my way of saying thank-you to her.
