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According to Greta Thunberg, \u2018Beyonce was wrong. Girls don\u2019t run the world: corporations and financial interests do.\u2019 But how do you write poems about the kind of world we live in, as defined by Thunberg? One way of doing so is by keeping such a conviction as an undercurrent, but the poems first of all have to be about the resilience of human beings even in the worst circumstances This is what the poems in Jim Aitken\u2019s poetry collection Declarations of Love<\/em>, in which all of the poems focus on what Graham Greene called \u2018the human factor,\u2019 brilliantly achieve.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/section>\nThe title-poem itself links such a project with appreciation of the natural world. The poem is made up of six quatrains, and in the last stanza the poet declares \u2018I will come clean and openly admit to my infatuation,\u2019 which has much to do with glorifying the onset of the seasons: \u2018Every Spring it is copper beech, silver birch and laburnum\/ and every Autumn it is maple and rowan. \u2026\u2019 Other poems in this vein include \u2018Fuchsia, Kinghorn\u2019 and \u2018Glitter and Glimmer\u2019. The former identifies fuchsia as originally a Caribbean flowering plant, so at the end it\u2019s declared \u2018a migrant success.\u2019\u00a0 The latter describes the \u2018diamond glitter\u2019 of early morning frost, but by evening, the poet concludes,<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\n\nSuch lines indicate an \u2018optimism of the imagination\u2019 (close to but distinct from what Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Letters<\/em> called the \u2018optimism of the will\u2019 which needs to leaven the \u2018pessimism of the intellect\u2019).\u00a0The poems expose the stark realities of for many today, but also never give up hope that change is possible, however unflinching the poem.\u00a0<\/div>\n\n\u00a0<\/div>\n\u2018Homeless Man\u2019 and \u2018Drunkard\u2019 are two of the most unflinchingly realistic. The second of the three stanzas goes as follows:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\u00a0<\/div>\nHe lay there like a smashed egg<\/span><\/div>\nand as I helped him\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\non to his unsteady feet\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nhe mumbled some inaudible\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
words of gratitude.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\u00a0<\/div>\nThere is nothing judgemental about the \u2018smashed egg\u2019 image, nor is it sentimental.\u00a0 It conveys complete helplessness and a hint of psychological damage, which even the \u2018inaudible\/ words of gratitude\u2019 cannot repair. The final lines avoid any easy way of dealing with this bleak situation, asking \u2018how much\/ you have you have to drink to get like that\u2019, and \u2018how much does it take\/ to have this system afflict you so?\u2019 The capitalist system in its current neoliberal phase is evidently blamed for the unfortunate state of this man, but this is not suggested in an ideologically censorious way; it\u2019s a matter of how many questions need to be answered when we\u2019re confronted with everyday misery.<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\nIn \u2018Homeless Man\u2019, one line refers to the man as \u2018the victim of an elite\u2019s rapacious greed\u2019, and nothing in the poem contradicts this view. Yet it ends with the poet telling us that the man would not have welcomed being told \u2018who had reduced him to this condition\u2019, going so far as being scatologically rude about didactic advice. In short, it is not only a poem which denounces the economic conditions, indeed deliberate policies, responsible for homelessness, but also a powerful, illuminating statement about human dignity.\u00a0<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\n\u2018Beachcombing\u2019 is a tribute to George Mackay Brown in three sections. In the first section we have the Orkney poet brooding, \u2018like Hamlet before him\u2019, on a \u2018seaman\u2019s skull\u2019. The second section draws a parallel between the North Sea and the Mediterranean: \u2018Once we called it Mare Nostrum.\u2019 Not coincidentally, readers might remind themselves that it is what Mussolini called it.\u00a0 The section describes Greek beachcombers who \u2018would welcome salty leather boots\/ that had danced the waves from Orkney\u2019, thus linking the historical traditions of seafaring in Greece and\u00a0Orkney, in tune with Mackay Brown\u2019s deep historical understanding. The second of three stanzas in the third section serves as a keynote to all the poems in Declarations of Love<\/em>:\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/div>\nFor fragile is what we all are,<\/span><\/div>\nvulnerable our condition.<\/span><\/div>\nAnd what should flow, should surge from this\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
is nothing less than compassion.<\/span><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\nA poem like \u2018The Citizen of Nowhere\u2019 makes such a call for compassion totally explict. It denounces how the authorities treat \u2018unwelcome\u2019 immigrants, pointing sardonically that\u00a0<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\n\u2026the blackbird has no papers<\/span><\/div>\nand needs no permission to sing<\/span><\/div>\nfor he is native wherever he flies.<\/span><\/div>\n\n\u00a0<\/div>\nAitken\u2019s voice here echoes that of Robert Henryson\u2019s medieval animal fables.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\nIn a lighter vein, but sharply satirical for all that, the title of the poem in Scots \u2018If Only Nicholas Witchell Spoke Scots\u2019, prepares us for what the poem tells us about members of the Royal Family who are well insulated from any \u2018cost of living crisis.\u2019 The poem is wonderfully illustrated by Martin Gollan. His drawing shows a television set in which \u2018Mitchell Scunnered\u2019 displays two fingers at us. Other drawings are more lyrical, and they all contribute to an attractively produced book.\u00a0<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\nIn her Introduction, radical writer Fran Lock praises Jim Aitken as \u2018a poet who understands the power of language to shape perception, to create or restore our bonds with each other and with the world, but also to dominate and destroy.\u2019 In short, he is very much a political poet, but a nuanced poet who encourages readers to come to their own conclusions, above all, to imagine a better world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n