December Poems

Here are some poems I have written in deep midwinter: 

Nina Milton

WINTER TREES

They are matchless,

My trees in winter. 

While I watch telly and eat carbs, 

Put the fire on, the heating up, 

They stand naked to the battle;

Steady for storm, ready for gale. 

Winter trees communicate in semaphore

Black flags against the half-day’s light.

They are gallows for bats,

Rigging for gulls,

Blue cages for robins 

Steeples for stormcocks.

In the cold sun, 

The oaks glow emerald with moss;

The planes strike piebald patterns;

Birch trunks shimmer like a high moon. 

I pull on gloves, hat, scarves,

Brave the cold to watch 

As they wait secure, 

Dreaming sap dreams,

Expectant for spring.

CAILLIACH 

                                                                                   Scrag End,

                                                                                   Hag wending

                                                                                   Her cackling flight

                                                                                   Over the mushroom yews.

                                                                                   The Samhuin night holds her,

                                                                                    Unfolds her soaring cloak

                                                                                    As she rides her birch broom high.

http://themotherhouseofthegoddess.com/

2013/12/21/winter-solstice-reflections-on-an-cailleach/

Storm Eye

Borne higher 

Than Circling wind,

A vortex for a throne.

Below, as we run for cover

She shrieks a laugh and spins

Stridng the tides.

Boughs creak

Clouds flapping

Seas flooding, seeing blood.

She shakes the earth 

Till fire spews.

Life’s elemental horrors are hers

As she beats out the storm

Enough! 

Misshapen crone, 

Winter harpy - time for home,

Let late winter snows gentle 

Lambs and snowdrops into life,

I implore, beseech you, hag,

It’s Bridget’s time, so pack your bag.

(the Cailliach is a Scottish Goddess, whose legend states she epitomizes hard winter)

STANTON DREW STONE CIRCLES

Photograph of Stanton Drew
 by the late Carni Tipton

Suppose the dolmen that squats high on the track

Are three petrified shepherds who never sleep – 

Moonbeam white, resting as they watch their sheep

Leaning to rest each on the other’s back?

While down in the valley, three circles lie,

Earth-rooted like old men’s molars, they stare

Past the earth’s harried timekeeping to where 

Stars wheel backwards and the moon’s phases fly

To the beat of these sandstone hearts. One ring

Lies fallow, resting in the weedy grass, 

The grandest circle is spaced wide and fast

The third stays tight, upright; I hear it sing.

It breaths the pulse notes of a well-tuned harp

It holds the secrets of a trusted chart.

BLACK MOUNTAIN, BRECONS.

My feet stand deep by your heel in the gloom

Of your towering wilds.

Storm wave, Wailing Wall,

They named you Black Hill,

The back end of Brecon’s

Mountain range where, disconsolate, you loom.

Ceridwen loves to feel the dusk enslave,

Wrap wild anguish round

A heart. Black Mountain must

Belong to her,

Stirring an iron-cast pot

Inside a hollow crag, some dark-eyed cave

Murky shadows move me;  are you

Goddess, hag, or just a tale 

From old-folk years?

No answer.

Only the wind, steep with dread

Flap of umbrella bat, bleak caw of crow,

As they soar into the desolate air.

From the break of dawn to moon-slivered night,

Herbs lie in curling steam.

Cauldron-sour on the tongue,

Perilous to steal, it will devour,

Turn you mad or

Offer transformation into light.

I turn upon my heel, can’t hold my place.

The barren cliffside sucks

At hope, drags away cheer.

My shoulders shudder 

At the goddess glowering in her crag

I want to weep at your heartbreaking face.

It doesn't matter which of the mountains of Wales you visit, in January, they loom over you in a very Welsh way; powerfully depressing. Recently we've passed under the shadow of several; the Preselis, the Cambrians, Carreg Cennan where our friend Gill lives, the Berwyn Range a little northeast from us, and the Black Mountain, which is the closest part of the Brecons to us. 

In fact, none of these are mountains in the true sense, all being less that 1000 metres in height. We all know that the only mountain in Wales is Snowdonia, which tops the 1000 by just a metre or so. But every hill and mound is a mountain to the Welsh; even we live on a mountain; the Gernos Mountain, which peaks (just above our cottage) at less than 300 metres.

We passed the very eastern end of the Black Mountain quite recently, as we drove through the village of Ynstadgynlais, and the hill loomed up against us like some sort of malevolent spirit about to do terrrible things to our car. That's how it felt, anyhow, and as soon as I had paper to write on, I had to record the weird things I'd felt, in the poem above. 

Winter Poems by Nina Milton

Writing the Pagan Life – the Shaman Mysteries

(available online, from Amazon
as a paperbacks as well as on Kindle)

In the Moors was the first of the Shaman Mysteries published by Midnight Ink.  On The Gallows 

(Unraveled Visions in the US)

 continues to follow Sabbie’s adventures as she runs a therapeutic shamanic business in Bridgwater. The third in the trilogy, 

Beneath the Tor, 

was released in November 2015 with a Glastonbury Launch Party

Through the Floodgates

was released in 2020

and continues the story of therapeutic shaman  

Sabbie Dare –  and her life in paganism and shamanism.

 

The Weird Genesis to the Shaman Mysteries

When I became a druid, in the late 1990’s, I’d been on a search towards the deeper meanings of life for a long time as a Rosicrucian, but I knew that something was missing for me in those teachings…a true love and honouring of the land and the ancient deities that still look over this land. I found this aspect in druidry. 

I’m an OBOD, which means moving through the three ‘grades’ of Bard, Ovate

and Druid. There’s a saying, among Ovates, that moving into this middle grade will change your life, and for me, that happened in spades.

The summer I became an Ovate, I had my star chart read at a Rainbow Camp. “Something’s afoot in your chart,” the astrologist told me. “Things are on the move for you. Tremendous changes.”

I told him I was booked on a Shamanic Training weekend. Maybe that was it? I already knew that once you begin to walk between the worlds, nothing is the same again – you are not the same again. “That’ll be it, then,” said the astrologer. He was right, but neither of us guessed quite how.

On a sunny morning that autumn, I shipped up in Bath, at John Matthews’ introductory workshop. Thirty of us, making hot drinks in a tiny kitchen, chatting a bit nervously and introducing ourselves. Like a lot of the participants, I had read John and Caitlin Matthew’s books, and knew their reputation went before them, but John looked ordinary, sitting cross-legged between us, and he opened the workshop in a quiet, almost muted voice. 

He reminded us that although shamanism can be a spiritual path, from its very early beginnings, it had been a tool; a method of getting close to another world – the world of spirits. It’s a very ancient practice indeed; there are those who think shamans are depicted in the Neolithic cave paintings found all over Europe. Shamans are thought of as special people by the communities they function within.  By entering a trance, often using nothing more than a drum beat or the rhythm of a dance, they move between the solid world we all live in, and the otherworlds, bringing back answers to questions that have no answers. 

It is said that to become a shaman, one must be called by spirits, but I think the spirits are calling us all...it’s just that only some people listen. When I talked to the other work-shoppers that weekend, I found several who described having the ‘shaman’s sickness’, a health crisis that had brought them visionary dreams. Other had found their minds opening during a ‘vision quest’ in wild country or during a dark night.

The more I delved, the more fascinated I became. By closing my eyes, listening to a fast, regular drum beat and allowing my mind to steady and focus, I found I was able to walk between the worlds, accompanied by my spirit ally who came to me in the guise of a mole, able to burrow down into lower realms. When I stroked his back with one finger, his coat felt as soft, warm and sleek as any mole of this world. Mole and I would come upon otherworldly presences who spoke to me, either in perfectly normal conversations or in mysterious symbols and signs. They often advised or directed me, or offered a gift of significance. I’d emerge feeling refreshed...amazed. 

I was already a writer at this time. In fact, I think I’ve always been one, ever since, when I was five, my first infant school teacher, Mrs Marsden, read an animal fable to the class, then asked us to write a similar sort of story. I was dumfounded – for the first time I realized that the books I loved had actually been written by real human beings. Before that, I believed they must have fallen from some sort of story heaven. It was a revelation – from then on I was scribbling down stories all the time, and I wrote my first novel at the age of fifteen. Well, okay, I started to write a novel which I never finished. But by the time I started work as a nurse, I was regularly publishing short stories in women’s magazines, and when my children were born, I began my career as a children’s writer. But I’d never had much success writing for adults and sometimes wondered if I ever would.

I had been moving through Caitlin Matthew’s series of shamanic workshops, and working with other British shaman too, building up my skills, and using them to some degree in my work as a palliative care nurse, when a new character walked into my head.

“Hi,” she said. I was driving to work, at the time, and she seemed almost to plonk herself down on the passenger seat. “I’m Sabbie Dare.” 

She looked like a woman in her late twenties, of mixed race, with a cute little gap between her teeth and very long, almost black hair, which kinked as it fell. “I’m a shaman,” she went on. “A therapeutic shaman.” 

“Ah, I responded,” (in my head, and keeping my eyes on the road, of course), “you take clients with problems. Probably problems they’ve already seen a gamut of professionals about; doctors, chiropractors, even hypnotherapists.”

She’d nodded.  “Some have souls that are complete shattered. And some bring me some very...difficult problems. They are people on the edge.”

She isn’t the sort to use the word ‘scary’. I’ve discovered that not much scares Sabbie Dare. But in my first Shaman Mystery, In the Moors, things get very scary indeed for Sabbie, as she tries to help someone in trouble. She’s a girl who only wants the best for those she meets, and she’ll regularly put herself on the line for her clients, not only in the spirit world, but also in the apparent world, because of course, The Shaman Mysteries, published by Llewellyn’s Midnight Ink imprint, are thrillers, albeit with an edge of spiritually. 

I write them for pagans and crime fiction lovers alike, so I have to be careful to walk a line between the truth of my own spiritual path, and the fictions I create. I don’t want to spin a line, that shamanism can ‘solve crime’ or ‘get people out of trouble’. And as the series progresses I am trying to introduce some of the aspects of shamanism, and paganism that might enlighten the ‘muggle reader’. Book one, In the Moors explains the shamanic journey, and introduces Sabbie’s animal ally, an otter called Trendle. In the second book, I begin to develop Sabbie’s otherworld associations, especially her guardian, a river goddess who she doesn’t yet quite trust. Book three, Beneath the Tor, uses a theme of transformation, including shapeshifting.This book is set in Glastonbury, and it was my great delight to be able to use some of the legends of the Vale of Avalon I also introduce the reader to the lower realms of the otherworld. 

Meanwhile Sabbie herself begins to understand who she is. She was brought up in the care system, after her mother died when she was six, and she’s never known her father. As the books develop, she uses her shamanic pathways to find out more about her own past.

One thing I love about the Shaman Mysteries is the landscapes I’m able to describe. I set the books in the Somerset Levels, a place with a truly fay and mysterious atmosphere, which can turn tricksy and dark, when mists come down, or floods rise. We visit Bridgewater Bay with its looming hulk of a nuclear power station in book two,  walk through the mysteries of Glastonbury in book three and, in book four, visit the devastating floods that swept over the levels in 2014. 

That conversation I had on Druid Camp five years ago, is beginning to ring true. Something did move and shake in my life, when I signed up to the Matthews shamanic workshops. Once you know how to access the world of spirits, you really never know what might happen next. 

What happened to me was that I now write books I love, and that people seem to love reading them. It was the one thing I’d longed to be able to do, and I am sure that the spirit world brought me this blessing.

September the 26th

If you pop over to the PAGES of this blog (you click at the top of the HOME page) and look at https://viewfromrhoshill.blogspot.com/p/wheel-of-year-at-rhos-hill.html

 you'll see a new account of our latest ritual celebration, this time for the autumn equinox. In it, I say... we all had our own process of moving from the scurry of getting ready for winter, down into gentle hibernation until the warming of spring…and that is true of us here. We're scurrying about like harvest mice, getting the provisions in, ready for the quite time of winter. Just look at Jim, with saw and axe he's filled bag after bag of split logs ready for burning. Our log shed is bursting with seasoned wood.

Windfall apples and toms ready for the pickling vinegar

The garden is bursting, too with produce ready to be picked. Most of it won't get any bigger, or riper, now the autumn is upon us. So I'm picking, peeling and pickling. I've got peach wine on the go and Jim's just barrelled up some of his honey beer. I'm hoping to make rose hip syrup, as I did last year, from my Rosa Rugosa. And I've got the problem of all the tomatoes ripening at once. Apart from giving them away (and everyone's got toms), there's chutney, or I could try freezing salsa, using the lovely chillies we're growing, or perhaps layering them with our potatoes and onions crop to freeze as a cheesy bake. Jim's brought home some sand for us to attempt the traditional method of storing carrots, and we have our hessian sacks (last job a sack race) ready for our entire plot of spuds. The other outstanding job is empying all the lovely pots that flowered so beautifully on the patio and the front wall all summer long, and using them to plant spring bulbs and winter colour.

Sadly, the hens are in opposite mode, and not laying well. I had to buy Jean's eggs, when I saw her at the Newcastle Emlyn market last week. 
"Ah, what you need to do," she said, "is feed them layers mash instead of pellets. I did it and my production shot up. It's the extra fluid, you see."
So we bought a sack of mash and started feeding it and the result was miraculous; that very day we found six eggs in a hedge!
What, I have to ask Ceredwin and Olwen (the culprits), is wrong with the lovely, dark, warm dry and comfy nesting boxes we provide free of charge? "Cluck", they replied, wisely.

12th September Nina's Book Launch - and what you can do now for me!

What a blast we all had at my book launch for In the Moors! People have been tweeting and messaging me to say that they really enjoyed the event. Sarah said...It was a lovely evening Nina! You spoke and read really well, and I'm looking forward to reading the book. Sue said,Great launch, Nina!. Kit said, Fab evening and wonderful to see so many. Am reading book already. Love it! Ali said... loving it too, and finding great examples of good writing for my workshop  - all those lovely verbs … And book me that lovely professor for my next book launch. He was so informative and entertaining all in 5 mins. Charlotte said, enjoyed it  - lovely to see you in your element x 
Jane said...Well done Nina! A great launch. And I hope you've recovered from the shock of Becky NOT being in Montenegro after all!

Yes, I must admit that although the entire thing was a ball, and there were fifty people laughing, chatting, sipping wine and queuing to have their books signed, the most wonderful moment in the evening for me was when I saw my daughter’s face in the crowds as I had no idea she’d be there, living as she does a long way away.

I've just heard from one of my students, who came a long way and stayed in a Bristol hotel overnight (what a sacrifice!) to be at my launch. She wrote; 

I enjoyed the whole event, your reading an extract from your book and the Professor's talk on Shamanism.  It was all very interesting.  I'm glad there was a good turn-out for you, Nina and of course, much book signing.  It was also lovely to meet other writers, so thank you for introducing me to some of them…I'd never been to one before and was unsure what to expect. But I must say it was truly great.  It was lovely to meet you Nina, and to find you in such an ecstatic mood.  Especially, the moment when you spotted your daughter in the crowd and not in Montenegro as you had thought.  I can relate to how you must have felt, since my son did something similar many years ago when he was much younger.  He was based in Singapore at the time but working off shore all around South East Asia as a commercial diver.  We hadn't seen him in three years but he turned up unexpectedly about two days before Christmas and surprised everyone.  It was really exciting!  He still loves to do that kind of thing. 

 Best regards,

Pat.

I was so honoured that some of my students made such an effort. But I want to thank everyone who came, because the bums on the seats were what really made the event. 

Another student was on holiday, and couldn't come, but she's just emailed me too, to say…

I’ve had to sit indoors on a beautiful sunny afternoon here in Brittany so that I could finish In the Moors and find out what happened.  I enjoyed it hugely!  And am looking forward to reading the next one.   What a brilliant concept to have a shaman at the centre of a crime mystery novel.   With my writing student hat on I was struck by the sense of place throughout the book.  Much food for thought there.

What a great recommendation for In the Moors! 

Naturally, if you haven't managed to procure a copy yet, you can get it from Amazon, but I would much rather you embraced the Books are my Bag campaigne and walked into a bookshop to buy it. Foyles in Cabot Circus is stocking it now, but if that's not your local bookshop, then go to that one and ask them to order it for you; or even better stock a couple. I can let you have information on distributors and publicity.

And if libraries are more your thing, then please mention the book to them. If you have In the Moors and enjoyed it, show it to your local librarian and ask them if they can keep a copy.

We finally drove away from Bristol at 11pm and immediately hit a diversion that took us back around the ring road into Filton and on to the Mall. We got home very late, but I couldn't really sleep anyway.

But up at 6.30 to let the hens out so I could tell them all my exciting news!