“Take hold of the shaft of the pen…
…Subscribe to the first step taken from a justified line into the margin."
"The First Gloass” - Seamus Heaney

I start my first post with words from Seamus Heaney’s poem “The First Gloss”, part of his Station Island collection. Not because I understood them immediately the first time that I read them. Or indeed the second, third, fourth or fifth time. I include them because it took me so long to understand them and that’s the point - learning something is hard. It takes time. It requires persistence. It is not easy. There will be times when you think you’re going backwards. There will be days when nothing works and, in the worst case, days after days when nothing works when still…nothing works.

But, over time, you’ll learn. You’ll find yourself understanding more and more. You’ll find yourself not having to look up things because you know them.

And it all comes from picking up the pen and writing the first words.

My Mother wrote her Masters’ thesis on Seamus Heaney and she had a picture on which these words from “The First Gloss” sit. The picture has been ever present for the last 30 years of my life.

I have read the words over and over many time - mainly because, as we have hung now, my Mother and Father left the picture in the loo. Until, one day (when the internet was useful) I looked them up and came to understand that they had meaning.

For me that meaning is…there is power in the written word (irrsepective of how and where it is written, i.e. in code or on parchment). And there is also a process, a ceremony even, that should be followed and celebrated each and every time we choose a word to write.