Poem of the week: Highland Daunder by Jeda Pearl

Pearl’s homiletics are not simply about claiming nationhood: they show nationhood as a complex entity, a tree of roots and branches which it’s essential fully to acknowledge and own. Mask-wearing and mimicry are forbidden. The command, “speak wi yer naitural vyce”, illustrates how oppressively internalised others’ social demands threaten to become.

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Pearl’s poem is very much about the obligation to “staund yer graund”. It fills out the meaning of those words concisely with a “daunder” among metaphors of “ground” so natural the reader hardly notices. Highland Daunder is a poem presented, in spite of the self-doubt, as proof of the poet’s belonging, of knowing a place and language as her own.