Damaris West

Welcome to my website. I'm pleased you found me and I hope you will stay a while.

I'm a British author of poetry, short stories, memoirs and novels. A number of my poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and I have three published novels.

Instilled at an early age with appreciation of the natural world, it's still immensely important to me and much of my poetry celebrates it, as do my novels. I always write from knowledge and experience. In fact you could probably tell exactly where I've lived from the places I write about. This includes Umbria in central Italy, my home for more than thirteen years.

Italian was a delight as another Romance language after my degree in French and Spanish - and not just the language but also the landscape and culture, which inspired a series of short stories (Tales from Rural Umbria) as well as a novel, The Wolves of Little Mouse Valley.

My novels explore a range of emotions and issues, from loss and evil to self-discovery and altruism. In some, an element of fantasy is interwoven with the realism. But read them and find out for yourself!

I live close to the sea in Scotland, in a small stone bungalow that was once a stable, with the companionship of an Italian rescue dog, a small cocker spaniel of the type used to hunt for truffles.

As an amateur photographer, most of the photographs on the website are my own. The one on this page was taken by my good friend Lorraine Johnston.



My novels "Wild Goose," "Skolthan" and "Queen Anne's Lace" are available on Amazon as e-books and paperbacks.

Outlines and excerpts for all five of my novels can be found after the pages of my published poems.

Night sky images

The new moon is firelight
on the runner
of a rocking chair.
Andromeda lounges
on a couch while
Cassiopeia reads
a novel, knees
drawn to her chin.
Orion sprawls,
hands behind head
and feet on the fender,
studded belt tight
over replete stomach.
The dogs growl
and twitch in their sleep.
The twins are in bed.


But it only takes focussing
on one star, shining
with science, to drag perception
down a shivering tunnel away
from familiar, from myth,
to horror of the unknowable.

Trailing nasturtium

You were the only thing that grew
in the pot. You came straight,
bent yourself backwards,
hugged your own legs


and turned conjurer
pulling endless green ribbon
out of your mouth.


You spun plates,
clashed cymbals
and tambourines.


Your sprouts became


parasols, U.F.O.'s,
lily pads floating on air,


pennies, pancakes
and platters invisible
sideways on,


crested heads
of tongue-poking
infant dragons
yawning
a yellow flair.


Contortionist
arm-locking
your own shoulders,


leaf-a-day wonder,


you continue to meet
yourself coming
in the other direction.

Ailsa Craig

The sunken part of this green marble egg
must be displacing half the Firth of Clyde.


A no-man's land of smashed rock lines its shore
and saves its mossy trackway from the tide.


Gannets screech – eternal as the weather.
A pipit cocks a bright, inviting eye


and flits down thoroughfares of rabbit dung
among the pungent ragwort and the heather.


Battered to a nub, the castle seems
more recently inhabited than even


cottages still propped by sills and beams.
The rusted residue of occupation


and enterprise is no more felt as litter
than if it were the flint tools of a caveman.

My father's hands

His were the most attractive
hands I ever saw:
philosopher’s hands - lean,
ascetic, masculine.
Two fingers had tobacco stains;
a third one wore a slender
wedding ring of war-time
gold, pinkish with copper.


Two dickie-birds perched often
on his fingernails.
His thumb would poke out,
wagging in the pulpit
at its prayers.
One finger had been
savaged by the fish
that got away.


I watched those hands twist worms
onto fish-hooks, fasten laces
so they wouldn't fall undone,
polish the yew-wood
table that they’d made,
shuffle cards, click deadly
chessmen down on sly
trajectories I hadn’t spotted.


But who could guess his hands
would change because of illness:
the nails curve, the fish-bit
little finger stay
bent from the crushing
of his unturned body,
his strong grasp drop
the soup-spoon as he fell asleep.



With thanks to Pexels (via Pixabay) for the photo.

Gift

I gave you
olive oil
green and bitter
when I would have given you


the marigolds
carpeting the grove


the moon-bright snow
on the mountains


the constellations
that I never learn


the wind that blows
my voice away.


I gave you
this poem
when I would have given you


the anchor that you lack
on the wild sea
of existence.

Persimmons

They were still clinging in the snow:
baubles on a twig Christmas tree,
Jack-o'-lanterns without faces,
bright as street oranges of Seville.


You told me I should be prepared
for the 'kaki experience'. They would be
super-sweet, jam-like, drip off the spoon,
but I couldn't countenance that gloopy


texture and didn't understand the point
of seeking them preciously among their leaves
like griffins' eggs, except maybe to stop them
splattering to slippy wadges underfoot.


A treat foregone through prejudice, you thought.
But the sight was otherworldly: so many
suns dipping with a last golden flare
into the dark rotation of the earth.

Lost lamb

She comes upon it crying in the aisle
between two hawthorn hedges,
dazed with abandonment.
Its mother must have wandered on
to browse, oblivious, and so,
between awareness and awareness,
its whole world vanished.
It quietens in her arms, heart
thumping like a disco floor,
and chews the velcro of her jacket.
Its head smells sweeter than shampoo.
She is Security, and will return it
whence it came, but just for this
brief moment it is hers.

To a dog on the operating table

I will take you home, my darling,
my angel, my love, when it’s over.
I will take you home to sunshine,
to grass and gravel, to wind
in your fur, to a thousand
smells and a hundred places
to drink, after the rain,
to companionship, to the goal,
the hopeless goal, of catching
fat green lizards under the lavender.


You will sit, again, and wait for me
by the garden door, and bark
to the dog across the valley,
and corner the neighbour’s cat
in an apple tree. You will carve
your space among legs, and occupy
the aisle beside my bed. You will sleep
and live with us, eat, breathe …
I will take you home, my darling,
when all of this is over.

Maybole beach

This is a beach
that few discover.
Unsigned, a secret
down a branching lane,
green at its approach with mossy
trees and hart's tongue fern,
a vast sea odour heralds it,
waves whispering behind.


The foreshore breathes magic.
Waders seem tame. A wisp
of cloud blurs the bewitching
symmetry of Ailsa Craig.
Culzean Castle gleams atop its cliff,
ochre, primrose, and old gold.
The wooded slopes shiver
with wind and birdsong.

Generations

We knew what was wrong with Grandma
Before we could hardly talk.
She grumbled about her pension
And lost the peas off her fork.


Soon after our parents copped it:
The scales fell from our eyes.
He was an obsolete bigot;
She told whopping white lies.


For a while we were busy with courting
Then we had kids of our own.
In no time at all we were fogies
And horribly accident-prone.


Still, my children’s children are precious:
They chuckle and sit on my knees.
But my pension's a downright disgrace
And my fork keeps losing the peas.

Blooming gorse  (a villanelle)

"When the gorse is not in bloom then kissing is out of fashion."

I cannot see the gorse in bloom.
Is kissing therefore out of fashion
Due to lockdown in my room?


The News conveys our global doom.
Because excursions are on ration
I cannot see the gorse in bloom.


Nothing penetrates the gloom.
My eyes are dull, my skin is ashen
Due to lockdown in my room.


No bride-to-be can kiss her groom
But likewise I deserve compassion:
I cannot see the gorse in bloom.


I cannot smell the sweet perfume
Of gorse (do you not share my passion?)
Due to lockdown in my room.


When normal living can resume,
Kissing will be back in fashion.
I will see the gorse in bloom
Released from lockdown in my room.

Ysgo

Grassy banks on either side
And marshy patches where kingcups grow.
A steep little path that winds and wanders
And drops at last to the beach below.
A shimmering waterfall; jasper stones
That shine like jewels in all the streams;
Sun-warmed rocks that the waves wash over…
I go there still in my dreams.

There is a world inside my head

There is a world inside my head
Where no-one goes but I:
An island world surrounded by
Blue sea and bluer sky.

On gorse-grown slopes the rocks are white
As moonlight all the day,
And in the night the shadows
Cannot take their warmth away.

Great leafy trees hang over streams
That through green gullies run,
And these are cool as wind
Because they never see the sun.

Here is no plant without a flower,
No bird without a song;
The cuckoo calls and bees hum
All the year and all day long.

In quiet moments I can dip
My feet into those streams,
Or plunge my naked self
Into the blue sea of my dreams.

The forgotten village of Vortigern's Glen 

I plunged down the steeply twisting track
Between the weather-pitted boulders
And the pine trees that the wind bends back
From the sea, while over my shoulders
The mist-enveloped mountain peaks seemed
To hang, brooding. Then the path swung round
And the sea, like a fish’s scales, gleamed
Silver before me, and I had found

The village. A few huddled houses
It was, with grass down the tiny street
Where stealthily the stray sheep browses,
And treads the rubble with cautious feet.
In the blank, grey walls the windows gaped
Likes sightless sockets. Elder trees clung
By the doorways, stunted and storm-shaped,
Bowed as if old, when they were still young.

Those wind-scoured dwellings breathed disaster;
The blind windows spoke of tragedy;
And so I left, and climbed up faster
Than I had come, and it seemed to me
That the stream’s faint, murmuring laughter
Mocked me, and the gliding gull’s harsh screams
Were of a ghost that followed after,
And for nights it crept into my dreams.

When Jemima is small, Leonard manages to be on her level, and often responds intuitively to her feelings.

They are walking in a wood when she spots a Keeper's Larder with various grisly carcasses hung on a strand of barbed wire. Her eye is caught by the patch of bright blue plumage on a jay's wing and Leonard responds telepathically to her appreciation of the colour.

Leonard stepped forward, plucked one of the stripy blue feathers and laid it in the palm of her hand. She walked all the rest of the way holding it out in front of her like a tiny Olympic flame.

'Skolthan' is a novel with a core of fantasy based around the notion that a portal exists to a fragment of the one-time Garden of Eden, called Skolthan, through an offshore island. The way through is the province of only a handful of people, unknown to each other, but these guardians must band together to deny access to evil forces which, once in control, would subvert the world.

The story has brutal elements including attempted child sacrifice and a description of the burning of a witch, but also portrayed are courage, companionship and loyalty among apparently ordinary village folk, and finally selfless devotion to a helpless young woman who has become sick of mind.

The setting, based on the wild North Norfolk coast in all seasons, is a strong element pervading the whole book.

Abigail is growing up more akin to her father, foreshadowing the estrangement from her mother, Hilda.

She was always a ‘Daddy’s girl’, riding on Josh’s shoulders down the sea wall, patting down the sand he dug for castles, bringing him the biggest shells and the brightest pebbles, creeping under his blanket to shelter from a thunderstorm.

Isabel the protagonist becomes better acquainted with the disabled Colin when they attend her daughter's wedding.

“What’s all that white?” Colin asked.

“That’s Queen Anne’s lace,” Isabel told him, and then they were among it. The wheelchair could hardly find the path through the crowding stems. All around, white flowers thrust and nodded, rank upon rank of them, massing to create the effect of snow. Tiny white petals fell all over Colin’s knees and shoulders and even his head. It was like pushing through froth, or getting caught up in a bride’s veil. He laughed, and stopped to push the plants aside with his hands.

“We’re in fairyland,” he said. “We really are. We must have said the magic word.”

'The Wolves of Little Mouse Valley' is set in mountainous and forested Umbria, central Italy. It reflects the way of life of a rural community which prizes truffles, olive oil, home-grown vegetables, hardy women and fidelity. It contains an element of fantasy in its depiction of a powerful population of wolves.

The wolves control the wild boar which in turn are a danger to the valued truffle harvest. They have a long-standing relationship with the family at the core of the story, having created an unbroken chain of wolf boys who are initiated into the ways of the wolves once they are a certain age, or when they reach a point of danger in their lives at which the wolves' help is needed.

The latter is the case of orphans in a notorious monastery which the wolves are instrumental in overturning as being corrupt and cruel even in its apparent blandishments. The wolves are moral beings which arrive on the scene as a force for good, and melt away when they are no longer needed.

'Little Mouse Valley' is the literal English translation of 'Valtopina', the village which, fictionalised, serves as the backdrop for much of the story.



With thanks to Peter Fischer - Papafox (via Pixabay) for the photo.

The passage is from the very end of the book.

They were also unaware that on the steep face of the higher mountain where the snow was a white curtain blotting everything from view, the wolves had gathered in a mass of darkness. It was a company of companies, a flock of flocks, and they had a great deal to communicate. It would be the stuff of wolf legend.

Not all of them had emerged unscathed from their mission. Between the pads of a paw, here and there, was a tiny sliver of red, blue or golden-yellow glass that had fallen from one of the bright pictures in the chapel windows. These pieces would need to be extracted, by tongue and teeth, because left where they were, they could make a wolf lame, and a lame wolf was slow and liable to succumb in the winter.



With thanks to InspiredImages (via Pixabay) for the photo.

The passage is from the very beginning of the novel. The heroine has climbed up the cliff in order to take seabirds' eggs.

Clodie’s fingers were dug securely into a crevice of the cliff so she permitted herself a quick downward glance at the sea. It was swollen, opaque, heaving menacingly right up against the rock face. What made it green like that, though? It made her think of one of those bright green shiny bags that washed up sometimes, but in this case with a monster inside, struggling feebly. Or a big fish in its death throes.

But there was a job to do. She had to do it quickly and efficiently because no-one must ever know how much it cost her in terms of sheer nerve and plucked-up courage or they would deem her incapable and start expecting her to do other things, and then she would be lost. She was Clodie the Cliff. That’s who she was and people always lived up to their epithets. It was how they were.