James Sutherland-Smith

James Sutherland-Smith Poems

James Sutherland-Smith Biography

JAMES SUTHERLAND-SMITH was born in Scotland in 1948, but has lived in Slovakia since 1989. He spent his working life as a teacher of English as a foreign language and as a lecturer in Cultural Studies. From 2002 to 2009 he was based in Belgrade on the Peacekeeping English Project as an English language Adviser to the Armed Services of Serbia and also to the Armed Services of Montenegro. He has published eight collections of his own poetry, the latest being " Small-Scale Observations" from Shearsman. Simultaneously in 2022, a bilingual chapbook, " The Bead of Blood" , was published in Slovakia. He has translated a number of Slovak and Serbian poets. The Slovak poets include Ján Buzássy, Mária Ferencuhová, Ján Gavura, Mila Haugová, Ivan Laucík and Milan Rúfus with book selections published in Britain, Canada and the USA. Serbian poets include Ivana Milankov, " Dinner with Fish and Mirrors" , from Arc Publications (UK) in 2013 and Miodrag Pavlovic, " Selected Poems" , from Salt Publications (UK) in 2014. A selection of poems by Eva Luka translated into English will be published by Seagull Books in 2025.)

The Best Poem Of James Sutherland-Smith

Swimming In The Red Sea Before A Sandstorm

Surfacing I see the great sun sink
Behind a pier which takes
The oil pipeline to deep water.
A fisherman spreads his mat
On a dune for evening prayer
While a pack of dogs sit
In shallows to cool themselves
And three women walk on the shore
Shielded by their husbands
From the naked white man in the sea.
A breeze lifts their veils to show skirts
Red, blue and green slashed with orange.

I dive and my shadow wavers
Across the fluted sand
To where devil fish quiver
And change colour when my darkness
Touches them. No mind was ever
Clear as this transparency
Over green pods of the sea grape
And slate blue of the digging crab.

Surfacing I see the sun lose shape
Foundering upon the horizon
As light burnishes the struts
And silvery petrol holders.
The dogs whine uneasily
And trot towards the shelter
Of a rock while the fisherman
Is crouched in hazy supplication.
The wind increases tugging
A multi-coloured umbrella
Which the husbands have put up
A hundred yards away.

I dive as if into a mind
Which does not know itself,
The sea coloured with a little sand.
I cannot use my eyes
But feel the water on my skin
As I swim down from the bath warmth
At the top to colder levels
Sensing icier undertows.

Surfacing I can't see the pier,
Barely the fisherman
Who stubbornly continues
His blurred devotion while the dogs
And couples huddle,
All beastwise, against the rock
As the sandstorm streams above them.
I swim out diving and diving
To avoid drowning in the air
And reach the yellow reef
To dive once again deeply
Into clearer, stranger waters.

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