Sae far fae (2025)

Sae far fae is a body of work investigating the materiality of language and gives a redefinition to contemporary poetry through modular displays of graphic art. The screen-printed works act as a response to the poem Bonnie Benarty by Fife poet Janet Shand and juxtaposes our different perspectives of the same place: Ballingry, Fife. Inspired by Ian Hamilton Finlay’s object poems, Sae far fae questions the place of poetry within contemporary art and redefines it as a physical form or something other.

Sae far fae is a poem written in response to Bonnie Benarty, the only existing poem by the poet Janet Shand. Both poems describe the same place, Benarty Hill and the village at the bottom of It (Ballingry), but write from different perspectives. While Shand speaks of a landscape with physical beauty and optimism, Sae far fae speaks of a landscape which lacks development and opportunity. Ballingry, is the place I grew up during what I believe to be my most formative years, from fifteen to eighteen, and is the place that my that family still live. Sae far fae is as much an understanding of this place as an environment as it is an understanding of who I am because of this place. Ballingry is currently one of Scotland’s regeneration areas, with significant drug, poverty and underdevelopment problems, and these factors contribute to addressing the juxtaposed perspective of Janet Shand and I.

Language is used as the focal material in this series and considers its longevity when put into a poetry context. Local dialect, words and phrases of Ballingry are used to preserve the language of scots, which is still somewhat alive in Ballingry. The wording used in the poem visually embodies local pronunciation of words, as well as nuancing collective Scottish identity through language.