No Ruined Stone

by Shara McCallum

No Ruined Stone is a verse sequence rooted in the life of 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns. In 1786, Burns arranged to migrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation, a plan he ultimately abandoned. Voiced by a fictive Burns and his fictional granddaughter, a "mulatta" passing for white, the book what would have happened had he gone?

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2021

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shara’s new collection arrived like a portent across the seas, perfectly in time to answer the question of what I’d read today, my 35th birthday. In a year beset by so much personal pain and affliction, No Ruined Stone is an enduring effigy of permanence. McCallum chronicles the speculative history of Robert Burns’ life, had he followed his intention to oversee a Jamaican plantation. Each poem is a hard, tender-throated knock at the doors of history, asking what we do with bloodstained legacies, how we account for ourselves on the land we call home, and how an island and her people are forged over time: how, in truth, we can use the best parts of ourselves to unforge the steel, dominion and disease of racist empires.

I am so grateful to be alive in a world where these poems, and so many others, are breathing.

“No longer a girl, it is time I turn from all
the given names to learn what land knows:
how forged in fire hills are birthed,
how loch and sky and sea converge
inside the eye’s trickery. No longer a child,
I must find a way to stand in this place,
and every other, not earthed for me.”

18/31
#TheSealeyChallenge

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in this collection, told mainly in the voices of the poet Robert Burns and a fictional granddaughter, imagine what might have been if Burns had emigrated to Jamaica to become a bookkeeper on a slave plantation. A potent narrative about erasure, inheritance, race, and slavery.

A number of the poems take the form of interleaving columns, which to me spoke to experience of being mixed race. The eye sees two separate things, and at times struggles to connect the language as it crosses from one column to the other. But the words as spoken cross the gap created by the white space just fine—in fact they may experience no gap at all.

Quite an impressive book, I thought.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

'In the carrion of history, I am
dismantled, reassembled,
dismantled—and not you
not anyone can save me
from this fate. In the carrion
of history, I am without
purchase. What is my body
but ransom?'

(Story, the First, p35)

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a departure from McCallum's previous books, because it is rooted in historical fiction, it is a sustained imagining of hypothetical historical experiences. Specifically, the first half of the book imagines that Robert Burns--the late eighteenth century Scottish poet--did emigrate to Jamaica, as he had planned in the late 1780s, and the second half of the book imagines the experience of Isabella, Burns' fictional granddaughter who is sent back to Scotland because she is light skinned enough to pass as white, despite her grandmother being from Africa itself and her mother being darker skinned.

Structurally, the book is interesting because these two stories are contrasted to one another. In the first section, Burns leaves his home in Scotland to travel to Jamaica, and in the second half Isabella leaves her home in Jamaica to travel to Scotland. While their experiences are profoundly different--most notably because Burns is a white man in slave-owning Jamaica, whereas Isabella is a mixed-race descendant of African slaves trying to pass as white in a profoundly racist society--neither feels comfortable in the society in which they're living. Burns feels the injustice of slavery, and even (problematically perhaps, given his job working in a plantation's administration) identifies to a certain extent with the slaves because he himself was of a working class background, the son of laborers. Isabella, on the other hand, is keenly aware that she must live a lie in order to survive in Scottish society, and much of her anxiety revolves around the inability to be her true self, even with her husband.
https://youtu.be/CpMYV1hTI2I

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, beautiful, thought-provoking and layered with a rare blend of humanity, wisdom, and imagination. It’s like an extraordinary meal one wishes would never end. Re-imagining the life of Robert Burns, McCallum peers into the past, into slavery, into colonialism, into ancestry, with the eye of a sage and the voice of a loving mourner.

[Farnaz Fatemi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic reimagining of What if…the acclaimed poet Robert Burns had left Scotland for Jamaica at the end of the 18th c. and been in charge of slaves? Raises rich questions of inheritance, responsibility, complicity and identity in stunningly fresh language.

[Scott Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fanciful reimagining of Robert Burns' life. "What if" he had sailed to work on his family's farm in Jamaica instead of staying in Scotland. Very intriguing.

[Lea]

Please seek out diverse perspectives.
This is such an interesting collection - speculative poetry is not something I’ve come across before and the way it weaves a story is impressive.
The addition of timelines and the author’s note really elevate the experience.

[Jeffrey Voccola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written and thoroughly engaging collection of poems. Using different points of view, McCallum imagines what might have happened had Scottish poet Robert Burns migrated to Jamaica. The result is a complex and thought-provoking story that reads like a novel. Brilliant work.

[Alicen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating retake on Robert Burns.