Just out with out with indie publisher Osmosis Press, Saskia McCracken’s prose poetry pamphlet Common Name explores the strange common names of seaweeds, such as sea beef, creeping tongue and oyster thief. 

To celebrate the pamphlet’s release, find a short excerpt below.

Common

Most seaweed has, as well as a Latin name given by a man of science, a common name, given not by a single author, but by many anonymous people. These names are often descriptive, painting lush sartorial pictures with a single stroke: plumed chenille, pearl moss, black tassel, red eyelet silk, lace, ribbon. They also invoke thieves, devils, animals. Seaweed itself is a common name for algae.

The shore has always been a commons in Scotland: a place where peasants gathered wrack and shellfish to eat in lean times; where excommunicated preachers gave sermons to congregations knee-deep in rising tides; where uneducated women could become botanists during the Victorian seaweed collecting craze. 

Who gave seaweeds their common names? Did they watch women in pearls and plumes drag soaked, sand-hemmed skirts along the beach? Where they whelk-fed or in top hats? Are seaweeds, common names, and the shore, gendered and classed, and if so by whom? Common names paint fantastical hungry pictures – who holds the brush?

[Sartorial]

Red Eyelet Silk, Red Lace, Red Ribbons, Red Fringe, Black Tassel, Pearl Moss, Sewing Thread, Plumed Chenille, Seersucker.

Caravaggio colours of the mind hankering after a winter of winkles, for who can afford one red ribbon? Everything is dull browns and greys on these shores of bare feet, except the sea and slaughter of thin animals. Empty shells pile up by the doorstep. 

Sea Beef

Delectable bovine in the style of Stubbs. Muscles ripple beneath soft curls. Face on, eyes wide, horizontal pupils stare straight ahead. Her tail pounds the waves, thick with scales that shimmer with flecks of white paint, creating the semblance of silver. She huffs steam. Bubbles rise to the surface. Each chimera in art, Horace tells us, is a monstrous error. 

Creeping Tongue

Ruche and braggair of cat gut and curly gristle on a devil’s apron. Cup and saucer (poor man’s weather glass) with a red serving fork, an angel wing on a dainty leaf surrounded by grape stone. Each hidden rib a veined fan inside a slack marrow; goat tang, sloke. 

Oyster Thief

Each pearl pocketed is another silvering tongueless mouth washed ashore ripe for brittling underfoot.

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You can order ‘Common Name’ (edition of 200 copies; bound with algae-dyed string or saddle-stitched) from Osmosis Press here.

Saskia McCracken is a Glasgow-based author and poet interested whose writing focuses on environmental issues. She has a particular obsession with seaweed. Her poetry and fiction publications include ‘Imperative Utopia’ (-algia press), ‘Cyanotypes’ (Dancing Girl Press), ‘The King of Birds’ (Hickathrift Press), and ‘Zero Hours’ (Broken Sleep Books). She is currently completing her nonfiction debut, ‘Awful Creatures: Encounters with Britain’s Unlovable Animals’. You can follow Saskia at @SaskiadeRM