Doolittle Emily: Cairn
five songs for SATB choir (SATB)
Doolittle Emily: Cairn
five songs for SATB choir (SATB)
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About
Cairn is a collection of choral pieces about stones and fossils found in Scotland, based on poetry by Perthshire-based writer and artist Dawn Wood. This is my third collaboration with Dawn: I really enjoy working with her, both because of her vividly evocative poetry and because of a joyful and open creative process. Each of the poems can be understood metaphorically, but also describes an actual encounter Dawn has had with a found stone. Much of my music is based on sounds, processes, or ideas from the natural world, but I typically focus on the ephemeral or transient – a birdsong, wind, rain. For these pieces I really enjoyed tuning into the much longer timescales of stones – their quiet steadiness as ideas, species, and even geographies come and go. Cairn was commissioned by the McEwen Bequest for the Glasgow University Chapel Choir, conducted by Katy Lavinia Cooper.
QUARTZ
Inner fire
makes lucid glass
that speaks
of tetrahedrons;
flame’s message
and transmission,
direct and fast,
perfectly aligned –
as heart to heart
and mind to mind
and fist to grasp
FOSSIL
I dwell in loss,
a shell of what I was,
a bivalve, petrified and pale.
My hinge, the centre of the pebble,
I am a door to the past,
a butterfly, cast
against a flinty sky.
Look back
and turn with me.
CHALCEDONY
On the wintry shingle, waxy chalcedony,
with a pocket of absent calcite,
your iron-tight hold on a honey glow;
on the lonely shore you might have stayed,
but your diamond-shape of agate
catches my eye.
OLD RED SANDSTONE
Once upon a riverbed,
once upon a delta-stage,
a flood plane grew a skin of rust,
as red as red; before it folded,
scooped and quarried, lost
to palaces and echoes, arches.
HOW A STONE REACHED HEAVEN
I dropped it in the night
and heard: no need to hold so tight
everything you need is yours,
set already with the stars
Poetry © Dawn Wood, 2025
Music @ Emily Doolittle 2025
Contents
- Doolittle Emily: Cairn
