Poetry Scotland: Newsboard
News Items: Callander Poetry Weekend 2009 | Poor Old Tired Horse exhibition | Adrian Mitchell |
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With SallyE and ColinW now blogging regularly, a lot of our news appears there first,
but we regard our separate blogs as being informal and personal, containing a mix
of news and our opinions on that news, from our different viewpoints. This Newsboard
will continue to contain news that we think will be of interest to Poetry Scotland
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For those who want to follow up our blogs, check out these links:
SallyE's blog is at http://www.desktopsallye.com/
and Colin's blog is at http://colinwill.blogspot.com
Callander Poetry Weekend, 4-th - 6th September 2009
Come to Callander Poetry Weekend 2009, read your poetry and hear current poets from all over Scotland and the South. The programme also includes a Burns Lunch and a Sunday Sailing on the Lady of the Lake.
The programme starts on Friday evening but there will be people here by Thursday evening when there will be informal supper and chat. Friday the shop and garden are available for reading, writing, talking etc
In addition we are delighted to confirm the renowned Itinerant Poetry Librarian from San Francisco will be running her library throughout the weekend from Friday to Sunday.
There will be room for some additional readers until the end of August, so email Sally if you want to join in. Also if I have got anything wrong or put you down for a time you do not want. You will also get a chance to display your books on tables in the hall (Saturday) and ad hoc in the garden and shop.
Friday evening 4 September
Reading session from 6 - 7.30 p.m. with Les Merton, Lucinda Carey and others.
7.30 - 8 p.m. Andrew McCallum and Bridget Khursheed reading to celebrate the Eildon Tree's birthday.
Opening party from 8 p.m. with readers Mike Penney, Morelle Smith, Jean Thewlis, Ian Blake and music to be arranged.
Saturday.5 September
10 -11.40 Kirk Hall. Juliana Geer, Kemal Houghton,
Eileen Carney Hulme, A. C. Clarke and Visiting poets from Jean Sargeant Poetry Group.
Saturday 12 pm Burns Mini-Conference Kirk Hall
(12 am) Catherine Smith Burns and the Stars
(12.20) Fred Woodward Burns and Science
(12.40) Morelle Smith Burns' Star Chart
Saturday 1pm. Burns Lunch. Kirk Hall.
Buffet, allowing informal discussion.
Saturday 2.10 - 4pm. Kirk Hall
Margaret Gillies Brown (Laureate, Poetry Scotland).
Magi Gibson (Makar, Stirling)
Robin Cairns, Chris Powici, Sheila Templeton, Alison Craig, Ian Comrie, Ian Blake.
Saturday 4.20 - 6pm Garden/ Shop
Fred Beake, Sally Evans, Elizabeth Rimmer, amd others.
Red Squirrel authors: Colin Donati, Joanne Cody.
Saturday Evening, Shop
(7.15 - 7.50 Clylevlom: Alistair Paterson and others, Irene Brown,
(8.- 8.50) Les Merton (Poetry Cornwall)
(9 - 9.50) Tessa Ransford, Kevin Cadwallander, Anna Dickie, Itinerant Poetry Librarian.
(10.00 - 11.00) Onya Wick.
Sunday 6th September
An ecological morning
11.- 11.40 Sally Evans talks about bees and about writing about bees
11.40 - 12 Anne Connolly, Adam Parry.
12 - 12.50 Soundscapes. Vivien Jones, Jean Atkin, Jackie Galley and Fiona Russell, poetry performance from "Soundscapes" and "Goosechase"
1.00 Lunch
Sunday afternoon 2.00 - 3.45
Poetry by Ian Russell, Alan Gay, Maureen Weldon, Charlie Gracie, Colin Will, Katie Gracie, Sheena Blackhall (Makar, Aberdeenshire), Magi McGlynn.
Sunday 5 pm Trossachs Pier.
(participants' treat) Sunday Sailing on The Lady of the Lake, Loch Katrine. Cruise 5pm-6pm. Songs from Sheena Blackhall and Magi McGlynn, a very short reading from Scott's The Lady of the Lake, plus a few poems on board subject to timing and at the discretion of the Skipper.
We should all be back in Callander by half past six (or leave direct from Trossachs at 6p.m.)
That's all folks. For travel info, B&B or if you want to be squeezed in the programme, contact Sally. A lift from Edinburgh Sat a.m and back Sunday late evening is currently on offer.
Safety notice: particularly if bringing children, please keep off the edges of the garden ponds, and please take care on the main road between the Kirk Hall and the shop.
You will be glad of a warm jacket if the weather is chilly.
Any tweeters please tweet Callander Poetry. That will also catch Callander Poetry Weekend (you dont need #)
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Onya Wick
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.
17 June – 23 August 2009
Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. is an exhibition that takes an imaginative and expansive look at textbased
art practices from the 1960s to the present day. In particular the exhibition is inspired by the
example of Concrete Poetry, a movement that flowered in the 60s but which is now largely
forgotten. Concrete Poetry explored the graphic potential of language alongside its poetic and literary
possibilities, and so too do the works in this exhibition, which includes works by figures who
emerged in the 60s alongside those of younger, contemporary artists.
Concrete Poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in
conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem. The movement has its roots
in the 1950s, and in separate initiatives by Swiss and Brazilian writers, but it came to wider attention
in the 6os, gaining adherents in many countries and extending into the art world as well as the
literary sphere. The Scottish artist and writer Ian Hamilton Finlay is the most important figure
associated with Concrete Poetry in Britain, and the exhibition takes its title from a periodical that he
ran from 1962 to 1968, and which featured graphic and literary experiments by Finlay alongside
those of other artists and poets. The exhibition includes a number of short texts by Finlay,
reproduced as wall paintings – just one of the ways in which the artist chose to inscribe his work into
the world.
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London.
Adrian Mitchell: an appreciation by Beth Junor, with thoughts from Sally and Colin
Tucked in the back of my copy of Adrian Mitchell’s ‘Greatest Hits’ , signed affectionately, along with his signature cartoon of the smiling dog and the word ‘peace’ , is a review of a reading he gave at Newbury Arts Workshop in 1994. The reviewer says, “....For someone who is popularly known as a political poet, he may have surprised some with such celebration of his love for his family and his constant gratitude for the happy and loving home into which he was born....For anyone of the left, the evening was an affirmation, hearing the words of someone who has continued to speak out, through his poetry, plays and books, of their shared enduring ideals, and the importance of so-called ‘subversives’ standing against conventional political wisdom and the mores of the cynical, shallow and self-seeking culture in which we presently live.” I don’t know whether I kept this clipping of the review as a published record of what we’d already experienced as Adrian Mitchell’s affirmation, or for the curiosity value of the reviewer’s words – the latter much more surprising, since Newbury was the town closest to the women’s peace camp on Greenham Common, where we had been banned from every cafe except one, where we fielded insults from the townsfolk on a daily basis, where we appeared in Court and from where we were sent to Holloway Women’s Prison. Adrian Mitchell, through a statement he wrote at the request of our mutual friends and fellow activists Margaretta D’Arcy & John Arden, supported us when we needed it most, that is, after we had made it clear that our opposition to weapons of mass destruction was a non-aligned opposition (in, of all places, Moscow in 1987). It had been easy to show support for us prior to this – we’d been at number one of the media’s hit parade of causes celebres for a considerable time – but Adrian Mitchell spoke up for us after Moscow, after we’d become the pariahs of the pro-Soviet, anti-American - dominated peace movement. For this I have always held him in high regard. Then, these few years later, giving a poetry reading in Newbury and a workshop in a local school intentionally or unintentionally gave further affirmation to those ‘subversives’ who remained living on the fringe of the Newbury community (the peace camp was still there at the time of his reading and workshop). The Newbury community, perhaps more than any other community in Britain at that time, needed this opportunity to be enriched by listening to those words of affirmation for dissidence. Indeed from the 1990s once the Cold War thawed, the INF Treaty had been signed and Jean and Georgina from the camp won their legal victory over the Greenham Common Byelaws, paving the way for the return of the Common to the community, local opinion did shift and I am certain Adrian Mitchell’s presence, his words that evening, his workshop with the school children, helped achieve this. I am also immensely grateful to Adrian Mitchell as a poet, for showing that, of course, poetry is political. He is a British poet whose poetry gave me ‘permission’ and continues to give me encouragement to write in the way I do. I last saw Adrian Mitchell at the Edinburgh Book Festival, when he was promoting a collection of Paul McCartney’s poetry which he had edited and introduced. This too seemed entirely in keeping with his independent, kind and encouraging actions – I enjoyed the reading immensely and again was grateful for his own poetry. On the title page the exact same quizzical dog cartoon appears along with his signature and the word ‘peace’. I wonder what the little dog means, what its origin is, but perhaps the only thing that matters about it now is that it makes me smile every time I look at it. As such it is another encouragement, a kind of spirit protection for people whose outlook or lives have led them to appreciation of his work. I thought of him again on Saturday (10 th January), when tens of thousands of people marched in London and Edinburgh against the bombing of Gaza, of his famous poem ‘To Whom It May Concern’, You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out, You take the human being and you twist it all about May he rest in peace.
Beth Junor The great Adrian Mitchell died unexpectedly just before Christmas. Dubbed the Shadow Poet Laureate, he was a wonderful poet, whose strong views against war, shared by the population in general, were expressed in poems such as Tell me Lies About Vietnam. He helped to shape modern performance poetry, appearing in the Poetry Olympics with Michael Horovitz, the American Beats, etc. More recently he edited and introduced Paul McCartney's book of poems and songs, again in the face of fierce disapproval from parts of the poetry establishment. His political presence tended to obscure what a very fine poet he was. Adrian practised what he preached about disarmament, as when he gave the Greenham Common women his support and assistance. His death was sudden and shocked his friends, who seemed to include the entire poetry community. Born in Scotland, he went South and made his life there, but he understood Scotland, and regularly visited (recently for StAnza poetry festival). Adrian was 76.
Sally Evans
Colin notes that he first encountered Adrian in Edinburgh in 1962 (he thinks) when Adrian
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