SALT, publisher of my most recent short story collection, The Searching Glance, have been in financial difficulties. Close to the brink, they are clawing their way back through the 'Just One Book' campaign. Readers of short literary fiction and poetry are invited to show their support for small independent publishers of these non-commercial genres by buying one book from Salt's titles. The impact in the press and in £££ has been startling, a testimony to the respect SALT have gained for their niche.
So, just a reminder that buying a copy of The Searching Glance from SALT here will be contributing to the campaign... and there's 33% off until the end of June.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Writing Home: A Scottish PEN initiative to mark Refugee Week (June 15th to 21st 2009)
Scottish PEN has invited poetry and prose from refugees, asylum seekers, and those whose first language is not English to appear alongside the work of a few professional writers who are members of Scottish PEN in an on-line showcase to mark Refugee Week. The writing, inspired by the theme of 'Home', will be posted on both the Scottish Refugee Council and Scottish PEN websites from 15th June 2009.
The collection which has resulted from our invitation provides an introduction to some new writers in Scotland, and reminders of well-known names. This has been an opportunity to highlight the range of writing and writers living in Scotland in a very practical way. We've been especially pleased to encourage the kind of collaboration that enables work from writers for whom English is not their first language to reach a wider readership, and are grateful to those who worked with writers to translate their work. Read this interview on the Scottish Book Trust website to understand how this process worked between Kusay Hussein and Sue Reid Sexton.
Plans are now underway for a regular Scottish PEN on-line literary magazine which will appear on a different theme later this year.
The collection which has resulted from our invitation provides an introduction to some new writers in Scotland, and reminders of well-known names. This has been an opportunity to highlight the range of writing and writers living in Scotland in a very practical way. We've been especially pleased to encourage the kind of collaboration that enables work from writers for whom English is not their first language to reach a wider readership, and are grateful to those who worked with writers to translate their work. Read this interview on the Scottish Book Trust website to understand how this process worked between Kusay Hussein and Sue Reid Sexton.
Plans are now underway for a regular Scottish PEN on-line literary magazine which will appear on a different theme later this year.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Bond, Abigail Bond
I've just finished a project at Pinkie Primary School, Musselburgh, with children's writer Lari Don, funded by the Scottish Book Trust. We had a great time with a P5 class, writing imaginative stories. The class invented a character who would appear in all their stories, one Abigail Bond, story-investigator (see photo). She had some handy character features such as a photographic memory and made herself distinctive with her black fedora hat and a banana always in her pocket. Using the three elements of stories - character, setting and 'plot' - we worked with the children to explore places where some mysterious stories might lie, and then set Abigail onto them, plotting her activities first on storyboards. 
As practice in close observation from a real location, we spent one lesson at a beautiful 17th century doocot more or less in the school grounds. We gave each pupil a lovely hard-backed notebook, as writers deserve, and led them through a series of activities involving the senses (hands on stone, blindfolded) and imagination. the notebooks started to fill. Pigeons clattered in and out of the high loft windows, the air smelt of cut grass and pigeon poo, and the children told us about a Green Lady said to hang around the doocot at night with a small child. I found out later she was believed to be the first wife of the Earl of Dunfermline who died in slightly mysterious circumstances having borne him four daughters and no sons.
The children chose their own locations to write about and examined them in the same way. Then each wrote up their story which they read to an audience of P3s on their final day. The project inspired smiley faces and many interesting comments in the final evaluation, perhaps the best being 'I felt like a writer'. Which was our point.
I found myself intrigued by the doocot and its ancient function in providing protein for the Earl and his family. It was old and mysterious with its locked doors, and still half inhabited by descendants of the originals. The children had been studying Mary Queen of Scots, and a timeline hung across the classroom telling of her adventures and misadventures through the years. My imagination started to grow a story out of these collisions, and here it is:
The locked doocot of Pinkie
As Abigail Bond approached the doocot, something started clapping above her head. She pulled the black fedora hat low over her eyes and hurried on. Her long shadow stretched ahead of her towards the square-shaped building that sat alone in the school field. The windows of the loft stared back at her like two dark eyes.
When she reached the doocot, her hands grazed the rough wall and she could feel the great age of the building. It was as if the stories were vibrating in its pink stone. The sudden clapping of wings above her head made her heart jump into her mouth.
‘I’m not afraid of you!’ she shouted up at the pigeons. They were whirring their wings as loudly as helicopter blades, as they flew in and out of the loft windows. They should be going to bed, she thought.
‘Coo, coo’, they answered.
‘It’s because of you that the Council are going to knock this doocot down’, she accused them.
People had been complaining that it smelt of poo. They said it was dirty and unhealthy. But she’d been to the museum, and the P5 children at the school had told her some amazing things about the doocot. She knew there were stories in it. She was a story-investigator, she had to find them out before it was too late!
She dragged an old gate out of the woods and leant it against the wall. She was an athletic girl, and climbed it like a ladder, higher and higher towards the window. The clattering pigeons came closer now, flapped cold air onto her face while their wings batted at her hat. Like fighter jets they dive-bombed her and pushed her off balance.
Now it seemed that instead of their annoying, ‘coo, coo’, they were saying, ‘boo, boo!’ and then, ‘shoo, shoo!’
‘They’re guarding something,’ she told herself.
But what could it be?
At the museum, they told her that pigeons were kept here to be killed for the Earl of Dumfermline’s supper. But she felt sure there was more to it than this.
When she reached the window, a wall of pecking beaks stopped her from looking in. She cried out as she felt a claw scratch her cheek. The hurricane that their wings were beating up blew a terrible stink into her face, up her nose. It even seemed to wriggle into her ears. She put an arm up to protect herself.
‘Shoo, shoo!’ hooted loud in one ear, and then in the other what sounded like, ‘Our fathers flew for you!’
She looked down. The ground was a long way below, frost-hard and dark. The gate wobbled underneath her. Her legs trembled and her hands sweated, slipping on the gate. Then the gate lurched under her and she dived forward, through a curtain of feather and stink, into the dark. Bump.
She sat up in the loft, spread her hands beside her and felt twigs, moss, something sticky.
‘Nests,’ she thought.
The pigeons flapped and pecked and scratched around her in the dark, and she had to swim breast-stroke in the air to keep them away. She spluttered on all the feathers she was breathing in.
‘Our grampas flew for you,’ she heard again. And then, another muttered, ‘You ate our grampas and our grandmas too,’ and then, ‘You used our poo so your gardens grew!’ She knew that all these things were true, but not any more. That was the Earl of Dunfermline hundreds of years ago, she thought, the man who’d built this Doocot.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘There’s no point in being angry with me.’ But they carried on their attack.
She searched in her pockets for something she could calm them with, and that was when she felt the banana – the food she never travelled without. She scattered pieces of it around her, and gradually the flapping settled.
‘Phew’, she breathed. ‘Phew, phew.’
‘Coo, coo,’ the very hungry pigeons replied.
Now her arms were free, she reached for the torch in her story-investigator’s belt. The first thing she saw was a beautifully woven nest around which stood a sentry of three puff-chested pigeons. The torchlight glinted on something in the nest. It was red and silky, tied with a bow of ancient-looking ribbon.
‘Is that human hair?’ she asked.
‘Coo, coo,’ one of the sentries replied. ‘Our grandmas flew for you. To Borthwick and back, they flew and flew.’
‘How many years ago?’ she asked.
‘Four hundred and forty two.’
She calculated quickly. ‘1567, Borthwick.’ Her photographic memory whipped through the papers she’d seen at the museum. ‘Got it! Mary Queen of Scots. In 1567 she escaped from Borthwhick Castle disguised as a pageboy, didn’t she? She shaved her hair off, and you and your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have guarded a lock of it ever since.’
The pigeons jostled, nodded, puffed up their chests with pride.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told them. ‘I won’t let you lose your home. It’s not that smelly, once you get used to it.’
At nine o’clock the next morning, she burst into the East Lothian Council office, and marched up to the man on the desk who was reading a newspaper.
He looked up, a little surprised to see a girl with a hat covered in grey feathers, a long scratch down one cheek, and some green slime smeared on her coat sleeve.
‘Now young lady, you can’t just march in here and expect…’
‘Bond,’ she said. ‘Abigail Bond. Story-investigator.’
He was silent. She spread her hands onto the desk and stared into the man’s eyes. ‘Pinkie Doocot,’ she said. ‘There’s a very important story there.’
After she told him, the man straightened his tie, and said, ‘Well, young lady, it seems you have made quite a discovery.’
‘So you won’t knock it down?’
He shuffled his feet. Something moved behind the man’s head, and Abigail heard a distant clapping. She looked through the office window and saw a squadron of pigeons fly past.
The man turned to look too. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, and turned back to her, almost smiling. ‘Certainly not!’ he said. ‘We’ll not be knocking it down’.
And they both watched through the window as the pigeons looped the loop.
The End
Written by Linda Cracknell for Primary 5 at Pinkie Primary School. With thanks to the children for their help with character, setting and the title.
As Abigail Bond approached the doocot, something started clapping above her head. She pulled the black fedora hat low over her eyes and hurried on. Her long shadow stretched ahead of her towards the square-shaped building that sat alone in the school field. The windows of the loft stared back at her like two dark eyes.
When she reached the doocot, her hands grazed the rough wall and she could feel the great age of the building. It was as if the stories were vibrating in its pink stone. The sudden clapping of wings above her head made her heart jump into her mouth.
‘I’m not afraid of you!’ she shouted up at the pigeons. They were whirring their wings as loudly as helicopter blades, as they flew in and out of the loft windows. They should be going to bed, she thought.
‘Coo, coo’, they answered.
‘It’s because of you that the Council are going to knock this doocot down’, she accused them.
People had been complaining that it smelt of poo. They said it was dirty and unhealthy. But she’d been to the museum, and the P5 children at the school had told her some amazing things about the doocot. She knew there were stories in it. She was a story-investigator, she had to find them out before it was too late!
She dragged an old gate out of the woods and leant it against the wall. She was an athletic girl, and climbed it like a ladder, higher and higher towards the window. The clattering pigeons came closer now, flapped cold air onto her face while their wings batted at her hat. Like fighter jets they dive-bombed her and pushed her off balance.
Now it seemed that instead of their annoying, ‘coo, coo’, they were saying, ‘boo, boo!’ and then, ‘shoo, shoo!’
‘They’re guarding something,’ she told herself.
But what could it be?
At the museum, they told her that pigeons were kept here to be killed for the Earl of Dumfermline’s supper. But she felt sure there was more to it than this.
When she reached the window, a wall of pecking beaks stopped her from looking in. She cried out as she felt a claw scratch her cheek. The hurricane that their wings were beating up blew a terrible stink into her face, up her nose. It even seemed to wriggle into her ears. She put an arm up to protect herself.
‘Shoo, shoo!’ hooted loud in one ear, and then in the other what sounded like, ‘Our fathers flew for you!’
She looked down. The ground was a long way below, frost-hard and dark. The gate wobbled underneath her. Her legs trembled and her hands sweated, slipping on the gate. Then the gate lurched under her and she dived forward, through a curtain of feather and stink, into the dark. Bump.
She sat up in the loft, spread her hands beside her and felt twigs, moss, something sticky.
‘Nests,’ she thought.
The pigeons flapped and pecked and scratched around her in the dark, and she had to swim breast-stroke in the air to keep them away. She spluttered on all the feathers she was breathing in.
‘Our grampas flew for you,’ she heard again. And then, another muttered, ‘You ate our grampas and our grandmas too,’ and then, ‘You used our poo so your gardens grew!’ She knew that all these things were true, but not any more. That was the Earl of Dunfermline hundreds of years ago, she thought, the man who’d built this Doocot.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘There’s no point in being angry with me.’ But they carried on their attack.
She searched in her pockets for something she could calm them with, and that was when she felt the banana – the food she never travelled without. She scattered pieces of it around her, and gradually the flapping settled.
‘Phew’, she breathed. ‘Phew, phew.’
‘Coo, coo,’ the very hungry pigeons replied.
Now her arms were free, she reached for the torch in her story-investigator’s belt. The first thing she saw was a beautifully woven nest around which stood a sentry of three puff-chested pigeons. The torchlight glinted on something in the nest. It was red and silky, tied with a bow of ancient-looking ribbon.
‘Is that human hair?’ she asked.
‘Coo, coo,’ one of the sentries replied. ‘Our grandmas flew for you. To Borthwick and back, they flew and flew.’
‘How many years ago?’ she asked.
‘Four hundred and forty two.’
She calculated quickly. ‘1567, Borthwick.’ Her photographic memory whipped through the papers she’d seen at the museum. ‘Got it! Mary Queen of Scots. In 1567 she escaped from Borthwhick Castle disguised as a pageboy, didn’t she? She shaved her hair off, and you and your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have guarded a lock of it ever since.’
The pigeons jostled, nodded, puffed up their chests with pride.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told them. ‘I won’t let you lose your home. It’s not that smelly, once you get used to it.’
At nine o’clock the next morning, she burst into the East Lothian Council office, and marched up to the man on the desk who was reading a newspaper.
He looked up, a little surprised to see a girl with a hat covered in grey feathers, a long scratch down one cheek, and some green slime smeared on her coat sleeve.
‘Now young lady, you can’t just march in here and expect…’
‘Bond,’ she said. ‘Abigail Bond. Story-investigator.’
He was silent. She spread her hands onto the desk and stared into the man’s eyes. ‘Pinkie Doocot,’ she said. ‘There’s a very important story there.’
After she told him, the man straightened his tie, and said, ‘Well, young lady, it seems you have made quite a discovery.’
‘So you won’t knock it down?’
He shuffled his feet. Something moved behind the man’s head, and Abigail heard a distant clapping. She looked through the office window and saw a squadron of pigeons fly past.
The man turned to look too. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, and turned back to her, almost smiling. ‘Certainly not!’ he said. ‘We’ll not be knocking it down’.
And they both watched through the window as the pigeons looped the loop.
The End
Written by Linda Cracknell for Primary 5 at Pinkie Primary School. With thanks to the children for their help with character, setting and the title.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Kenya's Son
The village of Kogelo in western Kenya would now like to update the name of its secondary school to take account of recent world events. From the bus travelling west out of Nairobi into the streets of steamy Kisumu on Lake Victoria, we heard, along with the distinctive 'tuk tuk' of the Paiggio auto rickshaws, the streets drumming with the words 'Obama' and 'Kogelo'. My friend Philo, probably because she was with me, was hailed as 'Michelle' in the streets, taken for a black American. In Jomo Kenyatta park, huge banners and monstrous screens were erected, and a line of people directed the hose of the fire engine to damp down the loose red earth in preparation for crowds whilst children leaped in and out of the spray.'Kogelo?' asked a matatu minibus driver, leaning from his window, hand cupped upwards in the usual gesture of query for business. 'Yes we can'. Kogelo was the place to be on 20th January, and we crossed the equator to get there. For a moment it seemed that the world's attention turned onto this tiny place on a high red dust plain between boulder strewn hills and the Lake.
The party brimmed with pride and happiness. 'You're welcome,' said elderly women and men holding leather-skinned hands out to me. 'Congratulations,' I replied. They stood near the staged seating, hats and dresses of dignitaries brought to the Kenya Tourist Board stand from where a programme of speeches and performances could be watched. A flour company gave away free calendars to an ever-lengthening queue as if it was flour itself that was being given - the much-disputed maize. A company from nearby Kericho trialled iced tea.
A camel with knobbly knees was regularly brought crumpling to the ground and re-erected to be led through the crowd with stiff faced children lurching on its back, to the screams of the parting crowd and children pursuing it on the ground. A few traders from Nairobi had brought Obama khangas, hats, T-shirts. Phone companies flashed brightly coloured logos and shirts. Village women sat quietly on the ground selling their usual piles of peanuts for a few shillings. Amongst this and the local football match, amidst the atmosphere of a village fete, an ABC reporter spent the afternoon standing on the bonnet of a land cruiser with a camera trained on him, a producer scurrying at ground level with phones and instructions. Music throbbed from local radio PA systems, and some boys swayed from the branches of the highest tree to get an overview.
We were there to sell and promote Philo Ikonya's book for young readers 'How a Kenyan boy became American President'. We spread them on the bonnet of our taxi. I played the hawker and circulated the party encouraging people to take a look. Children crowded in, devouring the words from the page with shy hunger, but 200 shillings (a little under £2) was too much for most to be spending on a book. One boy was wheeling his siblings around on a bicycle. In Form 7 of the local school, he showed persistent interest in the book and was able to answer all Philo's questions about Nelson Mandela. She presented him with a signed copy as a tribute to his brightness and for the message the book should hold for him about fulfilling one's promise however humble one's beginnings. He clutched the book with pride and said, 'It is not easy to find someone who gives you something for free.'
A group of young men called me over, wanting to speak of the new President. 'We expect him to help us a lot. Because he was here with us. Her knows the situation. The life is too rough. We don't have food. We don't have water. We don't have enough fee for the education.' I nod and agree, sympathise, and ask, 'Are you expecting a lot from yourselves as well?' to which spokesman, Bernard replied, 'Correct', but went on to reiterate what they expect from the President, the son of this village. 'Congratulations,' I said to them. 'Welcome, welcome,' they said. 'Feel at home. Feel at home. And even, if you think so, we can even marry you.' After which came hand slaps and shrieks of laughter. I mingled back into the crowd, moving between the pools of music that beat and pushed against each other, moved feet and hips, and fluttered against the tree-hung banners of a smiling black man's face under which were the words 'Congratulations Our Son'.
We packed the books up and returned to Kisumu where bookshops and local NGOs took them more readily than the village could. 'You know,' people told us over and over, 'Kenyans don't really read.' It seemed to me that our exercise had shown something quite different. The children leaning over the car bonnet hungrily turning the pages of the book couldn't have been more eager to read. The real difficulty is getting the books to them.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Philo Ikonya released
Philo Ikonya, President of Kenyan PEN, was arrested and beaten by police earlier this week after taking part in a peaceful demonstration outside parliament in Nairobi in protest against hyperinflation and the rising prices of maize flour at a time of impending famine in Kenya.
I have now heard that she has been released, appeared in court yesterday and was released on bail along with the two others arrested with her. She is in hospital and is making a good recovery from the injuries sustained during the police assault.
Her case has apparently received a lot of media attention in Kenya and she is receiving support from Kenyan PEN and local campaigners. She is famous, in words from the Pambazuka social justice network, for she, 'wields her pen with fierce, lyrical intelligence in the global media'. The network of writers which is represented by PEN International will do all they can to offer solidarity, support and practical help so that she can return to strength in her important role and as the inspiring person that she is.
I have now heard that she has been released, appeared in court yesterday and was released on bail along with the two others arrested with her. She is in hospital and is making a good recovery from the injuries sustained during the police assault.
Her case has apparently received a lot of media attention in Kenya and she is receiving support from Kenyan PEN and local campaigners. She is famous, in words from the Pambazuka social justice network, for she, 'wields her pen with fierce, lyrical intelligence in the global media'. The network of writers which is represented by PEN International will do all they can to offer solidarity, support and practical help so that she can return to strength in her important role and as the inspiring person that she is.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
PEN Kenya President arrested
Reports have been reaching me today that friend, writer and PEN colleague, Philo Ikonya, has been arrested outside the Kenyan Parliament during a peaceful protest about the price of maize and the connected corruption scandal. She remains unreleased and without charges. Having just returned from a trip to Kenya in which I spent a great deal of time with Philo, I have witnessed her passion for grassroots change to overcome corruption, an emerging famine, and remaining murmurs of the damaging tribalism which set of post-election violence last year. Her commitment to her country, to freedom of expression and fellow Kenyans is powerful and I know she will always use her great creativity and communication skills to work for justice and empowerment, sometimes, as today, at personal cost. From wearing her protest sackcloth, to talking up a different approach to Valentine's Day, she smiles, talks, inspires others. We're watching you Philo, and sending you strength and the resolution of a rapid release.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Innerpeffray Library
"...that jewel inlaid in the fields of Perthshire,
the reading-room at Innerpeffray - "
from Robert Crawford's poem 'The Digital Library, St Andrews', written for National Poetry Day 2007
Jewel-like and well hidden, this library near Crieff, where I was on Saturday, enchants both with its location on a bend in the River Earn with a Roman road marching past, and by its incredible collection of ancient books. Scotland's oldest free public lending library, it opened here in 1763, and to scan the ledger with the records of the borrowers, where they walked from and what they borrowed, is to appreciate the hunger for knowledge.
Visitors these days can't borrow, but they can browse and whether it's the content of the books or the intrigue of printing, paper-making and binding that draws you in, there's a wealth on offer. The enthusiasm of keepers Colin and Ann Edgar will keep the mysteries opening with match-box sized bibles, unique books covering subjects as diverse as astrology, demonology, chiromancy, spiritualism, war, politics, law, agriculture, horticulture, natural history, history and literature. And in a number of languages. A personal favourite is the "Historie of foure footed beastes" by Edward Topsell, London 1607, from which the Mantichora above is extracted.
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