Illuminating Libraries

My latest radio play ‘The Lamp’ goes out on BBC Radio Four on 14th December, and has special status as ‘Play Of The Week’ which means that it will also be available as a podcast from Friday 16th for seven days.

It was recorded on location at Perthshire’s charming Library of Innerpeffray at the beginning of November, and I’m only now shuffling the paperwork around, deciding what to keep, what to discard, where to file it. But it’s interesting to look over the lengthy process of proposal and development in the scraps of paper, the notebooks, the handwritten and successive typed manuscripts, with Director Eilidh McCreadie’s helpful notes, which finally led to the official script sent out to all involved by the BBC.

I’ve been enchanted with Innerpeffray for a long time, Scotland’s first public lending library set on a bend of the river Earn. Founded in 1680, it epitomises Scotland’s Enlightenment, and a belief in the power of books to civilise and democratise, to illuminate the spirit, after a period of terrible violence. It proved ‘the urge for education amongst the lowliest of country folk’ and is more recently a magnet for literary tourists rather than a lending library. I’d wanted to write something set there for a long time, though I hadn’t thought of it being a radio play.

It chimed though, with a visit to Kenya in early 2009. I’d been intending to go the previous year but was prevented by the post-election violence which ravaged the country, leaving over 1,000 dead and thousands displaced. I was going there to visit friend and PEN colleague Philo Ikonya, who had stood in that election. Several things became apparent as I visited various towns and villages with her and talked to people. They included a burning desire for peace, political freedom, and tolerance; and a hunger for books and reading which by and large remained un-met. We visited Kisumu, in the west of Kenya, and ‘Obama’s’ nearby village Kogelo, at the time of his inauguration. We had hoped to sell the book which Philo had written for children about Obama’s Kenyan origins. We spent the inauguration day surrounded by children, and often adults, devouring the pages of the book. But in truth it was unthinkable for any of these ‘country folk’ to buy a copy, or even get access to one to borrow, a situation reflected all over sub-Saharan Africa where books are so precious they might be wrapped in plastic and kept on a shelf rather than read.

And so, the parallels began to form in my mind. Along with them came the character of a young enthusiastic Kenyan librarian from the Kisumu area, who is exploring British libraries on a study visit with Book Aid International, and becomes enchanted himself by Innerpeffray. This enchantment, coupled with his fear of the forthcoming election in 2012 at home, fuel a reluctance to leave. When he sees a woman – Elspeth, a widow from a nearby farm – crossing the river to the library at a ford used by the library’s past borrowers, he is reminded of journeys on foot at home, and begins to entice her into books herself. But he is dealing with an antiquarian book collection kept largely behind glass, and so hangs the story…

It was a great joy and privilege to record on location – hearing the gasp from the actors as they walked into the high-ceilinged room lined with leather bound books that I had tried to conjure with words. And as ever, it’s a fantastic learning experience as a writer to hear how the actors interpret your words – the nuance provided by a question mark; the trip-up of unnatural speech; the finding of humour or pathos where you had not seen it yourself.

The play has happened to coincide with a time of great concern for access to libraries here, and so another contemporary chime was set up. Meanwhile in Kenya, efforts are being made to broaden access to books through the mobile libraries (including bicycle and camel-driven) of the Kenya National Libraries Service. Especially in the conflict-ridden Rift Valley, some libraries are being cultivated as places which can provide a civilised and tolerant meeting place for people on opposing sides in the 2008 troubles.

Three wonderful books in their turn helped me with this project – Arthur Herman’s ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’; ‘First Light’, a gorgeous limited edition history of Innerpeffray by George Chamier; and Alberto Manguel’s ‘The Library of Night’. I’ll leave the last word with him:

‘As repositories of history or sources for the future, as guides or manuals for difficult times, as symbols of authority past and present, the books in a library stand for more than their collective contents…’

Treasures in Sixty Two Words

Saturday 3rd December sees the launch of '26Treasures', another quirky partnership project from the 26 Writers' collective, this time with the National Museum of Scotland. (see last post for another 26 challenge!) Sister projects are also going on in Wales and Northern Ireland.

The launch will bring together for Treasure Chatter most of the 26 writers who have been randomly matched with 26 museum objects. Together they tell Scotland's history, and the writers are diverse as the objects, from poets and novelists (such as Alexander McCall Smith, James Robertson, Sara Sheridan) to screenwriters, journalists and academics. One of the particularly challenging aspects of the task was to write about each object, in whatever form, in exactly 62 words!

I was matched with ‘The Coigrich’, the ‘crozier shrine’ of Saint Fillan, an Irish missionary active in Glendochart in the early 8th Century, on display in the Museum’s Kingdom of the Scots gallery.

The writing process is always a bit mysterious, but my mystery object turned out to have its origins just up the road from me, and had me stomping along the West Highland Way between Crianlarich and Tyndrum to discover more about the places associated with the Saint.

The elaborate shrine in the shape of a crozier handle dates from the 15th century but with earlier elements including a crystal believed to have come from the original crozier. The Dewar family were its hereditary keepers, and in 1818 Archibald Dewar emigrated to Canada and took it with him. It was returned to Scotland in 1877 by his grandson. The Coigrich had an almost magical potency in a cult of people who believed it to have healing powers for their cattle.

I did a fair bit of research but the 62 word limit was a wonderful creative restriction, forcing me to choose one theme, or 'story' from many potentials. One of the things that intrigued me about the Coigrich, was that even when it left the country, Canadian Highlanders still sought it out to help their sick cattle. Such was the belief in its power over centuries. This is where I decided to focus, and then to try and crystallise language down to some essential images.

Since completing this piece of work, I've found the rigour of finding those 62 words has helped me elsewhere - to be spare, to be ruthless, and find the sharpest expression. This kind of compression is perhaps more common to poetry, a form I feel I should try my hand at more often for the energy and discipline it brings to other forms of writing.

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to experiencing the fresh perspective that the writers should bring collectively to these objects and the stories they tell. Treasure indeed.

Turning litter into literature?

I've always been intrigued by the fragments of stories that you come across as scribbles on paper - a shopping list for a party; an unfinished love letter; a message passed surreptitiously from hand to hand during a boring meeting. So when I saw on the '26' writers' website that Andy Hayes was proposing to distribute 26 of the handwritten scraps he's collected over two years from the streets of London, I put my name in the hat. And it was duly drawn...

When my scrap (above) arrived, I had 26 days to write a short story that included the message, or was inspired by it. With quite a lot of other things on my plate, and much less of a personal message than I'd anticipated, I had to beat off panic! I've written before about the length of time I take to write a short story from genesis to completion, with all the layers bedding in, and a purpose emerging over multiple drafts. I did not have the luxury this time. But part of my reason for taking it on was because I sometimes find it useful to have external prompts, deadlines, restrictions imposed, in order to make sure that I write something. And so I did.

A new story will be appearing on the 'throw-away-lines' website each day between 25th November and 11th December, each inspired by a random piece of litter. And what diversity!

As for mine... (do take a look)...on this occasion I can assure you that, yes, it's rubbish, and be proud of it!

Festival Season

Two weeks and two festivals. The first was the Biggar Little Festival where I returned to Brownsbank Cottage, last home to Christopher Grieve (poet Hugh MacDiarmid) and his wife Valda Trevlyn. I was writer in residence there for three years from 2002 -5 and despite an absence of six years, I felt immediately at home in its two tiny rooms with condensation clouded windows and the idiosyncratic collections of books, trinkets, pipes and wally dogs.

I ran a workshop at the cottage with the group pictured above, and decided to invite close attention to objects. NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) recently ran a 'Writing on Location' project in which writers worked with the collections of various writers' houses, now museums. I decided to try out some of the activities described in NAWE magazine's issue 54, in particular an activity Mario Petrucci ran at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.

First of all we each chose an object and wrote a quick list of its features - observable or known. With a trip to Cornwall coming up, it was Valda's Cornish flag that immediately grabbed my attention. I'd always been drawn to the melancholy of her separation from her beloved homeland. So my list went something like:

black with a white cross

pinned to the blue door with rusty drawing pins

faded by sun

it came here with Valda, the nationalist

etc

Then we made a list of those abstract words for emotion or concept that often haunt our writing and obscure or flatten meaning: beauty, hope, fear, etc.

The trick was then to see what happened if we matched the abstract words with the concrete description. The result was sometimes curious, accidental and intuitive. For example, my object resonated well with 'ageing' and also 'homesickness'.

'Homesickness is a sun-faded flag that was black, and is now greying, with a white cross. It's been pinned to a door six hundred miles from its homeland for the last fifty years.'

Later that day I was reading in the delightful intimacy of the Atkinson Pryce Bookshop.

The next stop was the Dundee Literary Festival where I was reading with Meaghan Delahunt. It was wonderful to be part of an excellent programme of novelists, poets, life writers, who attracted good audiences right through from 9am! Particularly striking was the session with Sarah Gabriel who has written lyrically and bravely about a battle with cancer and how it led her to unlock the memory of her own mother in 'Eating Pomegranates'.

bad news for the short story

I was all in a warm glow about the short story's radiance on the radio after having one of my stories broadcast in June (see my last post), and not least because it was chosen for Pick of the Week. So, I was dismayed to discover this week that the new BBC Radio Four controller Gwyneth Williams, has decided to reduce the story reading slot to ONE a week (it used to be every weekday).

I know how well loved these story slots are by writers and by listeners alike - fifteen minutes of transportation through voice and words. We are the envy of the literary world.

Cries of anguish and protest are being orchestrated, both in the e-petition (below) and through the Society of Authors to which you can add your voice. It's hoped that a question will be put to Gwyneth Williams about this on Radio Four's Feedback programme this Friday, 29th July.

I couldn't summarise the issue better than James Robertson has in his comment on National Short Story Week's e-petition:

"This does seem an incredibly retrograde step, and particularly ill-judged since Radio 4 is one of the very few media outlets which can demonstrate a truly excellent record in supporting and promoting the short story as a literary form. It seems to me that radio is THE pre-eminent medium for the short story form. There should be more short stories, not fewer, on radio. The 15-minute story, read on radio, is perfectly suited for our current times of busy lives, multi-tasking and shortened attention spans. It is also, in relative terms as far as the creative arts are concerned, very produce.

"Looking at this from a Scottish perspective, I have a horrible sense of déjà vu. For many years Radio Scotland carried an excellent morning slot, five days a week, called Storyline. This was axed in 2000 after a hugely successful and varied eight years. Its demise as the only literary strand then running on Radio Scotland coincided almost precisely with a general dumbing-down of the station. Ironically, Radio Scotland is beginning to show an interest in developing literary and book-based programmes again, including broadcasting occasional short stories. But there is no question that, to my mind, the regular broadcasting of short stories is one mark of an intelligent and creative radio service. It would be appalling if Radio 4 chooses this moment to ditch its honourable and long association with the short story form."

The Horizon Pool on Radio Four

Britain's' most northerly 'Lido', the sea-water Trinkie pool near Wick, established in a fit of healthiness in the 1930s, is the setting for my story 'The Horizon Pool', read on BBC Radio Four's Afternoon Reading on Thursday June 9th.

Commissioned as part of a themed series of stories about outdoor swimming, two very different Lido stories by Michelle Roberts and Stella Duffy (both great treats) will feature on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Mine is certainly the chilliest! I've walked past the Trinkie many times and in many weathers, and still never seen a swimmer in it, even at its most inviting.

Wick and area intrigues me. It has a great sense of ancient history in its brochs and castles, and more recent industrial history in its once-thronged herring harbours. Always elemental, empty, and rather sad, it suited the journey of the teenage character in my story very well.

You can find some of my photos of Wick's ghost words here.

Writing Huts and Houses

I've been lucky enough to spend two consecutive weeks recently in houses dedicated to words and writing: Tŷ Newydd in Wales and Moniack Mhor in the Scottish Highlands. Each is distinct in feel, position and location, Tŷ Newydd, once home to Lloyd George, a white house gracing a lawn looking out over Cardigan Bay; and Moniack Mhor a croft house clinging onto a gusty hilltop in Invernessshire. But both provide a calm and creative atmosphere which gets imaginations whirring and pens scribbling (or keyboards chittering). Both houses offer residential writing courses, (and it's worth knowing they also have bursaries that can be applied for to help with costs). I was at Tŷ Newydd to tutor a short story course with Sara Maitland with a grand group of writers: an intimate, hard-working, serious and hilarious week. At Moniack Mhor I was working each day with a different group of children from local primary schools, exploring the wildlife of Abriachan Forest in the mornings and capturing some of the wonder into words in the afternoons. The sense of application was palpable in both locations, and in long, light evenings at Moniack, I plugged into the creative breezes and wrote at this gorgeous window desk myself.

It raises the question for me of how the location of the writer affects the writing. Are some places better for the playful hatching of ideas (a busy cafe perhaps?), some for consolidated writing, some for revision? I've recently become a trustee of a piece of community-owned land close to home - a hill, Dun Coillich, that rises up one of the high flanks of Schiehallion. A hut is perched on its lower slopes, and it seems to call out for a writer to occupy it. Perhaps at certain stages, the view would be too much of a distraction, but I will be climbing that hill to it, inspired by thoughts of great writers who've famously made creative retreats in huts. I have to confess my own custom-built writing hut appeals to me, though mine would have to a) be heated, and b) rotate during the day to catch the natural light, just as George Bernard Shaw's did.