Last Living Writer at Brownsbank Cottage?

There's a lovely piece on Radio Scotland's 'Book Cafe' today (and an audio slideshow on the website) featuring James Robertson re-visiting Brownsbank Cottage near Biggar, last home to poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve). The two room cottage was preserved after his wife, Valda's death in 1989, and has functioned as a living memorial through a writing fellowship for the last 17 years. James was the first fellow, I was the fifth, and Carl MacDougall is just finishing his tenure as the last. The funding from South Lanarkshire Council has been cut. This is a very sad day.

I found it hugely nostalgic to see the photos of a place where I stayed and wrote and ran writing groups and readings for three years. Its saturation in poetry, pipe smoke, and Valda's feisty Cornish personality has acted as a wonderful literary focus for so many people over so many years. And as James says in the programme, it's certainly not only of local significance, but national. Let's hope we jointly muster the vision to keep the place alive.

Photo above of myself with the portrait of Valda taken by Gerry Cambridge, the Third Brownsbank Writing Fellow.

Brownsbank - an anthology

This humble cottage, Brownsbank, thirty miles south of Edinburgh was the home of poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve) from 1951 until his death in 1978, and his wife, Valda Trevlyn Grieve, until hers in 1989. During their occupation the cottage became a literary pilgrimage - visited by Ginsberg and Yevtushenko, amongst others. Afterwards it was preserved by the Biggar Museums Trust and a series of writers took fellowships based there, of which I was one from 2002-5.

Many visitors to the cottage have been inspired to write about the experience and the resonant sense of its past residents - the literary lion, the feisty Cornish wife, the infamous mice. And now, some of these writings have been collected in an anthology which collectively conjure the cottage, its occupants, the surrounding hills. Amongst the writers are James Robertson, Elizabeth Burns, Bill Headdon who comes from Valda's beloved Bude, and poet Michael Collier, who visited MacDiarmid from Maryland in 1976.

I was always intrigued by Valda's room in the cottage, her famous red hair and her part in the poet's life and success. In 2005, my play about her, The Best Snow for Skiing, was broadcast on Radio Four, researched by talking to people who knew her and by reading her letters to her husband (now collected in a book by Beth Junor, Scarcely Ever Out of My Thoughts). I'm proud that a short extract of my play appears in this new anthology. Gerry Cambridge's photo of me with Valda's portrait at Brownsbank in 2005 can be found on his website.

The anthology is available from Brownsbank Cottage Committee for £7.99.