Guest speaker: Scottish actor & playwright Matthew Zajac, who will be also performing his critically acclaimed play THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS – the first performance of this play in France
I never felt so much
Since I have felt at all
The tingling smell and touch
Of dogrose and sweet briar,
Nettles against the wall,
All sours and sweets that grow
Together or apart
In hedge or marsh or ditch…
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck…
“Muir’s contact with Europe is significant, however, not only in a personal and literary sense, but also in a wider political context which resonates with our own early twenty-first century times. His travels in the 1920s immediately after the end of World War One, and again at the end of World War Two, tell a story of Europe itself at critical points in its history.”
Broad in the beam? More broad in sympathy.
Stiff in the joints? More flexible in mind.
Deaf on the right? New voices from the Left
In politics and art more clearly sound…
The Scottish Novel in 1824
1 July, University of Edinburgh – free
This one-day in-person symposium marks the bicentenary of 1824, an ‘annus mirabilis’ in the history of Scottish fiction that saw the publication of two experimental masterpieces: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner, & Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet.
A multi-day conference is planned for Glasgow in summer 2025 (dates TBD) to mark the quatercentenary of the death of James VI & I. Please register your interest via the online form (NB this is NOT a CFP)
Addendum: we should address the 🐘 in the room… in case of confusion, there is of course a FICTIONAL “John Galt”, created by a very famous American author, whose towering influence on literature still resonates today…
…of course I speak of the late, great Robert E. Howard, whose character “John Galt” appears in the short story “Black Talons”, published in STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES, Dec 1933 (it’s not one of his best, though—stick to #Conan the Barbarian)
…we turned it over, read easily One Pound,
but then the shock of Latin, like a gloss,
Respublica Scotorum, sent across
such ages as we guessed but never found…
—Edwin Morgan, “The Coin”
““The Coin’ … slips infinite riches of cognitive possibility into the reader’s mental pockets”
The Paisley weaver poet & songwriter: celebrating Robert Tannahill
17 May, Royal Society of Edinburgh – free
Dissenting from prevailing notions that label Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) as “sweetly sentimental”, Prof Fred Freeman's lecture positions Tannahill as a major poet who expanded the tradition of British “rationalist” pastoralism.
All translations of literature seem to contain unfortunate mistakes that will probably never be corrected. Here in Leri Price’s translation of Khaled Khalifa’s novel No One Prayed Over Their Graves (a good translation overall), الفتيات السافرات means girls who don’t wear the hijab, not girls who travel. #literature#Arabic#translation
The battle of #Culloden was fought #OTD, 16 April 1746. It has, unsurprisingly, left a significant imprint in the literature & culture of Scotland. A short 🧵
1/8
John Buchan called FLEMINGTON—Violet Jacob’s 1911 novel of the 1745 #Jacobite rising & aftermath—“the best Scots #romantic novel since The Master of Ballantrae”
2/8
“The representation in Gaelic literature of Culloden […] makes a study of that literature, even in translation, a vital corrective to that of more exclusively English or Scottish literature in Scots & English.”
In “Highland Songs of the ’45”, the National Trust for Scotland shares original audio recordings of #Gaelic songs collected by archivist John Lorne Campbell from Canna
My kid didn't like reading "The Fall of the House of Ussher", but I told them not to be too hard on the author because he was just a Poe boy from a Poe family.
A Sense of Place – The Battle for Hearts & Minds in the Scottish Landscape
Reading Scotland with John D. Burns
16 April, free online
This seminar will explore how historic patterns of land ownership & changes in land use have profoundly affected the Highlands of Scotland. The challenge for writers & artists is to capture the imagination of the Scottish people & show what our future could be.
