February 26th


Tickets are now available for the staged reading of my translation of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children which will be held at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow on Saturday April 5th. The event will begin at 7.45 pm and will be with professional actors directed by Tam Dean Burn. Tickets £3 can be booked online or by telephone here

The book of my translation has now been brought to publication by Smokestack Books. Copies from the first week of March will be able to be bought from the publisher's website and I will put the link here in the journal when that happens.

 

February 16th

puirweelamb

February 15th


I have put up the excerpts of my verse sequence so far on the current situation regarding Westminster and Scotland here 

 

 

February 13th 

At last, after two years of political vacuity from politicians and journalists in Scotland; of ubiquitous displays of rhetorical posturing and counterposturing; the debate about Scottish independence has begun. 

It is nothing to do with “self” determination, and nothing to do with imperialism; nothing to do with “accents of the mind”, nothing to do with the Scottish Enlightenment—which happened after the Act of Union; nothing to do with whether Protestantism and Presbyterianism represented the triumph of lateral diffused democracy over hierarchical centralised Catholicism—though that is a matter worthy of thought.   

It is nothing to do with “the Scottish character”, nothing to do with a “desire for fairness”. It is nothing to do with gender, nothing to do with “the Nordic model”. It is nothing, even, to do with “the people of Scotland”, whoever those are, or the country of Scotland—a country which will exist and does exist as an independent topographical entity, with culturally distinct history and  traditions as all countries have. No-one is disputing that Scotland is a country.

But the Chancellor George Gideon Osborne has finally dragged even the amorphous spineless principle-less Labour Party with him to a publicly shared position; that the debate, as any on a national independence must be unless it is a potpourri of irrelevances: the debate is on the organisation of state governance—and that, in the twenty first century, means an argument about the nature and provision of capital . 

So the debate about Scottish “independence” has finally begun. And at last I am genuinely interested—now that I no longer feel alone.  

 

 

January 31st

meg on the reformation

 

January 27th


The magazine Post interviewed me about a month ago and the interview has now gone online here

 

 

January 22nd


Things planned for March to June.  

 

March 14th   Reading  with Sean Burn, Julie Johnstone, Luke Hall, part of series of Caesura readings Artisan Bar London Road Edinburgh.

March 20th  Swedenborg Hall Bloomsbury Way London. Reading with poet Nicholas Johnson and John Healy author The Grass Arena

April 5th   Staged reading of my translation of Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children, Tron Theatre Glasgow.

April 6th.  Staged reading excerpts from my translation of Mother Courage with discussion including myself and Tam Dean Burn about the play and current military politics. Mitchell Theatre Glasgow. 

May 28th  or 29th Giving a talk at a University of Glasgow Postgraduate conference called Protest . Beginning of details with call for papers here 

June 29th   Reading at  Shore Poets venue Edinburgh. 

 

 

January 1st


Self-determination in art.  Independence of mind.  Nationality an irrelevance. 

 

 

2013   

  

December 30th

 

alex xmas 2014

 

 Photograph of grandson Alex with me on Xmas day. 

 

 

 

 


 

December 24th

seasons greetings

 

 

December 22nd

Tom Raworth’s ongoing “notes” page on his website is always worth checking, and some of the old work he has been putting up recently is for me a delight. I think for instance of the two artist sketch pads he filled about thirty years ago that he has put up as free pdf downloads. It’s so great that material like this, which I think of as being the intimate and inventive spirit of poetry itself, is now through the internet able to be made available to all by the artist simply sitting at home, no publisher, no hassle, no “Oh we can’t possibly produce that without great expense.” The downloads are there in the entries for December 17th and 13th. If you haven’t been to Tom Raworth’s notes page here before, it’s worth a long browse .

 

 

December 21st

stamp album with text

 

stamp album 2

 

 

December 19th

Xmas day present 1958 from my brother Eric: signed copy of Passed to You  autobiography of Celtic player Charlie Tully. 

charlie tully

 

Published nine years before Celtic won the European Cup, among things of note now is Tully’s description of the weekly wage in 1958 when Celtic along with Rangers were the best-paid team in Scotland. “My payslip and the payslip of every first team player at Parkhead is £16.” It went up to £19 if they won, and £17.50 if they drew. Tully says “the average wage of many labourers I know is £10; with overtime they can make it £15.” But Celtic players had to look smart and do things in the public eye. “After taxation, food, clothes and shoes (for the children as well as yourself) rent, light, gas, smokes and entertainment, the men who are cheered and lauded on that glamourous football field are probably in as much of a financial struggle as anyone else.... Most of the fans think footballers are loaded down with money. They couldn’t be more wrong.” Tully said the players’ union wasn’t strong enough. 

 

 

 

December 10th

Asked to send a preface to my version of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children that Smokestack are publishing in 2014, I have sent this.

brecht intro 1

brecht intro 2

 

 

 

 


 

December 5th

Some time ago the Derry poet Paul Laughlin emailed my website with a collection of poems he was gathering for publication. He had dedicated one to myself, a political poem using the exam question scenario as conceptual frame.

I liked the poem and the collection overall: its spareness, intellectual-emotional feeling, and the sense of a writer in dialogue with themself in language towards the concluded object; not somebody setting out with a conclusion to lay it on you or fit an object into it. A sense of integrity in art in other words, which is always refreshing.

Now that the collection has been published I asked Paul Laughlin for permission to put a couple of the poems up in the journal here. Not as claiming to be the best in the book, just as two examples of aspects, political and personal, the book is able to present. I thank him for permission. 

paul laughlin poems

Paul Laughlin

 

 Paul Laughlin’s The New Accord  is published by Lapwing Publications of Belfast. You can buy it as a downloaded ebook for £5 or have a hard copy sent you for £10 here

 

 


 


journal entry

 

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