The Heart of Arts Policy

I've just discovered that Michael Russell, the Scottish minister with responsibility for culture, held a meeting with artists yesterday at the Traverse Theatre. This is important stuff for anyone involved or interested in Scotland's cultural life. There's a short video about the event here; it includes reactions to the meeting from Ron Butlin and Margaret Bennett. You can (and should) listen to a podcast of the whole thing here and make up your own mind. Having done so, this artist is encouraged about the current direction of arts policy.

If you don't have time to listen, there is a very good report of the event in The Herald, peppered with quotations from Russell's opening speech and his answers to the audience's questions. The Scotsman, on the other hand, will tell you very little about what he said. It focuses on the constitutional issues raised by the nature of the Scottish block grant, which Russell mentioned once or twice. It won't be hard make your mind up about that difference.

Happy Birthday, Mr Burns

Technically, I've let the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth pass without comment, but I could hardly let it pass without mention, even if a touch belated. I'm not going to regail you with an online immortal memory; I'll simply point you in the direction of one of my favourite pieces of Burns.

I love "A Poet's Welcome to His Love-Begotten Daughter" -- or, in its unbowdlerised title, "He Welcomes his Bastart Wean" -- for a number of reasons. First off, its mixter-maxter of swagger and sweet tenderness. So typically Burns. He can't resist thumbing his nose at convention even as he's expressing how fatherhood has bowled him over.

Secondly, it demonstrates the flexibility of the Standard Habbie (better known, but less accurately so, as the Burns stanza). It's tempting to think of that form as fit only for the satirical and comic poems that Burns so excelled in. After all, it's the stanza of "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "To a Haggis". But, in this poem, it proves itself equal to the task of containing and shaping the conjoined tenderness and bravado. And there's some great rhyming.

Thirdly, giving this as my favourite piece of Burns in a BBC Radio Scotland competition won me a copy of the Linn complete Burns songs recordings! A fantastic set of discs.

At the link above, there's a good reading of it, taken from the BBC's project to record, gradually, all Burns's poems and songs. I'd have wished John Gordon Sinclair to read "faither" instead of "father", but he hits the nail on the head when he uses the fricative in "unsought for", "fought for" and "unwrought for", rightly taking his lead from "dochter".

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Another Burns link, but less striclty Bardic: The Falkirk Antonine Friendship Link will be holding their 2nd Burns Supper on Fri Jan 30th at 7.30 pm, in the Christian Centre, Glebe St, Falkirk - with apropriate music and food. This year's speaker will be Gene Stolzfus, founder and Director Emeritus of Christian Peacemaker Teams. CPT maintain trained Violence Reduction Teams in several parts of the World, including the Hebron area and Iraq (where four of a delegation were held hostage two years ago, and Islamic Peacemakers were established). Gene had been asked to talk about "A Casestudy in Peacemaking: Iraq", but also to refer to Israel/Palestine - no doubt this will include Gaza. Admission by donation, all are welcome.

Bádhraic Ó Bamaigh go brágh!

You'll be humming it for weeks, especially around 20th January 2009.

Yes, They Did! (Could We?)

A truly remarkable day in the USA. A truly remarkable day for politics in the developed world full stop, surely. I found myself quite moved first thing this morning hearing President elect Obama's victory speech. And I was moved again this evening watching the scenes of celebration.

President elect Obama. Wow. Let's say that again: "President elect Obama". Even last year, who'd have thought we'd be witnessing the election of the first African American President of the United States? (Who'd even have dared to be certain Bush's successor would be a Democrat?) The adjective historic is overused but it most certainly fits here.

How long, I wonder, until the UK has its first black or Asian Prime Minister? We don't use phrases such as "British Asian" or "British Afro-Caribbean", do we really? Would the political classes contemplate a non-white leader for one of our major political parties at the moment? Would the electorate be willing to vote into power a party led by a non-white man or woman? That's not even going anywhere near the vexed questions of turnout and participation. There's no immediate prospect of finding out but, as the American election proved, politics can be full of surprises.

Putting the Brakes on the Breaks

The Sunday Herald reports that the SNP Scottish Government is abandoning its manifesto pledge to provide Irish-style tax breaks for artists, musicians and writers and, instead, conducting a substantial review of arts funding in Scotland. It's hardly a surprise that it should ditch the tax plans: the Scottish Parliament doesn't have the powers to implement them anyway and it was always extremely unlikely that the UK Government would enable such a scheme to proceed.

With the bill to merge the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen into Creative Scotland going through the Scottish Parliament now, perhaps it's an opportune moment to review arts funding. Interesting that this news comes hot on the heels of the SAC's latest funding announcements, with significant cultural institutions, including Scottish Language Dictionaries and the Scots Language Centre, receiving none of its three-year "flexible funding". If the review results in more cash to go round, that would be welcome. We'll see what it comes up with.

First Minister to open Linlithgow Book Festival

We are delighted to announce that Alex Salmond MSP, Scotland's First Minister and a son of Linlithgow, will open this year's festival. A short opening ceremony will take place in the Masonic Halls at 6.15 pm on Friday 2nd November. The ceremony will be free and open to the public.

Nationalism, Nasties and Numismatics

I want to respond in more detail to a couple of the comments on my post about the first part of Yang-May Ooi's interview with Rob Mackenzie (the second part of which is now available). Ms Baroque (aka Katy Evans-Bush) commented:

"the idea of nationalist poetry sounds disturbingly stalinist these days."

Three things bother me about that statement. The first is the slide from a national poetry to a nationalist poetry. The second is, in essence, what bothered me about the phrase "Scottish poetry" in the original interview, namely: what does it mean? The third is the equation of nationalism with extremism and repression.

Scotland is a nation, not just a region--just not a nation state. As such, it has a national poetry. Of course, it would be foolish to pretend that this poetry is entirely sepearate from British poetry and English (sic) literature as a whole, but there are distinctive characteristics to Scottish poetry, not only linguistically but thematically. Part of the latter is a concern about Scottish identity. I can't think of an equivalent concern in English poetry*, though I could be wrong about that.

It seems to me that Yang-May was asking Rob about where he would place his work in relation to the notion of a national poetry, whether Scottish or British**. It leaves me asking why Ms Baroque felt the need to invoke nationalism and equate it with Stalinism (answers on an e-card, please, Ms B!).

Let's interrogate possible meanings of the concept nationalist poetry. What could it be? The most obvious answer is a poetry that supports nationalism. But then we have to ask whether we're talking political nationalism, cultural nationalism or both.

If we're talking political nationalism, what hue? There are right and left-wing expressions of nationalism. Unfortunately, it seems the right-wing nationalism is often aggressive, voluble and therefore taken to be with the whole story. One thinks immediately of the BNP, the Balkans and various of the struggles in the Middle East. One might also think of an old-school Tory my-country-right-or-wrong, for-King-and-country jingoism.

But they're not the whole story. Whether we're talking political or cultural nationalism, or a nationalism of the left or the right, one of the crucial points is whether it's a nationalism of grudge, hatred and exclusion or friendship, celebration and optimism. Many Scots are comfortable with being part of a mongrel nation, to use a phrase that William McIlvanney famously employed positively of Scotland in 1992.

This is not to deny the sectarianism rife in the central belt of Scotland, that there is racism in Scotland or that there are anti-English elements in the Scottish nationalist movement. It's a sad fact of human nature that such prejudices exist in any population (and must be resisted) regardless of the presence or absence of a nationalist movement. For all they are problems in Scotland, we have not only some fine counter-examples but a counter-tradition.

This brings me back to poetry, thankfully! To me, the poem that best sums up why (Scottish) nationalism is not a great Stalinist evil is "The Coin" from Edwin Morgan's sequence Sonnets from Scotland, written after the failed 1979 referendum. I couldn't find a satisfactory link, so here it is:

We brushed the dirt off, held it to the light.
The obverse showed us Scotland, and the head
of a red deer; the antler-glint had fled
but the fine cut could still be felt. All right:
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
at the worn edge where once the date had been
and where as many fingers had gripped hard
as hopes their silent race had lost or gained.
The marshy scurf crept up to our machine,
sucked at our boots. Yet nothing seemed ill-starred.
And least of all the realm the coin contained.

Of course, I've already invoked Morgan as a good Scottish internationalist. It's the all-embracing optimism of that closure ("nothing seemed ill-starred") that strikes and excites me every time I read it. That's the nation of "A Man's A Man for A' That", Joseph Knight or the grassroots campaign to prevent Sakchai Makao's deportation. That's a nation that can be nationalist without being jingoistic and a nation that its inhabitants can take pride in without, I hope, becoming proud.

*Of course, that concern probably sometimes comes out in the kind of "matter of Scotland" poem that has clear relatives in English writing. However, although there's overlap I don't think a poem about Scottish/English idenity the same as a matter of Scotland/England poem .

**National is one of those odd words in the UK that doesn't quite know what it refers to. In Scotland, it tends to refer to Scotland; in England, it usually tries to refer to the whole of the UK but often basically refers to England, as in the phrase "the national news" or "the national press", the news values of which which are in reality quite Anglocentric, if not metrocentric.

The Independents Strike Back

Interesting piece in today's Sunday Herald about independent bookshops in Scotland. It seems Hugh Andrew of Birlinn is branching out into bookstores. This has to be a welcome development for writers and readers in Scotland, given the dominance of identikit chain book stores, but the big challenge is how independents will not just survive but thrive against the competition of sites like Amazon.

There are a few odd comments in the article, such as:

The small Elgin store, scheduled to open in the autumn, is considered the last independent Scottish bookshop with the exception of John Smith, which now runs university bookshops.

The "last independent Scottish bookshop"?! Do they mean "independent chain"? Is it a chain? There are certainly other individual independent bookshops, such as Word Power in Edinburgh or Linlithgow Bookshop in, funnily enough, Linlithgow.

And Alasdair Gray is quoted as saying:

the country has "hardly a publisher or bookshop to call its own".

But there's a reasonable small press scene here. Aside from Birlinn, Canongate and Luath, there's a good clutch of pamphlet publishers. Still, one can hardly disagree that it could be a lot healthier and we could have more publishers of bigger size and impact.

Fascinating to see the criticisms of the previous Executive's approach to publishing and the book trade, though it seems misplaced to criticise the Executive for the growth of big out-of-town bookshops when planning is a local authority responsibility. It will be even more interesting to see how the SNP Executive approaches the matter.

Scottish Six

So the notion of a "Scottish Six" is back on the agenda, though probably not very far up it. I don't know how far this is an intitiative of Pete Wishart's or of the wider SNP but, if a Scottish Six O'clock News comes into being, I suspect it won't happen in a great hurry.

Constitutional Blogging

It seems something of a shame that my day job constrains me from blogging about this fascinating new era in Scottish politics. But there we go. Instead, I recommend to anyone interested in an analysis of developments the new blog by BBC Scotland correspondent Brian Taylor. His is a far more interesting, more entertaining analysis than I could ever give anyway.

I also highly recommend Neal Ascherson's openDemocracy article on the debate about a written constitution for Britain. That might seem a wee bit of a leap in one blog note but, as you'll see if you read the piece, the new situation in Scotland also has profound implications for British politics as a whole.

Salty ruminations on bad news from Bloodaxe.

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Which come after Mark Ravenhill writes on arts funding vs sport funding in The Guardian.

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Meanwhile, here's a new poetry podcasting project.

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And something else that could set poetry alight.

Interesting Times

So, the SNP came out on top, only just. Given my day job, it's inappropriate for me to express any opinion on the result, except that there's no denying it's a momentous change in Scottish politics. However, with the possibility of challenges to the result and no prospect of a coalition big enough to form a majority, the future looks pretty uncertain. A minority Administration now appears likely, but the possibility remains that the majority in the Parliament could vote against Salmond for First Minister, which could force Scotland back to the polls. If that were to happen, at least there would be less room for confusion over ballot papers.

A Brief Note on Translation, Politics and Art

Today's Guardian Review includes a reasonable piece by Jennie Erdal on literary translation. It has no especially profound insights to offer on the process/art/act of translation but is more concerned with the profile of translators and translation in the world of books in the UK (woeful, but improving slightly). However, I liked the final sentence:

"Translators let us see another way of life, other possibilities, other matters, other manners, increasing the understanding between nations far better than politicians."

This is a significant function not only of translation but of much art of whatever form.

The Trouble with Normal

is, as Bruce said, it always gets worse.

The Scottish Cultural Academy

The Scottish Executive has finally announced a little more about the Scottish cultural academy that the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport promised us months and months ago in the Executive's response to the Cultural Commission's report.

There has been some muttering about the fact that the academy, which is based somewhat on the Irish Aosdána scheme, wasn't mentioned in the draft culture bill, so the announcement--made ahead of the results of this year's Creative Scotland awards--is certainly welcome. Scotland has been bad at acknowledging and supporting its creative artists, so any increase in recognition is a step forward for our society. I wish, however, that more was also being done to encourage those of us who're still wrestling to establish ourselves.

Edwin Morgan, Scotland's first official Makar, has been appointed the academy's first member. He is an obvious and appropriate choice, given his literary standing and his popularity. Morgan is still writing away with remarkable energy, in spite of his advanced age and cancer. I'll keep a close eye out for who joins him in the academy. It will be interesting to see how the membership develops.

This might be very funny ...

... but I couldn't possibly comment.

Words on War

Read this, by Eliot Weinberger, and weep.

Then read this, also by Weinberger, and weep some more.

Finally, read this, not by Weinberger, and smile grimly.

Draft Culture (Scotland) Bill

The Scottish Executive has published its draft Culture (Scotland) Bill for consultation. This marks an important juncture for arts and culture policy in Scotland, but The Scotsman reports that James Boyle, the head of the Cultural Commission, which the Executive set up to draw up a vision for Scotland's cultural policy, is not at all happy with the draft bill. Likewise, The Herald's report and editorial will not make happy reading for those at Victoria Quay. Something of a contrast with the warm words on the Executive's own site.

Festival of Politics

Went to a couple of events on the Festival of Politics on Thursday. The first, the Royal Society of Arts lecture on the impact of technology on society and politics, was interesting but didn't enthrall me. The second event was billed as a discussion on Scottish culture, media and politics. Essentially, it was three journalists bemoaning the direction of newspaper and broadcast media management and its impact on the quality of journalism in Scotland and the UK. An informative if somewhat depressing session, it benefited from having the Scotsman critic and columnist Joyce McMillan as one of the panelists. She is a passionate, articulate and intelligent speaker and was the only panelist to discuss arts and culture.

McMillan's main bone of contention was the poverty of coverage for the arts in Scotland, even by Scottish media. As a Scottish theatre critic of long standing, she's well placed to comment. She pointed out that the appetite for arts and culture has burgeoned over the past decade or so but the space and resources given over to serious arts journalism have shrunk. Newspapers, she said, are edited on the macho assumption that sport (specifically, football) will sell copies, but nobody has tested whether good, extensive coverage of arts and culture could have the same effect. She didn't mention books, however, and the advent of the Scottish Review of Books, which is distributed free as an insert into the Sunday Herald. Okay, so one magazine does not a renaissance make, but it's a significant improvement on the previous situation.