I didn't visit Xinjiang Province on my trip in 2007, but I did visit Qinghai and Tibet, and the parallels are obvious. There are many ethnic minorities in China - 55 is the figure often quoted - and their cultures are as various. Xinjiang's capital, Ürümqi, was a staging post on the Northern Silk Road. To the Southwest is the cold Taklamakan Desert, where red-haired mummies were found some years ago. The indigenous people here are Uighur, of Turkic origin. Indeed, during WWII, the area was named as East Turkestan.
The Southern Silk Road went through Xining in Qinghai Province, where the minority Hui people are descendants of Arab and Persian traders who intermarried with locals. The Hui, like the Uighur, are Moslems. Qinghai is on the Tibetan Plateau, cold in summer and bitterly cold in winter. When we visited in November 2007 the vast and beautiful saltwater lake - Qinghai Hu - was beginning to freeze, and we had snow when we visited the Kumbum Monastery in Ta'er Si.
Tibet itself (Xizang) is, of course, home to the Tibetan people, and is a pilgrimage centre for many other peoples.
The point is that in all three areas, called 'Autonomous Republics' in doublespeak, have ethnic Han Chinese majorities now. Xining and Lhasa are for the most part modern Chinese cities, and Ürümqi probably is too, although I haven't seen it. For ideological and economic reasons, the Chinese government has pursued a policy of encouraging settlement in these regions, and it seems to have been popular. The 'One Child' policy does not apply to ethnic minorities, nor to marriages between such minorities and ethnic Han Chinese. Equally, better educational facilities, financial access and the encouragement of entrepreneurial spirit in 'greater China' have given its people greater business opportunities in the less developed provinces. This fuels resentment among the indigenes, and that won't be helped until education and training in these regions is levelled up. It was obvious to me that a large proportion - probably the majority - of the businesses we saw in Lhasa were Chinese-owned.
So the resentments on both sides are huge, and can't easily be solved, The eggs can't be unscrambled. Separatism on the basis of ethnicity is morally repugnant and impossible in practice. What would help would be greater sensitivity from the Chinese government in understanding the reasons for the build-up of anger, and it then taking steps to improve the long-term prospects for all peoples in these regions. The brutal suppression of protest will not work. China is an astonishing and wonderful nation, and it contains within its borders many different cultures. Until it learns to value diversity, pluralism and dissent it will continue to have difficulties with its minorities.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Writing groups
It's a cliché, I know, that writing is a solitary activity, but our writing exists in a social context, even if it's just an abstract relationship between writer and anonymous readers. The writing group provides a specific social setting for writing, but not all writers would feel comfortable about belonging to one. That's fine. I've heard it said that writing groups result in a homogenisation of style, technique or outlook, and that may indeed be true of some, but it's certainly not true of all.
Writing groups serve a number of functions:
Writing groups serve a number of functions:
- analysis and criticism of members' work
- advice and encouragement
- development of skills and techniques
- writing practice
- social interaction
The first group I joined was Edinburgh's School of Poets, founded more than 25 years ago by Tessa Ransford, and still going strong. It's a 'critical' group, focusing on detailed analysis by small groups of each member's poem. I know my own work benefited from such analysis, but living in Sunny Dunny after retirement, and being so busy with other things, meant that I had to leave the group some years ago.
I helped to found the Dunbar Writers' Group not long after moving to the town. It aims to deliver all of the services listed above, and it's become a focus for writing within the town's thriving artistic community. I don't lead the group now, members chair meetings in rotation, and I'm much happier with that. We joined the umbrella organisation - Tyne & Esk Writers - which looks after the interests of eight writing groups within Midlothian and East Lothian.
One of the Tyne & Esk groups is specifically for poetry, and it has adopted the ethos and some of the methods of work of the School of Poets. It's always nice to meet up once a month in the old (if somewhat fusty-smelling) Council Chambers in North Berwick, and it's an encouragement to write at least one decent poem every month.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Poetry in Scots II
A while back I wrote about my enthusiasm for the Makars of the 15th and 16th centuries. What has been their legacy? Well, not a single strand, I would argue; in fact a division between the language people spoke - leading to a demotic tradition in Scots poetry, and on the other side a tradition of Scots as a distinct literary language.
The Scots ballads are a marvellous flowering in the 16th and 17th centuries, based on an oral tradition of storytelling in poetic form. Thus they're mostly narrative poems, sometimes sung, mostly anonymous, and collected by scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries. As spoken or sung poems, they're mostly in the tradition we'd call demotic. So, in Sir Patrick Spence (or Spens), we have:
The king sits in Dunfermling toune,
Drinking the bluid-reid wine:
'O whaur will I get a guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine?'
There are several versions, and I won't go into who collected what and when, but note that the poem conflates a 17th century Aberdour mariner lost at sea with an ill-fated voyage to bring the king's daughter to marry Eric of Norway in 1281. The Border Ballads originated where it says on the tin. We also have the Bothy Ballads, which come from the farming lands of Buchan in North-East Scotland, and many of them embody the local forms of speech now called Doric.
There seems to have been a decline in writing in Scots, until Allan Ramsay (1685-1758) sparked a revival, paving the way for Fergusson and Burns. During the hiatus, if such it was, Gaelic poetry flowered, and it seems to me that the finest poetry of Scotland in the 17th and early 18th centuries was written in the Gaelic.
I find it difficult to characterise the language of Fergusson or Burns as either literary or demotic Scots. They both use words that would not be used by Scots in ordinary speech today, and I don't know enough history to know if they were at that time. But, I can almost always understand them on the page without reference to a Scots dictionary - something I can't say about the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid.
Coming to late 19th and early 20th centuries, the fine poetry of Marion Angus, Violet Jacob and Helen Cruikshank wrote in elegant spoken Scots. When we come to Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) we're definitely in the realms of literary Scots, specifically Lallans, and some of the words used go back to the language of the Makars. I have to put my hand up here and say that I can't stand his polemical verse, nor his egotistical outbursts. The geologist and botanist in me loves his poems on these subjects, however.
William Soutar, a wonderful poet, wrote in demotic Scots, but Robert Garioch, who I met in the 1960s, wrote in a sort of mixed tradition.
I'm not going to do a roll-call of today's Scottish poets, but I'll give two examples which might help to exemplify the two traditions. Tom Leonard writes in Glasgow dialect, and my friend David Purdie writes in literary Scots. As his publisher I'm biased, but I think his poetry embodies the finest features of that tongue.
As for my own poetry, I maistly think in English, so I write thon wey, but I have written in Scots - literary and vernacular - and I find that some (English) poems demand the use of the occasional Scots word, when no other word will do. Look at Robert Crawford's poetry for another example of this way of writing.
The next generation? W N Herbert writes wonderful poetry in Scots, both literary and in his Dundonian accent. And Andrew Philip and Colin Donati are inspirational writers in Scots (and English).
The Scots ballads are a marvellous flowering in the 16th and 17th centuries, based on an oral tradition of storytelling in poetic form. Thus they're mostly narrative poems, sometimes sung, mostly anonymous, and collected by scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries. As spoken or sung poems, they're mostly in the tradition we'd call demotic. So, in Sir Patrick Spence (or Spens), we have:
The king sits in Dunfermling toune,
Drinking the bluid-reid wine:
'O whaur will I get a guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine?'
There are several versions, and I won't go into who collected what and when, but note that the poem conflates a 17th century Aberdour mariner lost at sea with an ill-fated voyage to bring the king's daughter to marry Eric of Norway in 1281. The Border Ballads originated where it says on the tin. We also have the Bothy Ballads, which come from the farming lands of Buchan in North-East Scotland, and many of them embody the local forms of speech now called Doric.
There seems to have been a decline in writing in Scots, until Allan Ramsay (1685-1758) sparked a revival, paving the way for Fergusson and Burns. During the hiatus, if such it was, Gaelic poetry flowered, and it seems to me that the finest poetry of Scotland in the 17th and early 18th centuries was written in the Gaelic.
I find it difficult to characterise the language of Fergusson or Burns as either literary or demotic Scots. They both use words that would not be used by Scots in ordinary speech today, and I don't know enough history to know if they were at that time. But, I can almost always understand them on the page without reference to a Scots dictionary - something I can't say about the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid.
Coming to late 19th and early 20th centuries, the fine poetry of Marion Angus, Violet Jacob and Helen Cruikshank wrote in elegant spoken Scots. When we come to Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) we're definitely in the realms of literary Scots, specifically Lallans, and some of the words used go back to the language of the Makars. I have to put my hand up here and say that I can't stand his polemical verse, nor his egotistical outbursts. The geologist and botanist in me loves his poems on these subjects, however.
William Soutar, a wonderful poet, wrote in demotic Scots, but Robert Garioch, who I met in the 1960s, wrote in a sort of mixed tradition.
I'm not going to do a roll-call of today's Scottish poets, but I'll give two examples which might help to exemplify the two traditions. Tom Leonard writes in Glasgow dialect, and my friend David Purdie writes in literary Scots. As his publisher I'm biased, but I think his poetry embodies the finest features of that tongue.
As for my own poetry, I maistly think in English, so I write thon wey, but I have written in Scots - literary and vernacular - and I find that some (English) poems demand the use of the occasional Scots word, when no other word will do. Look at Robert Crawford's poetry for another example of this way of writing.
The next generation? W N Herbert writes wonderful poetry in Scots, both literary and in his Dundonian accent. And Andrew Philip and Colin Donati are inspirational writers in Scots (and English).
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Trees
I love trees. They're majestic organisms, with a huge variety of expressions of related forms, but that's not why I love them. I just can't imagine living in a landscape without them. They make me happy, and the bigger ones fill me with awe. (I may have mentioned before that I hugged a coastal redwood at Big Sur).
Anyway, trees have featured a lot in my literary life lately. I've been working with Alec Finlay on a project to write garden walks between certain specific trees in gardens. Not just any old trees though; these ones have had nest boxes and bat boxes installed in them, and on the boxes are cryptic clues to the names of the trees. My walks musn't mention the names of the trees either, but I've written different clues to help identify them. Which tree's timber, for example, was used to make piano keys? Which wood burns the hottest of any native tree? What's the national tree of Pakistan? I've included some much simpler identifying facts, but these are some of the more abstruse ones, and I enjoy knowing them. I'll post more information when the guides are published.
Then today I caught up with my friend Gerry Loose, and he gave me two baby trees grown from seed brought from Japan. One's a ginkgo, and the other's a Japanese maple. When they're a bit bigger I hope to plant them in the community garden in Dunbar that I'm working on, along with some Japanese black pine that I've grown from seed. Maybe it'll become a haiku grove where poets can write? Who can tell. They'll need protection from rabbits at first.
Gerry also asked me about the Fortingall Yew, possibly the oldest tree in Europe, in the graveyard at Fortingall, Perthshire. He wanted to know if it's a male or a female tree. Who, apart from all the other yews within pollination range, would want to know? Well, the birds in the area, for one. Many birds feed on the red juicy outer covering of the fruit, although most parts of the tree, including the seeds, are highly toxic to humans. Interestingly, the anti-cancer drug taxol is produced from a yew derivative (Taxus is the yew genus).
I mentioned the title-page of Leonhard Fuchs' De historia stirpium, published in Basel in 1542. The publisher, Isengrin's colophon is an engraving of a holly tree, with a block of timber threaded through the branches. I have no way of knowing, but I think he was trying to say that he'd used holly wood for his printing blocks, which would make sense - it's hard, and fine-grained.
Even in my own tiny garden I've got trees, albeit small ones. I have a rowan to ward off evil witches (it seems to have worked), a hazel, a willow, a laburnum, a thuja and a lilac.
PS: One of my contacts at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has confirmed that the Fortingall Yew is a male, so no berries. And I forgot a couple of trees in my garden. I have a variegated holly - which produces masses of flowers followed by berries - and a really gorgeous weeping apple tree. Every April it's covered in flowers (unless the speugs eat the buds - which they do) followed by tiny little red mini-apples (inedible) in Autumn.
Anyway, trees have featured a lot in my literary life lately. I've been working with Alec Finlay on a project to write garden walks between certain specific trees in gardens. Not just any old trees though; these ones have had nest boxes and bat boxes installed in them, and on the boxes are cryptic clues to the names of the trees. My walks musn't mention the names of the trees either, but I've written different clues to help identify them. Which tree's timber, for example, was used to make piano keys? Which wood burns the hottest of any native tree? What's the national tree of Pakistan? I've included some much simpler identifying facts, but these are some of the more abstruse ones, and I enjoy knowing them. I'll post more information when the guides are published.
Then today I caught up with my friend Gerry Loose, and he gave me two baby trees grown from seed brought from Japan. One's a ginkgo, and the other's a Japanese maple. When they're a bit bigger I hope to plant them in the community garden in Dunbar that I'm working on, along with some Japanese black pine that I've grown from seed. Maybe it'll become a haiku grove where poets can write? Who can tell. They'll need protection from rabbits at first.
Gerry also asked me about the Fortingall Yew, possibly the oldest tree in Europe, in the graveyard at Fortingall, Perthshire. He wanted to know if it's a male or a female tree. Who, apart from all the other yews within pollination range, would want to know? Well, the birds in the area, for one. Many birds feed on the red juicy outer covering of the fruit, although most parts of the tree, including the seeds, are highly toxic to humans. Interestingly, the anti-cancer drug taxol is produced from a yew derivative (Taxus is the yew genus).
I mentioned the title-page of Leonhard Fuchs' De historia stirpium, published in Basel in 1542. The publisher, Isengrin's colophon is an engraving of a holly tree, with a block of timber threaded through the branches. I have no way of knowing, but I think he was trying to say that he'd used holly wood for his printing blocks, which would make sense - it's hard, and fine-grained.
Even in my own tiny garden I've got trees, albeit small ones. I have a rowan to ward off evil witches (it seems to have worked), a hazel, a willow, a laburnum, a thuja and a lilac.
PS: One of my contacts at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has confirmed that the Fortingall Yew is a male, so no berries. And I forgot a couple of trees in my garden. I have a variegated holly - which produces masses of flowers followed by berries - and a really gorgeous weeping apple tree. Every April it's covered in flowers (unless the speugs eat the buds - which they do) followed by tiny little red mini-apples (inedible) in Autumn.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Haiku techniques
I recently bought a very handsome Kodansha (Tokyo) edition of Basho: complete haiku, translated by Jane Reichhold. As well as the poems, it contains original artwork by Shiro Tsujimura. Jane's notes at the end include the transliteration of the Japanese characters, then word-for-word translations with explanations For example, Basho's most famous poem is rendered as:
furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
old-pond /frog jump into / water's sound
In the main text, she renders the poem as:
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
which is much the best translation of the poem I've read to date.
One of the Notes sections is on haiku technique, and it's extremely interesting. Many haiku poets will be familiar with some of them, such as association, comparison and contrast. Others may be less familiar. She describes Basho's technique in the old frog poem as 'sense shifting', moving from the visual to the auditory, in a kind of synesthetic way. Shiki's shasei, or 'sketch from life', is one frequently found in haiku, where things are described as they are - Das Ding an sich! as the philosopher would have it. Paradox, pun, neologisms and wordplay are among the language techniques that can be used; twisting and pivoting take the reader by surprise, and 'hiding the author' is common. Three almost untranslatable conceptual features of Japanese culture are also used - sabi, wabi, and yugen. The cop-out route would be to say that these terms have no equivalents in English, and that's true but unhelpful. Let me hint then, that sabi has some parallels in the blues, or feeling blue - a kind of beauty in melancholic loneliness. Wabi is to do with finding beauty in underlying simplicity, and yugen relates to the unknowable, the mysterious depths of the ordinary which we ultimately cannot fathom.
furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
old-pond /frog jump into / water's sound
In the main text, she renders the poem as:
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
which is much the best translation of the poem I've read to date.
One of the Notes sections is on haiku technique, and it's extremely interesting. Many haiku poets will be familiar with some of them, such as association, comparison and contrast. Others may be less familiar. She describes Basho's technique in the old frog poem as 'sense shifting', moving from the visual to the auditory, in a kind of synesthetic way. Shiki's shasei, or 'sketch from life', is one frequently found in haiku, where things are described as they are - Das Ding an sich! as the philosopher would have it. Paradox, pun, neologisms and wordplay are among the language techniques that can be used; twisting and pivoting take the reader by surprise, and 'hiding the author' is common. Three almost untranslatable conceptual features of Japanese culture are also used - sabi, wabi, and yugen. The cop-out route would be to say that these terms have no equivalents in English, and that's true but unhelpful. Let me hint then, that sabi has some parallels in the blues, or feeling blue - a kind of beauty in melancholic loneliness. Wabi is to do with finding beauty in underlying simplicity, and yugen relates to the unknowable, the mysterious depths of the ordinary which we ultimately cannot fathom.
Friday, June 26, 2009
What a week!
Two book launches and a 'happening' this week - I'm shattered. Mary Johnston's book was launched tonight in Dalkeith Library, with Mary reading and Jim McIntosh playing fiddle. A lovely audience of around 40 gave Mary's book a great send-off.
Wednesday was Dave Purdie's launch in the Scottish Poetry Library. Dave's twin brother Bob, Dave and myself read sections from the poem, and we had songs from Dave's daughter Lesley-Anne and anecdotes from Bill Hill, plus some well-chosen words from Professor David Purdie, Dave's medical namesake.
The quality of the poetry in both is wonderful, and I'm very proud to have published them both. Mary's launch was always scheduled for tonight, and Dave's was going to be later, but he was going in to hospital today, so I pulled it forward to Wednesday. Two launches in a week isn't ideal, but it was a case of "Yes we can." And we did.
In between, last night the Writers' Group had a reading in the temporary Dunbar Arts Hub, which we're hoping might develop into something more permanent. We also had singing from the Dunbar Community Choir on the pavement outside the Hub. It was a great night, and it reminded me of the impromptu 'happenings' of the 1960s.
Wednesday was Dave Purdie's launch in the Scottish Poetry Library. Dave's twin brother Bob, Dave and myself read sections from the poem, and we had songs from Dave's daughter Lesley-Anne and anecdotes from Bill Hill, plus some well-chosen words from Professor David Purdie, Dave's medical namesake.
The quality of the poetry in both is wonderful, and I'm very proud to have published them both. Mary's launch was always scheduled for tonight, and Dave's was going to be later, but he was going in to hospital today, so I pulled it forward to Wednesday. Two launches in a week isn't ideal, but it was a case of "Yes we can." And we did.
In between, last night the Writers' Group had a reading in the temporary Dunbar Arts Hub, which we're hoping might develop into something more permanent. We also had singing from the Dunbar Community Choir on the pavement outside the Hub. It was a great night, and it reminded me of the impromptu 'happenings' of the 1960s.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Today's poem
It's been a very busy week, but the final version of the Springburn Park walk went off this morning, the arrangements are in hand for the launches tomorrow and Friday, and I've updated the sales page of the Calder Wood Press site with the new titles. Sitting in the garden this afternoon, I managed to write something new.
Poem removed for editing
A great launch for Dave Purdie's The Godothin last night, and I'm looking forward to Mary Johnston's launch on Friday.
Update on The Big Send-out:
One of the best magazines for speed of response is Smiths Knoll, and one of the Kindly Editors (Michael Laskey) kept up the track record this time. He didn't take my poems for the magazine, but he responded quickly and with courtesy.
Poem removed for editing
A great launch for Dave Purdie's The Godothin last night, and I'm looking forward to Mary Johnston's launch on Friday.
Update on The Big Send-out:
One of the best magazines for speed of response is Smiths Knoll, and one of the Kindly Editors (Michael Laskey) kept up the track record this time. He didn't take my poems for the magazine, but he responded quickly and with courtesy.
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