MORAG MACINNES speaks to co-founder JOHN CUMMING about the Northern Isles-based publisher whose distinctive poetry pamphlets and collaborative work with local artists and writers have earned rich praise over the last few years, and an award in recent months

John Cumming (© Mike Finnie)

WE ARE sitting in Stromness, overlooking Hoy Sound, in a house which clearly belongs to people who love having original art on their walls, sculptures on their tables and books on their shelves. John and Fiona Cumming are co–founders, with poet Christine da Luca and sculptor Frances Pelly, of the publishing cooperative Hansel Press. I met John after the launch of their latest book, White Below – poems and stories by six Shetland writers about the fishing industry.

MORAG: Tell me why, after a busy career in teaching and in the midst of your own ongoing work as a sculptor, you found yourself in the publishing world?

JOHN: I don’t think there was a Eureka moment! I reached the point where I realised there wis an awful lot of writers, particularly young writers, in both the Orkney and Shetland communities and there wisna really many outlets for their work, especially for the folk writan in dialect. You immediately limit your readership when you write in dialect, of course, but that doesn’t diminish its importance. I think it’s important that you keep using the dialect creatively, and have a support network that lets you experiment with it.

Also I loved books all my life and I suppose I became more conscious of them as objects – the idea that, you can make a bonny thing which is also useful and important. I wanted to pursue that.

The Cooperative really grew out of a printmaking venture. Myself and Frances Pelly started making woodcuts, with Shetland poetry as wir source. That brought wis in contact with Christine da Luca and we realised that she had the sam enthusiasms and the sam passion for the language. So we made this suite o woodcuts with poems blocked into them – it grew from there.

It was very well received. Then I took part in my first reading – no my ain wirk, but dialect work by ither writers – and really enjoyed that thing o the arts and people coming together – and the positive feedback I got. That was exciting as well as the business of makkin something beautiful.

Line drawing by John Cumming from White Below

MORAG: Did it feel, when you read in dialect, as if you were paying heed to a constituency that hadna previously been addressed?

JOHN: I think so, and I think as we began publishing we becam mair and mair aware o that because folk that hadna we though of as necessarily being ‘arty’, folk outwith the arts and crafts community, were comin an sayin good things, expressin an interest, and I thowt that was really interesting. I felt there wis a whole readership there that had missed oot

MORAG: Did you get a sense that when people hear their dialect read aloud they feel a real sense of connection with the subject matter?

JOHN: Yes, there’s a recognition and a warmth there. If I go right back to my ain childhood, I hae a significant moment when Johnny Graham (Shetland teacher, headmaster, writer) actually pit a copy o Whitemaa’s Saga by Eric Linklater in my hand. It’s aboot the development o an Orkney boy. Immediately as I read, there was that shock, that art can be aboot you, and your life, and your community. That hadna occurred to me before, and I guess I wanted to use it.

MORAG: Why the name Hansel?

JOHN: I think we thought very carefully about the name. Hansel means a gift, and a gift is something that dies if you keep it to yourself. The really significant thing about a gift is that it doesna end wi the giving. You use it and you pass it on. If you don’t do that, you are failing your community – you receive it, and pass it on.

MORAG: It seems to me the strength of Hansel is precisely this cooperative ethic that’s based in respect for the ability of small scattered communities like ours to make art that’s relevant and beautiful, a bit like the Arts and Crafts movement I suppose.

JOHN: We’ve been together for eight years and it really works through goodwill – I find that’s a good wey to wark, because if somebody comes up with an idea it’s usually something they have a passion for, and the energy to carry through. So rather than say: we must have a Board Meeting, it’s more like – well, how can we help you to do that, how can we facilitate this?

MORAG: What came after the woodblocks?

JOHN: We did a number o bairns books an accompanyin CDs for various ages. Christine was very concerned, because she had spent some time in the schools in Shetland, and saw that the dialect was disappearing from the playground. She wanted to counter that. Fiona and I had spoken for years about writing books for bairns that would be relevant to their lives here in the isles rather than for urban children – books about farms and boats. So oota that came a number of books, and I illustrated them as weel.

Arc o Mons title page by Diane Leslie

MORAG: The estate of Roald Dahl allowed you to turn George’s Marvellous Medicine into Shetlandic?

JOHN: Yes – it becam Dodie’s Phenominal Physic!

MORAG: Your poetry pamphlets are distinctive – the grey covers and monochrome illustrations, with the Hansel logo – a boat with a pen for a mast on the back. Beautiful little productions – you’ve published the veteran Shetland writer Stella Sutherland, as well as the Orcadian sequence Alias Isobel, and now Christie Williamson’s Arc o Mons, translations of Lorca, which was awarded a joint first prize in the Callum MacDonald Memorial Award.

JOHN: Yes, the first pamphlet we printed was Laureen Johnstone’s poetry collection Treeds. We did a print run of 200 and we sold out immediately, and it’s now being reprinted… we knew then we had a constituency who were eager to read and enjoy current dialect writing.

MORAG: Up to that point everything you did had been in Shetlandic – until Alias Isobel. Would it be true to say that Shetland has a much greater consciousness of the virility of its dialect than Orkney?

JOHN: I think so – but the reasons for that are complex and interesting. Orkney dialect is still alive and it’s very beautiful, but they are much more proactive in Shetland. There’s an alert keen audience and lots of opportunities for readers to perform. There are organisations, very successful ones like Shetland ForWirds, dedicated to the dialect.

MORAG: Do Shetland children have a greater consciousness of the switch between their dialect and the ‘official Scots’ they use in schools do you think? In Orkney it’s less defined?

JOHN: In a sense yes. A a lot o the country bairns in Shetland are still bi-lingual.

MORAG: This clutch of writers you’ve picked up on – they seem to me very confident in their identity and voice. Clearly they’re benefiting from something Orcadians are struggling with a bit – the sense that their culture is still using and invigorating the dialect they are working in.

JOHN: I think so. It does breed confidence. Speaking to the younger Shetland writers, I hear a determination to write in a way that’s contemporary and relevant – not to become kailyard. They want to explore writing forms and push boundaries.

White Below

MORAG: I notice that in White Below – Mark Smith in particular experiments with new directions and seems to have an urge to find out what’s going to happen next to the industry, and to want to play with form in his writing.

JOHN: Yes, this is important for anyone involved in dialect publishing (for want of a better term!). The urge towards nostalgia can be strong. It’s not a dying industry, it’s a changing one, the fishing – and in the sam wey, writing itself has to be dynamic and forward looking.

MORAG: Your own stories often look from the perspective of an old man looking back…

JOHN: I guess that’s because I’m an older man looking back! But I would like to think that whilst doing that I’m also looking at different ways of doing it – in terms of structure, of pushing things, … and not slipping into nostalgia

MORAG: The problem maybe you face dealing with an industry that dices with death is that you are talking about male bonding, and young men learning the ropes – very archetypal things… so it looks like a hymn to the past. In fact it’s not – they’re on an essential journey in life. There are always going to be boys undergoing rites of passage and there are still men eternally chasing the big catch – it’s just that the job has moved on!

JOHN: I said in the introduction to White Below that the sea and boat have made us who we are, and I think it does breed a certain character. It’s inevitable – because you have to be prepared to challenge, you have to have that confidence.

MORAG: There’s also a self-deprecating humour, a kind of lack of fuss in the attitude of the men and women in the collection. Little epiphanies dealt with very quietly.

JOHN: I’m been delighted by the number of these stories that have come back to me – folk have picked up on them and brought me more… I suppose the tradition goes right back to the sagas – you laugh in the face of disaster, you laugh at yourself, you have to be able to laugh at your situation in order to survive.

MORAG: White Below is like other things Hansel has, produced in that that the writers have worked with others – in this case those in the fishing industry, whose memories provided inspiration. In Mailboats, your last project, you were inspired by the St Kildan toy boats which carried messages to the mainland, and poets and makers worked together to put poems in boats and launch them. It resulted in some fine work and a fascinating exhibition. This kind of collaborative approach is obviously important to you?

JOHN: What emerges from collaboration is always fascinating. As an artist. I was never very comfortable with the idea of the creator as a lone spirit and I hate whar we find oorsels noo, wi the artist as celebrity.

I found as a sculptor that if you dinna pit yourself up on a pedestal – if you say I have this stone and I have a problem with what I want to mak o this stone, you will find a host o folk fae non artist backgrounds who are very happy to assist you and talk and offer ideas. Writing’s the same. When writing gets to be just about writing, it’s hopeless. I think it has to be grounded.

MORAG: And ultimately you are keeping in touch with your community’s values so you’re never alone ?

JOHN: I hope so.

Drawing by John Cumming from White Below

MORAG: This idea of commonality is what seems to give Hansel a lot of strength to produce work that’s wholehearted – you get a sense that everyone is engaged. All the reviewers mention how beautifully your books are produced, and their literary quality. If we consider Arc o Mons, the Lorca translations by Christie Williamson that won joint prize in June at the Callum MacDonald Memorial award for poetry pamphlets. How did that project come about?

JOHN: Christie had actually started the translations. Christine met him at the Spanish Institute and that chance meeting of two Shetland poets produced the book! The initiative is one we’ll hopefully follow up – I was in the Shetland Archives the other week looking at the work of the late William J. Tait, a very significant poet, a Scottish Renaissance man whose work and merits were never realised because he wrote in Shetlandic.

He translated Villon’s La Testemont – as well as Baudelaire and others. It’s amazing how well the medieval French translates, how the concerns and the language fit. That would be a big project for us, but I’d like to do it. Some of our best poets have been Shetlanders writing to Shetlanders, but Billy Tait looks outwards to the world, using universal themes. We need him, for our younger poets to see and study.

MORAG: There have already been calls for a sequel to White Below, as well?

JOHN: Yes – the industry moves on. One of our poets, Lise Sinclair, e-mailed me during the process of researching and said, ‘bairns, wir juist dellin da poans affa dis.’ (barely scratching the surface). I’d like to investigate stories about aquaculture – that’s a whole different world. Technology is so all pervasive now – it’s a strange and enticing new world for writers to get to grips with. We’re conscious too, though, of the knowledge that’s leaving with the older fishermen. People spoke very eloquently about the past, and they won’t be around much longer to pass things on.

Mailboats

MORAG: Any other plans?

JOHN: There are things I’d like to address – there’s still not enough of the visual arts represented. The Mailboats project was great, and Diana Leslie’s work in Arc o Mons is very fine indeed, but I’d like to encourage other artists to work with us. The Coop needs to have the enthusiasm and goodwill of lots of folk, giving of their time.

We’ve invested in new software, and I’m looking forward to a wider variety of styles in our next few productions. People have commented on the typefaces and the production in a very enthusiastic way and I’m delighted by that. Christine has a new bairns’ book in the pipeline, illustrated by Frances Pelly, and that’s good…

MORAG: How much time does all this take?

JOHN: How much time? I don’t measure it!

MORAG: Probably wise!

JOHN: I work by the maxim that it doesna feel like work when you’re enjoying it and when we stop enjoyin it, then we’ll stop!

MORAG: Many thanks!

© Morag MacInnes, 2010

Links

• Hansel Cooperative Press

Associated Page

Mailboats