Norman MacCaig Centenary Celebrations, Assynt, November 2010

NORMAN MACCAIG was born 100 years ago this month, on 14 November 2010. He spent his summers in Assynt for forty years, from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, and he left a poetic legacy of more than 100 poems about Assynt, despite his claim to be leaving ‘nothing but / cigarette packets and footprints’ in the place he called ‘this most beautiful corner of the land’.

To honour MacCaig’s poetry, the community of Assynt ran a week-long celebration involving readings of new poetry and old, walks, talks, ceilidhs and not just one but two art exhibitions.

Helen Denerley's sculpture Goat from the An Talla Solais exhibition

Art and poetry rub up against each other in ways that can transform the way we see each other and our places. Auden said ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, but in Scotland that nothing has been enormously significant, as Alan Riach and Alexander Moffat explained to a packed room in Lochinver (8 November), as they talked about how MacCaig’s poems sit among the rest of 20th century Scottish poetry, and how poetry influences Scottish culture more broadly.

They showed how poets like MacDiarmid helped to build the confidence in Scotland as a nation that has led to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, and argued that poets like Norman MacCaig, Sorley Maclean and George Mackay Brown set trends and expressed ideas that were responded to by Scottish artists, changing the way the north of Scotland is seen and heard in Scottish culture.

We can’t prove it, of course, but it is hard in Assynt not to believe that MacCaig’s words played a key role in the historic land buyouts that have helped to stem the decline of this fragile corner.

‘Who owns this landscape?

The millionaire who bought it or

the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning

with a deer on his back?’

‘Who possesses this landscape? –

The man who bought it or

I who am possessed by it?’

‘Does owning have anything to do with love?’

These words, from MacCaig’s longest poem, ‘A Man in Assynt’, opened up a possibility back in the revolutionary year of 1968. They turned a fact (ownership by the rich and powerful) into a questionable state, they turned a felt injustice into a political imperative and they undermined the status quo.

MacCaig was a visitor from Edinburgh, a schoolmaster and a member of the literary intelligentsia. His questioning of the legitimacy of the landowning elite signals a shift from a Scotland where unruly teuchters might grumble in highland glens, but could be ignored in the central belt. Powerful voices from the capital were on their side. Issues of landownership and the troubles of crofting communities were debated in Edinburgh pubs.

Eventually (it took a generation for change to become material) in 2005, MacCaig’s words were read out in the Scottish Parliament by Assynt people seeking the community right to buy the land put up for sale by the Vestey family, land that included the ‘litany’ of iconic mountains: Suilven, Canisp, Cul Mor and Cul Beg.

Politicians and civil servants were faced with the opportunity to give new answers to MacCaig’s questions, and did so. Who owns this landscape now? We do. It is held in trust by the community of Assynt on behalf of the people of Scotland. The marvellous mountain of Suilven, Scotland’s Fuji, is no longer private property.

Like Fuji, Suilven is much painted. Hokusai produced the famous 36 Views of Mount Fuji and almost as many views of Suilven came together in one of the two exhibitions in response to Norman MacCaig’s centenary. The leisure centre in Lochinver, usually the domain of badminton players, silver surfers learning internet skills and kids playing table football, became a place for art.

Suilven, Assynt's iconic mountain (photo by Kenny Mathieson)

The walls filled with paintings and photographs, not just of Suilven – Stac Pollaidh and Quinag featured too, as did many of the more intimate corners of Assynt – and in the room used usually for board meetings, first aid classes and business start-up training sessions, a cornucopia appeared of ceramics, glass, basketry and textiles, with a huge, glassy eyed metal frog, ‘Leap frog with raindrops’, by Gordon Nairn, as the centrepiece.

This joyful and diverse tribute to a brilliant poet is also a demonstration of the wealth of artistic talent in the north west highlands and proof that the landscape continues to inspire the best of Scottish art. Other pieces deserving mention are Helen Steven’s litany of mountains, and a splendidly robust Aunt Julia complete with big boots, full skirt and almost audibly loud Gaelic.

Euan Callus added thoughtful photographic responses to a dozen poems, while Robin Noble’s ‘Quinag’ is a harmonious rallentando in the haze (and Liz Lochhead’s favourite piece in the exhibition). A basket made from thorn stems and rosehips by Claire Belshaw, responding to ‘Praise of a Thorn Bush’, was in turn responded to by Pippa Little, the winner of the Norman MacCaig Poetry Competition.

‘they were supple and pliant, those old words

and they answered under her fingers; a slow

to-and-fro of inland water oars and

knock of a spade edge down-slanted

into peat; of rocks inching their way

through thousands of years…’

Down in Ullapool, a parallel exhibition runs at An Talla Solais. It centres around a marvellous set of sculptures by Helen Denerley including a goat, a crow, a heron, an earwig, starlings and sparrows, and most splendidly a gleaming toad in a rusty box, ‘a tiny radiance in a dark place’. Trevor Lockie also graces the space with a mesmerising painting of a ptarmigan and some glorious and uplifting quills, re-asking another MacCaig question: ‘Birds of which feather?’

Feathers by Trevor Lockie from the An Talla Solais exhibition

The openings of both exhibitions were graced by a performance of a new, specially written, setting of ‘Moment Musical in Assynt’, by harpist Wendy Stewart, which starts with Nordic chords and opens into a melody as full of character as the landscape and the words of the poem deserve. The piece has featured on the soundtrack of a video of some of the poetic highlights of the MacCaig centenary (see below).

Liz Lochhead, Rody Gorman, Alan Taylor, Alan Riach, Sandy Moffat, Colin Will and Norman’s son Ewen all helped to make it a special week. Assynt’s children also joined in the celebration. Poems by 46 pupils from Stoer, Lochinver and Ullapool schools, many illustrated with lavish exuberance, are displayed around the parish in shops, notice-boards and windows and gathered into a collection called ‘Assynt’s Casket’.

One can only feel sorry for Norman for not being around to enjoy it all.

© Mandy Haggith, 2010

Links

• Norman MacCaig Poetry Competition
• An Talla Solais