Ron Ferguson GMB Memorial lecture, Pier Arts Centre, Stromness / Ragnhild Ljosland, Orkney Library, 15 April 2011

RON Ferguson is a weel kent, weel loved face in Orkney – a minister who writes, a journalist who ministers, a loyal supporter of lost causes, if his love for Cowdenbeath FC is anything to go by.

His packed-out Memorial Lecture, the fourth in the G M B’s series, was, in keeping with the man, a gentle, meditative meander round the poet’s life and belief. His  forthcoming book The Wound and the Gift is ‘the most personal book I’ve written’ – as much a struggle with the nature of his own faith as an examination of Mackay Brown’s journey to Catholicism. He wonders about the nature of spirituality – is it transcendence? The divine? Something about the balance between life and works? What’s creativity? Is suffering – the Wound – integral to the Gift? How important is place – Rackwick, in particular – to the kind of Wordsworthian sensibility which allows poetry?

Ron Ferguson with fellow writers John Aberdein (left) and Nalini Paul at the Orkney Festival (photo Pam Beasant)

He reveals the unexpected G M B – the noisy drunk, the fierce self-hating young journalist, ‘everything about me revolts me beyond belief’ this TB ridden boy shouted at the douce reading public of Orkney. He explains the Calvinist voices ringing in the poet’s head – the Old Women of the well known early poem, with their ‘terrible holy joy’

It’s not a hagiography, this lecture – Ferguson sticks up, a little limply I suspect, for Knox, against the frowns of Muir and Brown, his two heroes – and it’s here, when he reveals his interest in and knowledge about things ecclesiastical and liturgical, that we see what an interesting addition to the G M B critical library his book will be.

He has had many ‘fascinating’ conversations, with all sorts of believers and non believers, about ‘coming home to Catholicism’ and what it may mean  – and about what kinds of Catholics there are, and what kind Mackay Brown thought he was. He speaks as a man ‘hanging by the fingernails’ to Presbyterianism, moved by man’s need for ritual in crisis – the need to light a candle.

‘A gentle enthusiast’ he calls Brown, and indeed, the same phrase could be applied aptly to Ferguson himself. He has ‘learned through George’  – how the beauty of the late religious poetry, for example ‘makes everything bearable. ‘Ceremony is what saves us’ he quotes. ‘These angels bring gifts for the house of the soul.’

Brown’s own voice punctuated the proceedings, reading as if he was in his fireside chair opposite us – and Maxwell Davis’ ‘Farewell to Hoy’, played at his funeral, ended the talk. I wager there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was a fine tribute.

Ragnhild Ljosland introduced her new book on the dialect poet Christina Costie that afternoon. Her vision of Costie, Robert Rendall and Ernest Marwick whooping it up in Willowbank Road as they uncovered folk tales together and shared poems seemed a touch far fetched, given the retiring character of each of these three worthies – as did her desire to have a plaque to Costie unveiled at the Cathedral and her contention that her heroine is a better dialect poet than Rendall.

But minor poets need their champions, and Ljosland is certainly enthusiastic. There was little critical meat in this introduction to the writer, and I’d have liked a dialect speaker to do the readings – I’m presuming there are no tapes of Costie reading her own work, which is a shame. But for the newcomer to Orkney writing, this was perhaps an invitation to find out more.

All this and a room full of books as well, workshops, a buzz about the town – more power to the G M B Fellowship, those hard workers and fund – seekers behind it all. It’s troubled times for folk like these back – room arts people and they deserve your support!

© Morag MacInnes, 2011

Links

• GMB Fellowship