Simon Hall, Orkney Library, 16 April 2011 / Kevin MacNeil, Lynnfield Hotel, Kirkwall, 17 April 2011

SCOTLAND’S newest literary festival, the Orkney Book Festival, celebrated Scottish island writers and writing with diverse offerings from folk who were born or have chosen to settle in the isles.

Simon Hall, whose book The History of Orkney Literature was joint winner of the 2010 Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year prize, continued the theme of celebrating lesser known Orkney writers explored elsewhere in the festival in his talk From Fjord to Island Foreshore: three neglected treasures of the Orkney Room. He was swift to begin his lecture by assuring us the keepers of Orkney Library’s reference room don’t neglect their books, but it is the work of Samuel Laing of Papdale, Walter Traill Dennison and Robert Rendall which is overlooked these days.

Authors John Aberdein (front) and Kevin MacNeil (back third left) with Orkney writers at the Lynnfield Hotel, Kirkwall (photo Pam Beasant)

Hall’s persuasive argument in his book that Orkney literature has a unique literary culture was demonstrated through these writers, who are for Hall as important as George Mackay Brown, Edwin Muir and Eric Linklater. Laing  (1780-1868) was a poet, provost, merchant laird, venture capitalist, bankrupt, writer and translator of the central prose work of medieval vernacular Scandinavian literature, Snorri Sturlason’s Heimskiringla. He was aware of the Scottish/Norse duality of his islands’ cultural history and had a strong and colourful character. It is his Journal of a Residence in Norway which Hall entreats us not to neglect: “a charming, intellectual and deeply enthusiastic account of Norwegian society in the 1830s.”

His attention turned to Walter Traill Dennison (1825-94), a great hero from the North Isle of Sanday who saved Orkney writing from oblivion through The Orcadian Sketch Book, prose, poetry and folklore in the Orkney dialect. We were treated to a rendition of an excerpt: The Selkie That Deud No Forget, which Hall reads to his own sons at bedtime.

Finally, poet, draper and conchologist (sea shell studier) Robert Rendall’s (1898-1967) Orkney Variants was championed. The poem Cragsman’s Widow, which refers to climbing down Orkney cliffs to catch seabirds was read in Scots. This lecture was enlivened by Hall’s anecdotes (like deaf Robert Rendall booming in a loud voice that he wants a quiet word) and his boundless enthusiasm for Orkney literature.

The festival’s aim to be inclusive invited local writers to participate through readings at the Cromarty Hall in St Margaret’s Hope, between performance and talk from poet and songster Lise Sinclair from Fair Isle and Orkney-based novelist John Aberdein. A workshop with Lise at Stromness Library discussed writing poetry and lyrics and used the meta-saga model of asking questions for poetry writing, a useful exercise. Poet, novelist and playwright, Kevin MacNeil ran a session on characterisation and dialogue in prose.

This was a prelude to his evening reading introducing the forthcoming anthology  he is editing, These Islands, We Sing (due out on 1 July), a nod to George Mackay Brown’s autobiography For the Islands I Sing.

He told us: “I am fallible, but I have aimed for a good representation of the important writers of the Scottish islands. It does not include anyone who has moored a yacht off Hoy and jumped ashore to write a haiku. They are people raised or who have lived in the islands for a lengthy time. There is no tokenism either in representing islands, or any imbalance of gender or class, I wanted good writing for the collection. and there is a significant number of extremely good poets.”

Poems are included by George Mackay Brown, Edwin Muir, Sorley Maclean, Iain Crichton Smith and Hugh McDairmid. In editing he has rediscovered old favourites and discovered new writers including Jen Hadfield, Alex Clunness and Meg Bateman. Poetry, he says, is grossly undervalued today and even dedicated readers overlook the disproportionate excellence of 20^th and 21^st century poetry from the Scottish isles. A strange conflict of self defeating injustices. Poetry is nourishing both intellectually and emotionally. He hopes the book will gain recognition for island poets who are very self deprecating about their work – brilliant poets.

He ponders what compels people who live on islands to become writers – perhaps interminable wet weather.

MacNeil read “powerful” Orkney poems by Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown, Shetlander Alex Cluness, Andrew Greig and his own poem in Gaelic and English. MacNeil finished with an aphorism from his book Be Wise, Be Otherwise: “There are so many people in the world, that the chances of someone breathing in absolute unison with you, right now, are very high indeed.” Feel synchronised.

Former GMB fellowship holder Nalini Paul (© Nalini Paul)

Fine Orkney fiddler Douglas Montgomery, played tunes from Orkney, Lewis, Caithness and India, Nalini Paul read poems from her pamphlets Skirlags and Slokt by Sea and an excerpt from her novel in progress, based on her family’s migration from India to Canada. Local writers read poems and short prose.

Other island connections were explored in Orkney library by Donald Anderson of Shetland Arts talking of developments in Shetland’s literature and Alayne Barton of the islands Book Trust spoke of the trust’s work and publications.

This book festival, it is hoped, will be the first of an annual date in the Orkney calendar. It’s a fine addition.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011