Midsummer Readings by Alec Finlay & Meg Bateman is taking place on Tuesday 21 June from 7.00 – 9.00 pm at The Isle of Skye Baking Company, in the Old Skye Wool Mill, off Dunvegan Road, Portree IV51 9HG.

ATLAS arts initiative is hosting an evening of poetry with the Skye Literary Salon. ATLAS Director Emma Nicolson has invited Alec Finlay an internationally recognised artist, poet and publisher to visit Skye to consider possibilities for an arts project that might take place here in 2011/12. Emma said  “We are delighted to be working with an artist of Alec’s calibre, especially as he has family ties to the area. When I suggested a reading to Alec he was quick to invite Meg Bateman to join him. They had both been to Dun Sgaith castle and Raasay with Ken Cockburn whilst travelling ‘the Road North’. We are really pleased that Meg can join Alec on midsummer’s eve in Portree”.

Alec Finlay has recently completed The Road North with Ken Cockburn.
For a year Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn travelled through Scotland, guided by the Japanese poet Basho, whose Oku-no-Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Ken and Alec left Edinburgh on 16 May 2010 – the same date that Basho and his companion Sora departed Edo in 1689 – with the aim to drink 53 types of tea and 53 types of whisky, and to devise 53 collaborative audio and visual poems. They completed their journey a year later at Glasgow’s hidden gardens, where they were joined by some of those who they met along the way. The road north is a word-map of Scotland. You can see how they progressed and read about the landscapes they have seen and the people they have met on the website: http://www.theroadnorth.co.uk

Meg Bateman, Gaelic poet and writer is based in Sleat where she is a lecturer at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. She has recently been involved in the visual arts collaborative research project between Dundee University and Sabhal Mòr, Window to the West.  Nowadays she finds herself writing mostly about time – and trying to bend it! She has also begun writing in English and finds this a very different medium from Gaelic. She is at present working on a collection in English, “Transparencies”. It is due to be published next year and explores the nature of time.

Rosie Somerville ATLAS Coordinator continued “Whenever we have artists visiting the island and we will also be inviting them to give a public talk about their work or do an interview on Cuillin FM. The recent formation of the Skye Literary Salon with its intimate eco café in the Isle of Skye Baking Company provides an exciting new venue for events of this kind”.

Entry to the event is free.

Alec Finlay is an internationally recognised artist, poet and publisher based in Newcastle Upon Tyne. In residencies at BALTIC, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and NaREC he has produced a series of acclaimed participative projects, from innovative publications to large-scale interventions such as wind turbines. Finlay describes his work as ‘microtonal,’ combining a number of smaller elements within a wider field, employing a range of media including poetics, sculpture, collage, audio-visual and new technologies. He is the publisher of over 20 books and recipient of 2 Scottish Design Awards. Currently Artist in Residence at Northumbria University, in 2010 Finlay was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize.

Meg Bateman lectures in literature and philosophy at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Skye’s Gaelic college and part of the University of the Highlands and Islands. She has recently been involved in the visual arts collaborative research project between Dundee University and Sabhal Mòr, “Window to the West”.

Her Gaelic poetry is included in numerous anthologies such as The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse, 2000 and The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945. She has also translated and co-edited three anthologies of Gaelic medieval, 17th century religious and verse. Her own poetry collections, Aotromachd/ Lightness and Soirbheas/ Fair Wind, were short-listed for the Scottish Book of the Year award in 1997 and 2007. The 1997 collection movingly deals with the fragility of love and human relationships and won a Scottish Arts Council award. She is at present working on a collection in English, “Transparencies”. It is due to be published next year and explores the nature of time.

Source: ATLAS