Edinburgh Book Festival, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 18 August 2011

TWO neighbours along the sea-route shared the platform in a skillfully planned event at Edinburgh Book Festival.

Angus Peter Campbell is a poet, novelist, journalist and actor. He speaks and writes in Gaelic and English, sometimes making the shift within the same spoken sentence.

Angus Peter Campbell (Scottish Book Trust)

Gwyneth Lewis has published a prose title which was short-listed for a “Mind” book of the year award as well as many books of poetry in Welsh and English. She set off on a long-distance voyage with the intention of documenting it in a log of poetry but the journal turned out to be an analysis of a relationship under great pressure.

Gwyneth Lewis

Gavin Wallace, who manages the literature portfolio at Creative Scotland, wisely said the minimum to allow these two voyagers the cues to set off on a summary of their own very individual Odysseys. Each took a timeless myth as their impetus and each story also provided a provisional framework.

Campbell took the tale of the quest for the source of the wind – probably of Norse origins. Lewis took a classic Welsh medieval legend, which has prompted poems and other responses in different arts through the centuries. She transfers the story to space. Campbell also gets airborne – or rather a cow appears to do so.

Campbell began. In a fluent spate, which included instant versions of asides in Gaelic – or maybe the English ones were the on-the-spot translations –  a seannachie was practicing his exuberant craft. Yarns were spliced together to form a narrative with purpose. Archie is a bit like the Jack figure in so many Scottish stories – a guy who, as my mother would say, turns out to be not as green as he’s cabbage looking.

Beginning with the theory that there is probably no gravity affecting South Uist, his hero begins a quest which will take him indeed to the North Pole and the discovery of that  hole there  – the one that unfortunately is more realist than magical.

In his conversational introduction Campbell sketched out his hero type thus. “Our Archie” is the sort of guy, so say his proud relatives, who must be a legend. If someone in the village had been round Cape Horn, “Our Archie did it naked, attached to the mast, while the ship was going backwards.”

There were no less surreal moments in Lewis’s take on her chosen legend. The story is transferred to a voyage in space where the relationship between the cadet and the old hand who seeks to pass on human experience as well as technical instruction, is the source of humour.

Even on the evidence of the short extract and the discussion, it is also the tool for detailed examination of what is still relevant in an old, old story.

A sharp wit and a poet’s playfulness with ideas as well as language came across. After a dust storm in the Miso soup, “You wouldn’t know how hard it is to catch airborne vomit in a paper bag.”

You got the feeling right away that the space-sick apprentice was into more of a journey than she’d bargained for. The Welsh source has two brothers transformed into a stag and a hind as punishment for a rape. These possibilities are wittily explored in the transposed narrative.

You got the feeling that the discussion, the comparisons of new and old myth and of the issues and opportunities available to the bilingual writer, could have gone on all day.

Individual discussions did occur as both writers were available to the large section of the audience, staying to buy the books and talk direct. Considering the bewildering scale of the whole event, it is inspiring that a true convivial festival atmosphere, brimming with goodwill, survives.

For those attending Book Festival events, I’d urge you to sample the free show at the Speigeltent, most evenings. Last night, the compere Ryan Van Winkle (known to many in the Highlands for organizing extensive poetry-performance tours) put together a  series of entertainments which was strangely satisfying.

From a dry intense genuine short story to low-key Edinburgh accent rap (over electronica), to the expert delivery of the roofer’s poems in his own unwavering voice, the  variety did not exclude the contemplative. It all ended in an electric blues shindig by Earl Grey and the Loose Leafs. A grand day out in Charlotte Square.

Archie and the North Wind, Luath Press

The Meat Tree, (based on Blodeuwedd), Seren Books

© Ian Stephen, 2011

Links

• Ian Stephen
• Angus Peter Campbell
• Gwyneth Lewis