Ullapool Book Festival, Ullapool, 11-13 May 2012

THIS year’s Ullapool Book Festival featured an impressive list of Scotland’s best writers: John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Aonghas MacNeacail, Mairi Hedderwick, Roger Hutchison, Alan Spence, Robin Robertston, Rodge Glass, Malcolm Macintyre and Kevin MacNeil, along with newer names like Sue Peebles and Alison Napier.

THROUGHOUT, the festival has the feel of a Highland ceilidh. It’s a three-day long conversation, with no parallel sessions, plenty of talent taking turns with stories, music, poetry and polemic, no shying from the most heartfelt sorrows or fears, laughter never far away, and regular pauses for hospitality to be enjoyed. It is always, as James Robertson said at the start, our favourite weekend of the year, and this time it was particularly joyful, with Aonghas MacNeacail’s 70th birthday celebration built into the heart of the programme on Saturday night.

Louise Welsh (photo Steve Lindbridge)

Although it can be interesting to hear a writer talk about their work, listening to an author reading from their work is even better. It satisfies a childlike urge for a bedtime story. Sitting in a lap (or a chair) being read to, we can abandon ourselves to the flow of words, with their ability to carry us off, out of self-consciousness, and immerse us in somewhere new. Good chairing is so important in events like this and the Ullapool festival seems to get the balance of readings and debate right, giving writers the lion’s share of time to read and allowing the audience to listen and the magic of immersion to happen.

Some poets, in particular, have the ability to spellbind an audience, and the master of them all is Robin Robertson. His mesmeric voice, hypnotic word patterning and tales steeped in myth and legend, left us feeling, as James Robertson put it, ‘as if when we step outside, seven years may have passed without our knowing it.’

Robin Robertson

After several writers have read, themes begin to emerge and metaphors reoccur. We were in deep, turbulent waters a lot this year: Swedish novelist Karin Altenberg drowned someone off St Kilda, and a freak wave carried off a one of the characters of Canadian short story writer Alexander MacLeod. John Burnside read from his latest novel, A Summer of Drowning, and Robin Robertson rowed across the Corrievrecken. Alan Spence took us to hell and hilarity, then let it all go. Always, within the stories and images conjured by the writers, there are deeper meanings flowing, which converge into the perfect maelstrom. Fear and innocence. Doom and wonder. Death and sex.

Every year at the Ullapool Book Festival I discover a writer new to me, who makes an immediate impact, and this year it was Sue Peebles, author of The Death of Lomond Friel. She has an extraordinary ability to write about darkness while finding humour in the cracks. She made the audience laugh whilst simultaneously showing us the bleak holes that can inhabit families, how sometimes it’s the people who are absent who fill our lives, and how we can live with people and love them, yet not really know them. Readings like this send me back into my own life with fresh eyes and renewed compassion, a feeling that it’s really possible to become a better person.

David Robinson, who reviews books for the Scotsman and is an excellent chair of literary events, said at one point that for a week after the festival he always feels as if he is more intelligent than he was before. I recognise that sense of having learned a lot in a condensed period, often because of the intellectual debates sparked by non-fiction writers.

This year, Andy Wightman got everyone talking about land reform and the need for the Scottish government to maintain the progress of the early years of the Parliament. Roger Hutchinson gave an enthralling account of the healing power of art, in the story of Angus MacPhee, weaver of grass, and Mairi Hedderwick, delightfully thrilled to be talking about her ‘grown-up’ writing, wove a tapestry of history, art and travel.

There were ghosts in the room. Giants of Scotland’s 20th century writing scene seem to have a tendency to reappear at Ullapool, not only as literary influences but as larger-than-life characters. Norman MacCaig and Sorley Maclean, whose centenaries have been celebrated in recent years, always seem to make their presence felt through anecdotes and reminiscences, and this year George Mackay Brown took a pew, thanks to Ron Ferguson’s exploration of the Orkney bard’s spiritual life. As the weekend progressed, others, like Edwin Muir, Iain Crichton Smith, Hugh MacDiarmid, even Robert Louis Stevenson, seemed to stroll in and take their place at the ceilidh.

Aonghas MacNeacail

As ever, Gaelic language featured generously, through poems from An Leabhar Mor na Gaidhlig, Aonghas MacNeacail and Kevin Macneil, stories from Martin Macintyre and a novel from Tormod Caimbeul. For the latter, in a first for a literary festival in Scotland, simultaneous translation allowed non-Gaelic speaking members of the audience to experience total immersion in the story.

And there was, of course, music. Kevin MacNeil gave an unofficial launch of a new album he has made with multi-talented guitarist and singer Willie Campbell, the result of a collaboration he nicely describes as ‘working together in a non-right-wing way’. To my amazement, as an opera-atheist, I was moved to tears by the ‘little bit of Tosca’, brought along from Scottish Opera in a cardboard box with a cello and a harp, a single soprano and a brilliant narrator. What a story! And there were plenty of songs, bawdy, irreverent and love-filled, for Aonghas MacNeacail on Saturday night.

As well as the stories and wordplay, it’s the people who make the Ullapool Book Festival so special, and two deserve special mention: Joan Michael, who chairs the committee of volunteers, a reader unrivalled in her enthusiasm for great writing, and James Robertson, the honorary president of the event, who acts as master of ceremonies throughout this weekend-long ceilidh of writing. Long may they continue working together in their non-right-wing way, bringing us the best literary festival in the world.

© Mandy Haggith, 2012

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