Sandstone Press

Reading poetry on trains

Posted by RLD on 28th February 2010

The Highland Festival used to have its offices among the topmost reaches of Inverness Castle. For those who have not visited Inverness the Castle is a reddish confection located on a hill above the River Ness, a fine postcard picture. A relic of the Old Queen and her Albert it has the royal residence at Balmoral as a cousin once or twice removed.

Nowadays though, it hosts Inverness Sheriff Court where I once kicked my heels for a couple of days as a potential witness. Later acquaintance would have me puffing my way up the stairs to meet Festival Director Alistair MacDonald and his team in their turret. From within that lofty chamber we planned and eventually executed two Festival shows, Centring On A Woman’s Voice and Dunbeath Water: an oratorio. The Festival itself was later executed, in the other sense of the word, to my almost-grief, among much finger pointing and blame. In fact it was a victim of the Victorian notion that the Highlands are one place.

We suffer from this in all kind of ways. The population is small and distances between them are great. Putting in, for example, a water scheme costs more per head than it does in a city, or even in farming areas such as Aberdeenshire. Alistair was obliged mix professional and amateur events on an inevitably inadequate budget and send them travelling around this vast area. The result was also inevitable and I will not quickly forget the pall that hung over us all as the last evening of the last Festival approached.

When it returns, as it eventually will, the new Festival should locate in the City of the Highlands with the wonderful Eden Court Theatre at its heart. The questions of whether it should be Classical, Trad or as broad in interest as it was, professional or amateur, and whether the shows should be sent to the people or the people bussed in to the shows, or that there be more local festivals in orbit as a sort of Fringe around the main festival, must remain moot. I suspect though, in the unlikely event that I should be seriously consulted, I will be biting the hand that used to feed me.

To return to Alistair and co’s lofty turret, it was up there that the idea of putting poets on trains was hatched. I was one of the lucky poets, twice reading on the Inverness – Nairn commuter, both ways (let it not be said that Alistair did not wring value out of money), also once on the beautiful Kyle line.

All it took for the poet was a neck of tempered steel and a back catalogue. The audience, of course, had no choice but to sit there and take it. Since only a few misguided damsels have ever run towards poets, their only alternative was to run away. It was not unusual towards the end of the journeys to find the poets reading towards a fair crowd at the back of the train.

The readings were not without their surprises. My nose jumped out of joint when I discovered a team of kilted tcheuchters working the Kyle train from the other end. The confrontation in the middle carriage was terrible. They were fundraising for the steam railway, soiling the journey’s purity with the passage of money from hand to hand. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

The trip to Nairn was an easy half shift; not so the return. The commuters had been waiting in the teeming rain as I had, for a while, with them and all the seats were already taken by travellers from Elgin and Forres. Cold, wet, with little horseshow frowns between their eyebrows the audience was there to be slain. What to read though, inevitably on a one to one basis with the neighbours quietly thanking God that this maniac had passed them by. My big poems, stuff such as Patrick Mor McCrimmon Teaches The Lament For The Only Son, a title longer than a haiku (count those syllables), or the three page Star Thrower, were obviously out. Settling on a short lyrical piece I whipped out my copy of Total Immersion and shouldered my way to the first commuter who did not drop his eyes and obviously pray for death.

You don’t have to read to more than three before you realise they are probably not going to turn on you as a mob. Misguided confidence grows. When I finished reading to Number Three I felt a tap on my shoulder. A fan! Someone was actually going to ask for more!

He was about my own height, with his hair brushed tightly down, wearing heavy framed spectacles speckled with raindrops, clad a tight black slick that buttoned from ankle to throat. A fan is a fan, I told myself, even when he’s dressed by his mother.

‘Some people,’ he said, ‘could be very offended by that. It’s blasphemous’.

I read him the book’s closing poem instead. Benediction has been read at weddings and christenings and so should have been a safe bet. Not so, and I was glad to get to the next carriage with my arse unscorched by hellfire.

Organised religion only really arrived in my life on a school visit to Iona, and the Iona Community, almost half a century ago. Experiences of the daily services and warmth of community influenced me deeply, as has become apparent through the decades. Nowadays I avoid all labels and, after working on Shadow Behind The Sun, particularly those associated with religion, nationality and ideology. My sense of identity runs to writer, editor and publisher and not much further.

For all that, I want to recognise and acknowledge that which, and those who, have been positive and enlightening. When the Neil Gunn Trust was planning for and building the Viewpoint on the Heights of Brae Kerr Yule, our founder and Chairman, and Allan Haldane our sculptor and artist, decided that two Caithness slabs should be built into the wall around the Tryst gate. On these slabs Allan inscribed a quotation from The Green Isle Of The Great Deep. One side says, ‘For love is the creator . . .’ The other says, ‘. . . and cruelty is that which destroys.’ Positioning the divided quote in that way was meant to suggest choice.

Kerr and Allan put a lot of weight on another quote which you can find on the welcoming plaque. This one is from The Serpent:-

‘For at the end of the day, what’s all the bother about? Simply about human relations, about how we are to live with one another on the old earth. That’s all, ultimately. To understand one another, and to understand what we can about the earth, and in the process gather some peace of mind and, with luck, a little delight.’

Okay, it’s a bit ‘Autumn Gold’. Where there are human relations there is generally trouble. Liking and respecting them as I did I kept my notions to myself. At the time I thought it a bit happy clappy. Now I am not so sure. Blink once and it moves from the Old Folks Home to the negotiating table and killing fields.

The next Nairn – Inverness adventure was a daytime trip in brilliant weather on a train that was only about half full. I approached an innocent victim, explained what the event was all about and asked if I could read to her. She said no. Worse was to follow. The other passengers in earshot were emboldened to also say no. I skipped a carriage and walked to the far end, hoping to outrun that word ‘no’ as it travelled from mouth to ear.

At the far end of the carriage I found a group of nine or ten people, all well dressed and with a certain air about them I felt I recognised. It turned out they were Americans, and when I asked them if I could read they said yes with suspicious enthusiasm. Not only that but I should sit with them. Wedging myself behind a table I chanced my blasphemous poem again. They asked for more. Would I oblige?

After a few more poems the woman opposite said, ‘That was wonderful and now I have something to tell you. We are Mormons and have something to read to you in turn.’ How neatly the tables can turn.

A cold shiver ran down my spine but it turned out I was not to be subjected to a tract.

‘We also write poetry,’ she said. Each of them produced a briefcase and from each briefcase each took a broad sheaf of poems and one by one, in turn, started to read. They were love poems, all shading more towards Eros than agapé.

Let me say that I know about Mormon polygamy, the dubious fixation with ancestry, the angel and the book. I also know that the founder, Joseph Smith, believed that no black person could possibly enter Heaven. All of that only follows the obvious fact that he was a charlatan. Any fool can see that and the fact that many intelligent people don’t shows that if you get the hook in early enough, and drive it deep enough, it is difficult and painful to remove. It’s founded on nonsense, but so are all the rest. Their mythologies have for long been in retreat before science. Their dogmas follow, but all too slowly and with too many casualties such as, I dare say, my friend the Offended Pharisee.

Before too long we agreed to return together along the train, reading our poems to whomever would listen and so we did, a conga of happy poets clapping its several rhythms to an audience of commuting celebrants.Before too long we agreed to return together along the train, reading our poems to whomever would listen and so we did, a conga of happy poets clapping its several rhythms to an audience of commuting celebrants

I like to think of this as the beginnings of a new literature based religion. Mind though, it has the beginnings of schism built in. The subjective appreciation of poetry might soon find itself in disagreement, leading to dispute and, soon, conflict with austere, stripped down, objective prose. Here is the offending poem. Brace yourself.

SANCTUS

My luve is like the Holy Ghost,
I kenna when she comes or goes.

I only ken when we are twined,
The cannle’s licht within my mind.

I only feel when we’re apairt,
The cannle’s warmth within my hert.

My luve is like the Holy Ghost,
She passes through me and I’m lost.