Seize The Day!

On the eve of the most important day in Scottish history for over 300 years it's difficult to concentrate on anything else. It's time for us all to decide - between more of the same, and worse, from the UK parties and the prospect of a better future for the people of Scotland, and, indeed, the rest of the world. In my view it’s not just about a socially and economically fairer society and ending Trident and nuclear bases here, important though these are, but having the power in our own hands, as we do tomorrow, to create better and more culturally fulfilling ways of living for everyone. Will we have the self-belief to change history for the better, or will we let ourselves down because of fears and uncertainty? 

My geopoetics American friend Laura Hope-Gill says on her Facebook timeline that ‘the spirit of independence is its own force in nature. Self-actualization is a vital need, for people and for nations. In this scenario, Scotland's Yes movement has a vision which once opened does not close for any warnings or practical considerations. This is a calling, something poetic speaking into the din of the so-called pragmatic, a term that genuinely ought to include the poetic in its "looking at it from all sides" claim. Scotland wants to be Scotland on its own. It wants to be Scotland and have its own story once again, after a very long time. That's a powerful wish, and there is nothing practical or realistic about wishes, yet they often win and amaze and show us new ways the world can be. The world is changing, moving away from outmoded ways of governance and management of resources. Scotland just might show us how it's done.’

I’m reminded also of her beautiful Fb post after the death of Robin Williams about how seeing his wonderful portrayal of the teacher John Keating in Dead Poets Society made her decide to spend the rest of her life teaching poetry and motivating young and older people to live their lives to the full. This she has done, and enriched many lives in the process, and tomorrow the people of Scotland should follow her example... and seize the day!

A Time For Reflection

A time for reflection on the old year and where it’s taken me. Well, to Kerrera, Lismore, Gigha, Coll, Tiree and Easdale for a start, to learn from their Community Trust activities, all different but earnestly tackling similar problems and taking their islands forward. This is what we hope to achieve with our Trust Atlantic Islands Centre here on Luing which would provide a café restaurant gathering place for the community and an exhibition and interpretation centre where islanders and visitors can learn more about the human and natural history of Luing and the other Argyll islands.

My writing also took me to Rothesay and Helensburgh Libraries and the Kilmarnock Burns Club in March to give readings from Slate, Sea and Sky, and to offer poetry workshops at Easdale and Luing Primary Schools which produced lots of good poems by pupils. A very fruitful collaboration with composer, musician and writer Mark Sheridan led to the Atlantic Islands Suite which premiered at the Atlantic Islands Festival here in July and went on to the Belladrum Festival in August, with perhaps more performances next year.

Then there was my ongoing creative partnership with Steve Pardue of Differentia Design which produced seven interpretation panels for the Oban Community Council, which were installed along the sea front in Oban and Ganavan in October, and the poetry rocks further north at Kentallen on the Caledonia Way cycle route. In the course of this I researched and learnt a lot about the history and wildlife of the area and the content of the panels can be seen at http://www.obancircle.org.uk/. Steve’s a great guy to work with, he always seems to get my creative juices going, and having a focus and deadline to meet always helps. I’m looking forward to more of the same next year.

Of course, the high point of the year was the Atlantic Islands Festival which by all accounts was a resounding success and brought outstanding musicians, writers and visual artists to Luing for a full week long programme of events, workshops, walks and talks. The lure of Luing has already brought some of them back and many have kept in touch through Facebook and e-mail and the experience has inspired them in their work and in their lives.

The Scottish Centre for Geopoetics has emerged stronger from this with new members on Luing and an extended and extending core of folk who are taken by the concept and its practice and understand its relevance to their ongoing work. Continuing creative connections with Mark and Marion Sheridan and Richard and Bridie Ashrowan, for example, should bring rich benefits to the development of geopoetics in Scotland and we are already planning weekend events on Islay at the end of February and at Ruskin’s house at Brantwood in Cumbria at the end of May. This last should bring together our members in the North of England and the Borders and hopefully kick-start a group in England.

This new phase in the growth of interest in geopoetics is epitomised for me in my friendship through Facebook with Nat Hall in Shetland, our new furthest north member, whose enthusiasm has already brought a whiff of energising ocean air to our ongoing work. Our continuing discussions with the International Futures Forum based at Aberdour also bode well for the future. This kind of networking and exchange of creative ideas and practice offers encouraging prospects for the development of geopoetics as a global movement.

The Festival was a massive voluntary undertaking and too much to take on every year so we have decided to plan for 2011 instead. I’m hoping that this will enable me to concentrate more on creating new work in poetry and non-fiction over the coming year and I aim to make this a priority in 2010. Healthwise it’s been a pretty good year too - helped by stress relieving holidays in Rhodes, Crete and Germany - and let’s hope that continues. The last night of the year beckons - more thoughts to follow in the New Year.

A Meeting of Minds: Geopoetics and the International Futures Forum

Ian and Marj Prior and I caught the first ferry from the Isle of Luing at 7.30 am and got to Aberdour by 11 after a fine journey between the hills that was splashed with damp autumn colours. We were warmly welcomed at The Boathouse by Andrew Lyon and Tina Sorenson on behalf of the International Futures Forum, and once everyone had assembled we were soon out on the coastal walk over the cliffs and through a wood to the neat little harbour of Aberdour.

A cawing of jackdaws took off from the beach leaving it to an oystercatcher, a redshank and some carrion crows. We walked round the harbour to the Blacksands amid speculation that the lack of signposts pointing there from the village signified the wish of local people to keep this beach to themselves. It was a beautiful little cove with stepping stones carved into the rock at the far end, so who could blame them, were it true?

On the point, a solitary curlew stood unconcerned amongst glistening rack but flew off as more of us approached. As usual we engaged in random snatches of conversations as we walked. Short and longer, familiar and new, sharing news and thoughts, always interesting, leaving you wanting more, but always with a weather eye open for everything around us.

A few of us called in at a small round gallery above the shore which had some good quality paintings and blue metal fish dangling from a frame on the wall. Back around the harbour we climbed up steep, winding steps to the top of the cliffs and found out later that these had been built by the father of a man who had come along that day to find out what geopoetics was about.

Invigorated by the walk, we were ready for a delicious soup and sandwich lunch back at The Boathouse thanks to the generosity of the IFF. In the course of conversation with Andrew and Graham Leicester, IFF Director, I learned that this magnificent new building with its open views over the Forth had once been a boat builder’s which its new owner Pat Henaghan had redesigned as a flexible, contemporary meeting place for hire.

The man himself sat down beside me and told me more about this and another attempted rebuilding project which led (don’t ask me how) into a description, based on a brain surgeon’s knowledge, of how the brain works and how PowerPoint was totally unsuitable for presentations if you wanted to engage with people and stimulate new thinking. Afterwards he gave me a copy of The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within by Edward R. Tufte, complete with a hilarious front cover showing a military parade in Budapest in 1956 and the caption “There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list!” which totally demolishes its flawed approach. PowerPoint no More!

It turned out that Pat was on his way to Santiago in Chile so I asked him to look up El Observatorio, the fledgling geopoetics centre there who recently got in touch with me, whilst Andrew joked that I might want to let them know that we were sending out our man to check them out.

Andrew, Graham, Jennifer Williams and Tony Hodgson from the IFF steering group sat in on our AGM held in the round in the stunning conference room upstairs as we discussed how our Summer School and Atlantic Islands Festival had led to new creative partnerships and strengthened existing ones, and discussed exciting plans for an Islay weekend in February and a North of England Going Outward event in May 2010. We also discussed our potential participation in a European-wide ASTRAL project which would bring together scientists and artists in creative educational ways.

When an IFF team came to Luing in August on a learning journey to explore the influence of culture on health, they asked us lots of questions about geopoetics and what we did. This time we asked the IFF members how they started off and what they did, and they told us that it began with two meetings in 2001 which led to a realisation that so much current thinking was based on an inadequate conceptual framework and from then on an involvement in a process of going out into the world in search of a wider and deeper approach.

They talked about the holistic science advocated by Brian Goodwin of Schumacher College, about the vision of the prophetic imagination proposed by Walter Brueggemann, and the World Model they had developed of how we conceive the world in which we’re living and the need to put the cosmos back into our thinking. As they spoke it became clearer that essentially we were talking about the same things: where they speak about a conceptual emergency we talk about the dead end of the motorway of western civilisation, where they talk about the need for cultural leadership and creative transgression we speak about a movement for radical cultural renewal.

As we talked Graham was scanning the booklet Geopoetics; place, culture, world by Kenneth White which we’d brought along, was seeing the inter-connections and said so. When one of our group suggested that Kenneth White and geopoetics didn’t engage with social and political issues and another that the IFF’s work was geopoetics with a purpose, I pointed out that some of us had spent many years of our lives doing just that and had come to the conclusion that how we lived our lives creatively could touch just as many, if not more, people than political activity. I also suggested that whatever economic or social situation an individual was in there remained the possibility of opening a world, developing one’s-self and responding creatively in a wide range of forms to it, thereby leading a fuller and fulfilled life.

Geopoetics has always had a purpose, a very ambitious purpose, its purpose is nothing less than a re-founding and re-grounding of contemporary culture on the basis of a new or renewed sense of world. The geopoetics movement begins with individuals who grasp that such an approach is desperately needed and are prepared to work with others to bring about a fundamental shift in thinking, living and expression.

Finding common cause and purpose with the work being done by the International Futures Forum was the revelation of the day and its potential is immeasurable. As we wound up our discussion I spotted a cormorant taking off into the fading light of the Forth estuary. I took that as an auspicious sign.