Scotland
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Just finished reading Alistair Findlay’s The Love Songs of John Knox, a sophisticated but hugely entertaining collection. It’s not often a book of poems has me chuckling aloud to myself almost every page. Even rarer is the collection I pass round colleagues at my day job to watch them chuckle and giggle aloud. Findlay takes
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The Sunday Herald has launched a campaign for a new Scottish Constitutional Convention. Is it just me, or has the result of the Scottish election breathed new life into Scottish politics, not only in itself but in how it relates to British politics?
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My post on the back of part 1 of Yang-May Ooi’s interview with Rob Mackenzie is generating the most discussion yet on Tonguefire (still piddling by other blogs’ standards, I know). Katy Evans-Bush has reminded me that she addressed the same issues with Rob in an earlier interview for the e-zine Umbrella. Here’s the relevant
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Interesting piece in today’s Sunday Herald about independent bookshops in Scotland. It seems Hugh Andrew of Birlinn is branching out into bookstores. This has to be a welcome development for writers and readers in Scotland, given the dominance of identikit chain book stores, but the big challenge is how independents will not just survive but
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So the notion of a “Scottish Six” is back on the agenda, though probably not very far up it. I don’t know how far this is an intitiative of Pete Wishart‘s or of the wider SNP but, if a Scottish Six O’clock News comes into being, I suspect it won’t happen in a great hurry.
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Rob Mackenzie has gone and got himself interviewed by Yang-May Ooi of FusionView. Part 1 of the piece is here. I was intrigued by the two following questions and answers: Is being Scottish a strong part of your identity? What does being Scottish mean to you? I’m not particularly nationalistic, until someone criticises Scotland. I
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It seems something of a shame that my day job constrains me from blogging about this fascinating new era in Scottish politics. But there we go. Instead, I recommend to anyone interested in an analysis of developments the new blog by BBC Scotland correspondent Brian Taylor. His is a far more interesting, more entertaining analysis
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So, the SNP came out on top, only just. Given my day job, it’s inappropriate for me to express any opinion on the result, except that there’s no denying it’s a momentous change in Scottish politics. However, with the possibility of challenges to the result and no prospect of a coalition big enough to form
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It’s getting a bit close to the Scottish Parliament elections to be posting a link like this one, but a Scottish voter (or anyone, for that matter) interested in culture could do worse than look at the Scots Language Centre‘s election pages. They contain details of not only the parties’* policies on the Scots language,
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The Scottish Executive has finally announced a little more about the Scottish cultural academy that the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport promised us months and months ago in the Executive’s response to the Cultural Commission‘s report. There has been some muttering about the fact that the academy, which is based somewhat on the Irish
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1 I recommend a listen to this week’s edition of “Poets and the Nation”. It’s a good, intelligent piece of broadcasting about how cultural change in Scotland has been reflected in poetry through the ages. It bounces about time a bit more than last week’s, which is one thing in its favour. 2 Radio 3
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Radio Scotland is airing a three-part series on Scottish poetry called “Poets and The Nation” on Mondays from 11:30 to 12:00. You can listen online from the features page (I assume each programme is available for the standard seven days after broadcast). The first instalment, which was broadcast Monday this week, explored how Scottish poets
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The Scottish Executive has published its draft Culture (Scotland) Bill for consultation. This marks an important juncture for arts and culture policy in Scotland, but The Scotsman reports that James Boyle, the head of the Cultural Commission, which the Executive set up to draw up a vision for Scotland’s cultural policy, is not at all
Amy Jo Philip 