Fine things happen on the road. Even before we got started there was a poetry workshop in Ullapool with Les Murray. I don’t know how one is meant to approach writers of that stature – it clearly isn’t possible to just turn up the deference volume appropriately – you wouldn’t be able to say a thing. Polite and paying attention for sure – beyond that we just soaked up the canny. Seeing him think about one or two of your poems, from cold, right there with ‘are you sure you really need that stanza?’ and a glint in his eye (when of course you didn’t need that stanza (or not all of it!)) – makes you giddy with the sight of how far there is to go. But because the man clearly still loves every moment of poetry after some 30 books of it – you still get the feeling it is possible to keep climbing. I don’t know -it’ll take weeks to assimilate all that we learnt – but remembering that he did a limerick for us too.
Then we met Alasdair Gray. It doesn’t seem right, even in the informal context of a blog, to say much about private conversations. So… am I just name-dropping for the sake of it? “I’ve got a secret but I anin’t gonna say!” Well, I hope not. I guess the imporant thing is that through all the nits and grits of getting books onto the shelves – and off the damned things – it is easy to forget that these lumps of paper, bulky and expensive as they are, carry the message still. And when you meet him you know, instantly and with certainty, that putting anything of Mr Gray’s out to the world deserves all the care and attention to detail that is possible – and that it is a job to be proud to do.
OK, I’ll dry my eyes and stop gazing to the heavens. But, no – first there was the Cleave launch. Many wonderful writers all in one room – a real synergy of readings. And then to cap it all we happened upon dinner with the new Edinburgh Makar, Ron Butlin, his wife Regi Claire and a couple of their friends, where I completed a full set of big literary figures to whom I jabbered nervously and incoherently but who were kind enough listen and smile rather than scowl.
Thus fortified we pack up our goods in a handkerchief on the end of a stick and make our way to London town to seek our fortune.
David
