Still digging through the dustbins

By Alistair Braidwood

SOMEONE recently garnished me with one of those useless statistics that can kill a conversation stone dead. The claim was that Scotland has more book festivals per head of population then any other country, and I have no reason to disbelieve it. It would be nice, if overly romantic, to see this as the natural legacy from the Knoxian drive to make sure every Scottish child could read the bible, a legacy which would cause the bearded one to wail and gnash if he knew the type of material that fills these festivals. From Shetland to Montrose, from Colonsay to North Berwick popular festivals are thriving, a situation which chimes with these times where small and independent rather than large and corporate is increasingly the most effective way to sell new books and promote new writers.
The big boys of Scotland’s book festivals - Edinburgh International, Glasgow’s Aye Write and Wigtown - tend to focus on the well kent and established, perhaps understandably, but there are so many writers, poets and performers trying to get their work read and their voice heard that the smaller festivals can offer an important platform. Regular literary performance nights such as Glasgow’s Words Per Minute and DiScOmBoBuLaTe, and the Edinburgh based Writer’s Bloc and Neu! Reekie, have proven that there’s a keen audience for new writing, often mixing it with live music and other performance.

There are also literary journals like Gutter, Valve and the forthcoming Octavius as well as the long established collections such as New Writing Scotland, Edinburgh Review, The Drouth and Product to back up this claim.
So there is now a new problem; with such a diversity of choice how do you make a festival stand out? This year’s Margins Book and Music Festival, at The Arches in Glasgow from the 24th-26th of February, perhaps shows the way forward. Glasgow has now become an all year festival city, with Celtic Connections kicking the year off, followed in quick succession by The Glasgow Film Festival, Aye Write, The International Comedy Festival, the Visual Art Festival, and so on throughout the year. With all of this going on against a background of recession, everyone seems to be fighting over an audience whose disposable income is stretched further than it has been for some time. It will be interesting to see how many of the larger festivals, which have grown exponentially year on year, will see a fall in sales in the next 12 months. It does seem that for too long some have taken their audiences for granted, charging ever increasing prices.

The organisers of Margins, Cargo Publishing, believe that there is, with careful programming and pricing, a way to bring together different audiences. They hold that most people interested in the arts have broad tastes and multiple interests, rarely catered for under one roof. This year they have sessions which include three generations of poets on stage with Tom Leonard, Don Paterson and Billy Letford appearing together. I often argue that labelling and categorising writers has a negative effect on how their writing will be perceived, or rather prejudged, but it is difficult to argue that at an event such as this it helps to have some sort of guide as to what you may like, and hopefully people will hang around to try something outside their comfort zone. So you may be a fan of Louise Welsh and/or Christopher Brookmyre and attend their event, but since you’re there you may want to see what the brand new writing collected by magazines such as Octavius or Gutter have to offer.

If you’re a fan of William MacIlvanney you will be intrigued as to why the organisers have placed him alongside new writer Allan Wilson, whose debut collection of short stories Wasted in Love is only came out last summer. There’s even a nod to that most divisive of Scotland’s national obsessions, namely fitba, as Graeme Hunter, an Aberdonian exile in Spain and expert on all things Barcelona, talks about the central role of that sport in Catalonian and Caledonian life, before a reading from Rodge Glass’s latest novel Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs. Amongst the live music performances, Roddy Woomble will follow a set by Alasdair Roberts and Withered Hand, and Malcolm Middleton will be supported by Aidan Moffat who appears with Bill Wells.

However, the highlight of the weekend takes place away from The Arches. It is a production of Fleck, Alasdair Gray’s playful take on the Faust legend, an event which should bring everyone who has an interest in Scottish writing together. Fleck has only been performed twice before, at last year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival and at the end of the year at the International Festival of Authors in Canada. The chances are that this will be the play’s last performance, a situation which must be due to economics and logistics rather than the quality of the writing, which is classic Gray.

Once again Margins have considered matching the venue to the event as Fleck takes place in the main auditorium of Oran Mor, the converted church at the top of Byres Road adorned by Gray’s beautiful murals. With the man himself taking on the central role of Old Nick, this promises to be the ultimate Alasdair Gray experience. The cast tells its own tale as to how he is viewed by his fellow writers as it includes Alan Bissett, Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh, Chiew Siah-Tei, Rodge Glass and Carl McDougal. It may be the closest Oran Mor has had to a religious experience since the days before they poured their first pint of Tennants.

How we consume our culture has, and is, changing dramatically and it’s important to remember that live performance remains the best way to catch a clear picture of what is going on culturally in your locale. As the world continues to shrink there is something ever more vital about the shared live experience be it music, theatre, film (you know what I mean) comedy, poetry and prose. Festivals such as Margins offer the chance to pick and choose your favourites alongside the promise of discovering the new.



http://www.marginsfestival.com