The Remarkable Jon McGregor

Ross Bradshaw gives an overview of the work of Jon McGregor, one of the most talented writers working in the East Midlands today. Read more

Can a man live on indie press alone?

Ross Bradshaw puts his money where his mouth is and decides to spend a year reading only books published by independent presses. How will this epic adventure end? Read more

Reading’s love affair with Indian writing

Ross Bradshaw takes a walk through the history of Indian writing in the United Kingdom. Read more

Bradshaw’s Top Ten of the Year

As the new year unfolds before us, Ross Bradshaw shares his own personal top ten books from the year before. Read more

The rise and rise of creative writing courses

Ross Bradshaw asks if creative writing courses give their students an advantage in becoming published.
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What I did on my holidays #2

You leave a country for just thirty or so years and, blimey, it changes. Here’s a few things there never used to be:

The Scottish Review of Books – a high quality quarterly newspaper given away with the Herald, in bookshops and libraries. The handful I’ve picked up led with the novelist Janice Galloway, the Canadian/Scottish diaspora writer (who happens to be my favourite short story writer) Alistair MacLeod, the new biography of Muriel Spark by the East Midlands’ writer Martin Stannard and a feature on the deserted villages of Europe. You can subscibe via www.argyllpublishing.co.uk or track down copies when you are up there.

Northwards Now – this is the one that intrigues me, a thrice yearly literary magazine from Inverness. Again free, I picked up my copy at the arts cinema in Glasgow, but you can subscribe for a fiver via www.northwordsnow.co.uk. This one has an orientation towards the north of the country, as the name suggests, so there is a bigger Gaelic content. But what interested me is that it is not have the feel of the kailyard and is quite mouthy. The current issue addresses the new round of Scottish poetry coming from Salt, admiring the look of the books but suggesting they suffer from “emporer’s new clothes” due to the absence of professinal editing.

Book Festivals – look beyond the overpriced Edinburgh Festival. How about the little one in Portobello (a town that does not even have a bookshop), Nairn, Ullapool, the biggie at Wigtown. Take it as read that Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdee also have theirs. The one I’m not overwhelmed by though is the Borders Book Festival. Overpriced, virtually nobody from the Borders, held outside of Melrose with no involvement of the local bookshop or local businesses and based on the hero worship principle. They could do better.

Bookshops – I hear great things about some of the northern shops, the bookshop/restaurant/gallery at Durness and The Ceilidh Place Bookshop in Ullapool. On my old stomping ground there is the charming and busy Masons of Melrose, Main Street Trading in St Boswells (set up by an ex-Bloomsbury worker) and, astonishingly The Forest Bookstore in the small town of Selkirk, which specialises in the build environment. All have the advantages of Scottish history and fiction for visitors (the Aberfeldy bookshop said in The Bookseller that their sales actually go down towards the Christmas period as there are less visitors) but none of the shops I have mentioned go for tartan tackiness, something so prevalent at tourist haunts. (It annoys me when crossing the border to see bagpipers – the Borders’ tradition is small pipes and no artificial highland dress.)

STANZA – Scotland’s big poetry festival, held in March (www.stanzapoetry.org). Their early programme is out already with Seamus Heaney topping the bill,but there is also a St Patrick’s Night celebration and evening of poetry from Shetland as well as Vicki Feaver, Moniza Alvi and a host over others – including readers from Cuba, Italy and Croatia. Scottish literature has always been internationalist.

Even my own town of Hawick is gettng in on the act. Its second hand bookshop, Waterspode, appears to have given up the ghost – I never, ever found it open anyway – but there is a festival weekend with Kathleen Jamie (one of my favourite Scottish poets) and Janice Galloway.

Yes, there were good things happening thirty years ago. I was introduced to the work of Edward Carpenter thirty years ago in Aberdeenshire by Noel Greig, who has just died, and there were several radical bookshops. But now (most of the developments mentioned above started withing the last few years) it really does feel that literature is centre stage throughout the whole country, in all the languages of Scotland. And I’m homesick.

Ross Bradshaw runs Five Leaves Publications, the region’s “biggest small press” and jointly organises Lowdham Book Festival. For ten years he was Nottinghamshire’s Literature Development Officer, and, earlier, spent seventeen years working in a radical independent bookshop. fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com

What I did on my holidays #1

Ross Bradshaw, publisher of Five Leaves press, tours the sights of literary Scotland and shares his discoveries.

After a couple of hours around Arthur’s Seat (or Arthur Seaton, as my literary Nottingham-centric companion called it) we dropped down to the Scottish Parliament, sitting in its shadow. The cost overrun and the fascinating architecture of the place have been rehearsed well enough, but it is worth a guided tour by anyone visiting Edinburgh. In its first year over around a million people, mostly Scots, went round their Parliament which probably makes Edwin Morgan’s “For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004” one of the best read poems going since every tour stops in front of it.

Edwin Morgan is the current “Makar”, the Scottish equivalent of the Poet Laureate, now in his eighties, a belatedly out gay man and a terrific poet. His Scottish Parliament poem is a celebration, but also a warning to the Members of the Scottish Parliament that it should not be a “nest of fearties” and worse of all not a place where they famous Scottish phrase “it wizny me” is used. Had more British Parliamentarians assented to his line “We give your our consent to govern, don’t pocket it and ride away” they might not be in the mess they currently are.

A hundred yards from the Scottish Parliament lies the Scottish Poetry Library (www.spl.org.uk) which proudly boasts the new Edwin Morgan archive (www.edwinmorgan.spl.org.uk). You can pick up some free postcards of Morgan poems like my favourite “Strawberries” or some of his sound poems, so loved by children. Morgan’s archive is not small as he, more than many, contributed to broadsheets, fugitive material of all types, as well as his main publications.

The Scottish Poetry Library is a rare calm space just off the Royal Mile, with a modest events programme, an annual small press fair and a very good broadsheet magazine, Poetry Reader. The library is well laid out with material to borrow or to examine, and some on sale. There’s a children’s area and an area for magazines. Naturally the coverage is slanted towards Scottish poetry, in all the languages of that country. On my visit there was a special exhibition of Ivor Cutler’s poetry and graphics. The same weekend there was a seminar on war poetry, with some current serving soldier poets attending and reading their work.

Without overstating the case, it felt to me that poetry plays a stronger role in Scottish life than here. Burns is never far away. And nor is haggis. I could not believe it at first but it does appear to be true that in 1984, when the Poetry Library first opened (in previous premises) the haggis manufacturer Mcsweeney’s made a vegetarian version that was so popular it went into general manufacture. I’ve bought it and enjoyed it a few times – never knowing its literary origins.

The Scottish Poetry Library produces a neat little pamphlet giving a history of the Library, on its 25th anniversary. £3 well spent.

Later, walking down a footpath by the Water of Leith we stumbled on the Dean Gallery, a building previously quite unknown to me. For the first time ever my jaw really did drop when I went into the exhibition recreating the studios of the Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. You have to see it. The literary interest is in the adjacant room, the Gabrielle Keillor Library where the work of the surrealist French poet Paul Éluard is on display, and is broadcast, backed by artists books and illustrated books from the Dada and Surrealist tradition. The Gallery as a whole specialises in Surrealism.

The final literary call was on the new Edinburgh Bookshop in Bruntsfield, a spin off from the children’s book in the same street. The shop had been open a few days when I called, with a small but carefully chosen stock of 3,000 books, mostly displayed face out in single copies. It will not replace my favourite Edinburgh bookshop Wordpower as my first port of call, but is another sign of the welcome return of confidence to independent bookselling.

Supported by Writing East Midlands

Ross Bradshaw runs Five Leaves Publications, the region’s “biggest small press” and jointly organises Lowdham Book Festival. For ten years he was Nottinghamshire’s Literature Development Officer, and, earlier, spent seventeen years working in a radical independent bookshop.

One man band

Small presses are often based on one individual. Is that a bad thing? Ross Bradshaw considers. Read more

Librarians! To the barricades!

Getting free public libraries was a struggle. So what can we do to keep them? Read more

Keith Leonard

Keith Leonard, best known as a founder of the Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham has sadly passed away. Ross Bradshaw remembers his contribution to the book life of Nottingham and beyond. Read more

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