HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY TO ORKNEY LIBRARY & ARCHIVE!

Ron Butlin talks to P7 from Glaitness Primary

This week has seen the tenth anniversary of Orkney Library & Archive moving into the new purpose built library on Junction Road. Though the Laing Street premises were much loved by generations of Orcadians, the library and particularly the archive, had outgrown it.

So to celebrate, we've been having various events. 

James Oswald

On Monday we hosted an event with farmer-crime-writer James Oswald who told the fascinating story of his recent phenomenal publishing success. 

Two books out this summer, one coming out in February next year and a further three book deal with Penguin to take the Inspector McLean mysteries to six. 

James reckons he can turn out two a year. AND run his 350 acre farm in Fife. Good luck to him! We were lucky here in Orkney to see James for his first gig on his own as an author. He might be a bit harder to book in future. I imagine he will be reaping the whirlwind of his success along with his silage!

Evisceration, I said, your first book is full of it. Was this a working through of your guilt that you send some of your animals to slaughter?

Louise Graham and James Oswald

No, replied James Oswald, it arose from me and Stuart McBride trying to out-gross each other!

Ron Butlin and children from Glaitness Primary School

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh's Makar or Poet Laureate, worked with two groups of young folk - five from Wirdsmit Young Writers' Group on Tuesday and on Wednesday, 31 from P7, Glaitness Primary!

Ron was very impressed by both groups. The Wirdsmit youngsters wrote at an enviable rate and produced excellent work. And he kept the group of 31 enthralled as he told them to stop thinking and allow their imaginations full rein.

Q. What's read again and again but never bought? was the riddle one came up with.

Ron Butlin in conversation with David Lea

Ron did a reading from his work in the evening - poetry and short stories - to a good crowd of folk and generated lively interesting questions and discussion. 

Tim Morrison, Cary Welling, Ron Ferguson

When politicians and corporations fail us, all we have is our shared humanity. Poetry can put us in touch with that.

Karen Walker and Jim Bergen

Ron got a surprise when two old friends of his turned up unexpectedly for his reading. Novelists Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan were on holiday in Orkney and came along.

Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh and Louise Graham

Amber Connolly who runs Wirdsmit

David Drever and Liam Stewart

Answer to the riddle: A library book!

Ron Butlin's and James Oswald's books are available to borrow - again and again! - from Orkney Library & Archive.

Reeling & Writhing with Orkney Reader

Alice with the Mock Turtle & the Gryphon

It's turned out a busy week for yours truly. Reeling and Writhing seems to describe it fairly accurately. As the Mock Turtle said to Alice, when she asked what he learned at school: 

'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with ... and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'

I know how he feels! 

A busy week, but all good things, I hasten to add.

Alice in Wonderland came to mind because I've been asked to take part in an event on Thursday with Glasgow Women's Library in their soon-to-be premises in Bridgeton, Glasgow, to talk along with Magi Gibson, their Reader in Residence, and Wendy Kirk, their Librarian, about books that changed our lives. 

Alice in Wonderland is one I have loved since before I could read - not perhaps for the best of reasons: I thought the book was called Alison Wonderland and was about a fellow Alison! It was influential for me though, when I eventually did read it, because it showed me how much I could identify with a character in a book; how much I could go through Alice's experiences with her, worry when she worried, feel sad when she was sad, happy and defiant when she found the courage to stand up to the strange, unsettling creatures she found around her and survive her unnerving adventures intact.

Magi and I will be speaking about one work of fiction, one of poetry and one non-fiction that have resonated strongly with us at different points in our lives.

Yesterday, Monday the 11th March, I appeared on BBC Radio Scotland's Book Cafe to talk about my involvement with Glasgow Women's Library's 21 Revolutions with authors Louise Welsh and Denise Mina. Still haven't heard it myself, but I believe it is on again on Sunday 17 March at 3.02 pm.

Louise Welsh

Denise Mina

Tomorrow we have the second meetings of the two new poetry reading groups:

The Poem's the Thing 

The afternoon one meets in Kirkwall Library from 1.00-2.00 pm and the evening one in Stromness Library from 6.00-7.00 pm.

Last month, it being the eve of Valentine's Day, we read Carol Ann Duffy's poem, Valentine; and because it was near the anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath, we read Mad Girl's Love Song, which is also the title of the latest biography of Plath. And we read The Overhaul, the title poem of Kathleen Jamie's new collection, winner of the Costa poetry prize and shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize. You can download a PDF of it and two other poems from the collection by clicking the link in the line above.

Kathleen Jamie

Tomorrow we'll read - ah, well, come along and see!  As a clue, let me quote Winston Churchill:

'I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.'

(Just noticed that 'equals' is an anagram of 'squeal'!)