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.

RON BUTLIN: The Edinburgh Makar visits Orkney

I first met Ron Butlin at Glasgow's Aye Write Festival where we were both reading from our recently published novels. His was called Belonging, a novel that captures extremes of cold and heat in the landscape and explores the turbulent weather of human relationships at the edge. I loved the book. 

Ron Butlin is one of those writers difficult to categorise. Equally successful across a variety of genres, he is an award winning novelist, short story writer, opera librettist and poet, recognised internationally and closer to home where he is Edinburgh Makar - or Poet Laureate.

And his road to this position is an interesting one. Here is an extract from a biography on his website:

"At sixteen he hitchhiked down to London where he did nothing for a while (he saw The Stones in Hyde Park, went up in a lift with Paul McCartney - such was life in those days). In quick succession, he secured the positions of valet-footman, barnacle scraper on Thames barges, computer operator and city messenger. Finally he became an associate member of a rather dismal and forgotten pop-group for whom he wrote song lyrics. In less than eight months, and on the strength of two records and a B-film, he retired for good. Without music, his lyrics did their best to become poems.

After drifting around abroad for a year or so he returned to a life of intense unemployment. This was when he began to write in earnest. Over the course of several years he did very little else. Eventually, however, the Government decided it was time he made a meaningful contribution to society and, as an incentive, stopped his dole money. Spurred into action he became a male model - for students at the Edinburgh College of Art. As well as broadening his social life, this allowed him to sit and do nothing for hours on end, leaving his imagination completely free. His earliest published poems date from this period."

"There are more people writing poetry than reading it, and precious few buying it," he says. 

Which is why he learned to 'diversify' and turn his hand to all sorts of writing. Unsuccessful as he characterises his early days writing pop song lyrics, it must have been a worthwhile apprenticeship, because he has since written several libretti for Scottish Opera. His most recent book of poetry, The Magicians of Edinburgh, has run into several reprints.

Of his book, The Sound Of My Voice, Irvine Welsh said: 'One of the greatest pieces of fiction to come out of Britain in the 80s' 

We are delighted to say that Ron Butlin is visiting us in Orkney next week.

Ron Butlin

7.00 pm

Wednesday 4 September

MacGillivray Room

Orkney Library & Archive 

Event FREE but TICKETED

To book your place 

Phone: 01856 873166

E-mail: general.enquiries@orkneylibrary.org.uk