Colouring the Blocks

I sent the OH out to the local library ten days ago. Despite being generally well educated and even though I have an M A in Highlands and Islands Literature I have always been conscious that I don't have the grounding I'd like in Scottish Literature generally. So I'd spent some time checking the on-line catalogue against a reading list and, given that the Orkney library is a local library and not attached to an academic institution, there was a gratifyingly high hit rate. He came back with a pile of six books, and since I had cautioned him against it, not all were about Edwin Muir. (Not surprisingly, since he was a local lad, there is a lot of material abour EM in the library.)

 

I spent the next five days reading in a way I haven't read for years; totally immersed and oblivious to everything else. It was so exciting. And gradually over those and subsequent days and courtesy of another trip to the library by OH, and the patience of the library staff who must be getting very familiar with certan areas of their stack I started to feel better. It was as though when I started the whole field of Scottish Literature was spread out like a patchwork quilt but nearly all the blocks were white and there was no  overall pattern visible to me. Gradually, as I read, some blocks got filled in. Some of the ones that were already coloued changed as my perception of a writer changed. And a dimly discernible pattern began to take shape.

 

And now, with a firmer footing, I feel confident about giving my reading a narrower focus. For the present I don't want to read any more extracts from Catherine Carswell's Open the Door! I don't want to follow any more discusions about the meaning of the end of Nan Shepherd's The Quarry Wood, or about how ironic, or not, is the picture of the eponymous hero of Robin Jenkins' Fergus Lamont. I certainly don't want yet another male perspective on Stella Cartwright, the Muse of Rose Street.

 

I will come back to these writers and the critical debates that surround them. But for now, it's time I think, to go back to the poetry; to the poets I already knew and to the ones that the last couple of weeks have introduced me to or changed my mind about.

 

It seems a long time since I declared to my A level English teacher 'Well besides, I don't even like poetry'. A long time, and I've come a long way.