World Congress - The Verdict

And like the infamous curate's egg it was 'excellent in parts'

The gripes first, if only because I was born and bred in the North East of England where that's the way we roll. In fact often it isn't a case of gripes first but gripes only, the inference being that anything that isn't mentioned was just fine.

So OK, if I were organising the First World Congress of Scottish Literatures, with a very definite purpose to that final plural, I would have had a few more sessions dealing with Gaelic Literature. As far as I recall there was one, which I know because I was there. It was on a couple of C20 Gaelic poets and therefore very relevant to me, and very good, but I would have liked to see more on that and on the wider aspects of Gaelic poetry - it didn't start with Sorley MacLean, or finish with Derick Thomson. Someone said at the first session that 'the elephant in the room was Scottish Literature in Latin' but if that was the case then Gaelic Literature was the mammoth.

 

Also if I were organising I would have had much more on the C20 and C21, less on Burns and less on Scott. They were great figures yes, but they don't add up to the totality of Scottish Literature and on some days if you had taken out the Scott/Burns/RLS stuff there wouldn't have been much left.

 

There was a day when we had 30 minutes for lunch. Given that it was a buffet and there were about 200 people to get served then 30 minutes wasn't really enough. Generally the days were very long - 9.30 - 5.30/6.00 ish. I appreciate that if people are coming from a long way (Oz, NZ, Canada etc) then you need to pack a lot in, but there comes a point when it's counter productive.

 

There were some Question Askers there. I differentiate between Question Askers and people who ask questions. I myself ask the occasional question, but that is because I want/need to enlighten my ignorance. Question Askers aren't interested in the answer to any question they may ramblingly formulate, they are only interested in stunning the audience by their supposed erudition which they display by packing into their 'question' as many long words and references to books and journals that they have read (skimmed?) as possible. This irritates me intensely, because what they are doing is Showing Off and another thing my north eastern up-bringing instilled in me was a horror of Showing Off.

 

There was also the occasional paper to which the only punch drunk response at the end was The Archers referencing question 'Are we at The Laurels?', code for utter and total bemusement.

 

That said, there were many good things. I met and listened and talked to  some amazing people. There was a reading session with not only Liz Lochhead  but also Jackie Kay. I've already mentioned the panel on literature/history intersection that featured the wonderful Henry Marsh (and really if that had been the only thing I got out of the Conference it would still have been totally worth going to Glasgow for four days). Some other sessions that really stay in my mind are the one on children's literature, a very highpowered collection of people talking in a very relaxed and accessible way about Hugh MacDiarmid, a great session on Post Colonialism and Scottish Literature....the list goes on.

 

So if there's another one, will I go? Like a shot.