The Pibroch Collection, published by Red Squirrel Press, will be launched at SPL on Saturday 26th February. Copies available from this website, Red Squirrel Press or on the night. Looking forward to a great day reading with the fabulous Helen Boden launching her collection, A Landscape to Figure In, and Stirling Makar, Laura Fyfe.
Tag Archives: John Bolland
Pibroch book launch – Glasgow
The Pibroch Collection, published by Red Squirrel Press, will be launched into this big wide world at Avant Garde on Monday 21st. Copies available from this website, Red Squirrel Press or on the night. Looking forward to a great night reading with Stirling Makar, Laura Fyfe launching her pamphlet The Truth Lies and Helen Boden launching her collection A Landscape to Figure In. And playing sax into the bargain.
Booking a table/seat at Avant Garde advised.
The Art of the Possible
As I write, Simon Gane and Brodie Murray are moving the truss for the staging up to the venue at Glenbuchat. This afternoon is the get in. The prequel to a week of rehearsal and, eventual, performance.
Over the last week I’ve been very conscious of the shift in effort and attention to detail involved in putting on a performance of this type.
Yes: I am used to the finnicky detail of editing poems – the notorious shifting and re-shifting of commas and nuancing of words – and the even greater scrutiny involved in proofing, typesetting and design. I have been blessed with a great publishing team in Sheila Wakefield, Elizabeth Rimmer and Gerry Cambridge at Red Squirrel Press who share a passion for perfection and vast amounts of patience.
And I am familiar with the excruciating attention involved in printing and painting – especially in portraiture – where a millimetre displacement or an increment of hue can make or break a piece.
But, as a writer and visual artist, I’ve never had to worry much about COVID risk assessment, feeding the crew, the availability of First Aiders: let alone whether anyone can actually see or hear me!
And yet here Pibroch is, in a real space – Glenbuchat Hall in West Aberdeenshire – at a real time – a Saturday night in January in the second year of a global pandemic – working with real people – performing to real people – with musical accompaniment by Fraser Fifield and visuals developed in collaboration with Graeme Roger – in a setting created by Simon Gane.
And we are ready and it has come together through the skills and effort of all of the team, not least the directorial inputs of Mark Thomson, the support of Martin Aitken, marketing nous of Lucy Stroud and mentoring of Lesley-Anne Rose of Open Road Ltd.
The journey from idea to text to a visual concept has been long but these last weeks have been intense. How do we make these ideas and elements play, in an exciting and engaging manner, within the real space? Where do I stand? How do I avoid getting in the way of projection? Am I lit – visible – audible – ‘appropriate’?
I began with naïf assumptions about the space – especially the stage – the options for lighting and projection (and exit routes and social distancing) but, day by day, the team has solved and resolved each issue – proposing, critiquing, collaborating, reworking.
A key design decision was to use a vertical rather horizontally aligned projection mode (think portrait rather than landscape). This played off of the available stage area and the projector throw necessary to achieve appropriate height to width ratios.
And the stage footprint – and no-go zones defined by the projection beams – constrained the lighting opportunities and, as I am sure will emerge, where I can actually ‘be’ on the stage at any moment in the performance.
Our decision not to use a stage mic frees me from the stand – and the simplifying constraint of a single narrow footprint as in cabaret performance. But now I am interacting with the lights, the projection beam and the challenge of not falling off the stage whilst speaking the text in a relaxed, powerful and (ideally!) coherent and audible manner. Hmm. I’m not sure I’m in Kansas anymore.
I have previous theatrical experience – I know how to find a light and follow notes – project and present. But, after almost a decade of working and performing as a poet and spoken word performer, it feels like this new project has taken my experience and practice to a new level of discipline and sophistication. All of which I owe to the Pibroch team who have acted not only as enablers to the work but patient mentors in each aspect of the craft. They have my eternal gratitude.
It was an idea and now it’s possible…and that is the art. A week from now we will be striking the set in that space and looking for future programming opportunities for Pibroch through 2022.
I have been working on this project since Autumn 2019 and I can honestly say – I am excited!
Watch this space for more updates as the week progresses.
Meet the Team
Pibroch Productions
It has been a long and fascinating journey bringing Pibroch to the stage and to publication with the generous help and support of fellow writers, musicians and, of course, my publisher. So, deep gratitude to Imogen Stirling, Hamish Napier, Elizabeth Rimmer, Mark Thomson, Sheila Wakefield & Gerry Cambridge of RedSquirrel Press & Lesley Anne Rose of Open Road Ltd. And, of course, Creative Scotland and the National Lottery for funding to develop the show.
So privileged now to have a great creative team on board to carry on taking the project to fruition.
Mark Thomson – Co-Director
Mark was Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company from until June 2016 during which time he directed over twenty-five productions including world premieres of Donna Franceschild’s Takin’ Over the Asylum, D C Jackson’s The Marriage of Figaro, Jo Clifford’s Every One and adaptation of Goethe’s Faust parts one and two, Six Black Candles by Des Dillon, John Byrne’s Uncle Varick as well as his own plays: A Madman Sings to the Moon, Pinocchio, his adaptation of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and, in 2011, Wondrous Flitting. In 2015 he directed The Caucasian Chalk Circle which won 4 CATS awards and earned him a nomination for Best Director at the UK Theatre Awards. His production of Waiting For Godot starring Brian Cox and Bill Paterson was nominated for several categories including Best Director and won Best Production at the CATS.
Prior to his time at the Royal Lyceum, Mark was Artistic Director of the Brunton Theatre Company, directing 21 shows and winning a Herald Angel Award for his play A Madman Sings to the Moon, and a Scotsman Fringe First and a Herald Angel Award for his play Moving Objects.
He has also worked as Assistant Director at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Royal Shakespeare Company and Associate Director at Nottingham Playhouse.
He now works as a Freelance Director, directing several productions for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and leads the MFA in Directing and MFA Acting Course at Napier University.
As well as co-directing Pibroch in 2022, Mark directed the premiere of D C Jackson’s I’m dissolving my love in a bath of acid. for Play. Pie and a Pint with Shetland’s Alison O’Donnell.
When not fretting over theatre Mark plays in his band The Bail Sheriffs and cycles in all weathers.
Fraser Fifield – Composer & Musician
Brought up in West Aberdeenshire, Fraser started playing bagpipes at the age of 11, taking lessons from his GP in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire. Since then, he has made music with a wide range of artists covering folk, jazz and beyond. His instrumental choices – pipes, saxophone and low-whistle – partly accounting for his exploratory style which sits astride several genres. He has performed on low whistle, saxophone and bagpipes with many artists including Salsa Celtica, Old Blind Dogs, Afro Celt Sound System, Zakir Hussain, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Capercaillie, Balkanopolis, Nedyalko Nedyalkov, BBC SSO, Gavin Marwick, Kathleen McInnes, Graeme Stephen, Rieda Morrison, Patsy Reid, Karine Polwart, Maeve McKinnon & Montenegro Eurovision 2015.
As well as performing in #PibrochthePlay , Fraser has been busy in 2022: touring with Graeme Stephen in Austria and Scotland, with Tom Bancroft’s ‘In Common’ in Egypt and performing at the Barbican, London, as part of the memorial concert for the late John Cummings. He also started a new 3 year role as Traditional Artist in Residence at University of Edinburgh.
Described by the Scotsman as ‘one of today’s outstanding talents’, his latest album, Piobaireachd, was released in 2021.
John Bolland – Writer, Co-Director & Performer
John Bolland managed parallel careers in writing and in the offshore oil & gas industry for almost 35 years. Scientifically trained but instinctively an artist, John writes novels, poetry and short fiction in Scots and English and is a graduate of the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing Masters programme. Between 1982 and 2014, he held a number of project management and consultancy roles for clients including BP, Exxon-Mobil and Shell. During 2018-19 he was a Regional Organiser for Extinction Rebellion and is currently active in the North East Scotland Climate Action Network (NESCAN). His poetry and short fiction has been widely published and his first collection – Fallen Stock – was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2019. The companion collection to the Pibroch performance was published by Red Squirrel in 2021. He is a director of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, chair of Huntly Climate Action and a trustee of the Dee & Don Ceilidh Collective.
Work inspires work. As well as planning for the 2023 tour, John has been working on two new projects: Twilt and Improvement Notice. Both works were prompted by after show discussions following Pibroch‘s 2022 performance and a realisation that “we must reimagine our past in order to be able to radically reimagine our future.”
Simon Gane – Production Manager & Designer for Pibroch
Simon is a freelance Designer and Production Manager based in the North East of Scotland. He trained, in his hometown, at the Bristol Old Vic as a Technician a few more years ago than he now cares to remember. Simon worked as a venue-based Technical Manager for many years, notably at TIC TOC in Coventry and The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen. Gaining a wide experience of many genres and disciplines, he was resident Lighting Designer at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen for a number of years before leaving the world of a secure salary to forge a more creative path. Since then, he has been managing productions and designing lighting & small sets, mainly for Scottish dance companies with occasional excursions back into theatre and music. His production management and design expertise has enabled him to realise productions inside & outside, site specific, nationally and internationally.
Like the rest of the team, Simon has been busy in 2022, generally making one end of the room brighter and a bit more organised than the other. Simon has provided lighting designs for NYDCS’ ’Sounds Like’,
Suzi Cunningham’s ‘Eidos’ & ‘Rules to Live by’, Y Dance Destinations and Project Y, Daniel Lorenzo’s ‘Red Land’ Katie Armstrong’s ‘ GLISK’ & ‘SKETCHES’ Sharon Took-Zozaya’s ‘ Finding Petunia Little Tree’,
Raw Material’s ‘Unicorn Christmas Party’, and SCO’s ‘Immersive’.
In parallel, Simon’s Production Manager hat has been well worn in support of James Ley’s ‘Ode to Joy’,
Dance Live Festival 2022, Sound Festival 2022, Pete Stolery’s ‘Aberdeen Sound Park’ for Wonderland and the Deeside Dance School Showcase 2023.
Martin Aitken – Producer
Martin Aitken is a multi-disciplinary arts practitioner based in the North-East of Scotland. Much of Martin’s work is rooted in the city of Aberdeen, telling local stories or working with local creative organisations and youth theatres. Initially trained in technical theatre, Martin is keen to use his knowledge in the industry to produce new work and support local artists to tell their stories. Recently Martin has also been exploring alternative outlets for his creativity, releasing two children’s books last year with a third due for release in early 2022.
Graeme Roger – Audio-Visual Design
Graeme Roger is a visual artist working across film, public art, performance, photography, installation & theatre. All his projects are collaborative in nature with other artists, musicians, directors and the wider community. His work has been shown nationally and internationally. He has created video designs for companies including The National Theatre of Scotland, Eden Court Theatre and C21 Theatre, often creating design for projections in public spaces and galleries.
Graeme is the Engagement Producer for Film & Visual Arts Projects at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness and leads the digi team on the Scottish Government’s ‘Cashback for Communities’ programme. http://www.wildbird.org.uk/
Karen Tennent – Set & Costume Design
Karen lives in Edinburgh Scotland and is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art. Her work as a theatre designer has toured all over the UK and abroad from village halls to Sydney Opera House. She enjoys collaborating with other artists, exploring live performance in its many forms. Her design experience includes devising and designing physical theatre, theatre for young audiences, touring and in house productions as well as large scale site-specific and promenade performances.
Recent designs include;
Don Quixote (Dundee Rep/Perth heatre ) by Ben Lewis: director Lu Kemp
MusterStation (Gridiron/Edinburgh International Festival 2022 )
Field- something for the future now an outdoor dance performance by Curious Seed (Edinburgh International Festival 2021 and Festival Cultura Inglesa Sao Paolo, Brazil 2022 ).
Lots Not Lots (Made in Scotland/Summerhall 2022 ) by Greg Sinclair and Hannah Vent .
Rubble (Scottish Opera), a new opera by Johnny McKnight and Gareth Williams for Scottish Opera Young Company
The Children (Dundee Rep) by Lucy Kirkwood directed by Andrew Panton
And if not Now ..When an film installation by Philip Pinsky and Karen Lamond in the National Museum Edinburgh for COP 26.
Christmas Dinner (Lyceum Edinburgh) by Rob Evans directed by Gill Robertson
Karen co-directed Sonata for a Man and a Boy (Greg Sinclair) which won the CATS best Children’s Theatre. She also won CATS best design and was nominated for the New York Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Design for Hansel and Gretel (Catherine Wheels).
Epiphany on Hope Street
It’s over a week now since the parties to the Conference that was COP26 jetted or slogged back to their many points of origin.
In the interval, I’ve been processing the constructive disillusionment of the event, the necessary street theatre of protest, the sickening deafness of politicians and lobbyists, the vile taste of greenwash.
If there is reason to hope, it might lie in the fact that, at least this time, ‘they’ didn’t even promise to ‘save the world’ by keeping average temperatures below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels in 2100.
Projections, based on the agreements, suggest 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels is the best-case scenario. As usual, those projections ignore many tipping points we might barge through in the meantime. Assume that is an optimistic estimate.
So, they are content we are 1.2 degrees less safe than they promised in Paris in 2015. As they left, they promised they might promise next year…next time…maybe.
Which is not, believe me, cause for despair. Many, many earnest folk committed to a better future prepared for COP26, showed up at COP26, tried to make their voices heard.
I was in Glasgow for the last day. An AcousticCommons radio initiative – As if Radio – had kindly invited me into the Civic House studio for a chat about ‘Poetry as Activism’, Pibroch and my views as a former ‘fossil-fuel industry insider’. Too weary to ‘slog’ home to Aberdeenshire (on the bus) that night, I stayed over at an excellent ‘affordable’ hotel in the Finnieston. On the Saturday morning we discovered that the bureaucrats were still fudging and evading whilst suggesting that pulling an all-nighter was somehow ‘above and beyond’ their job-descriptions. “It’s only a mass extinction event, after all!”
In the breakfast room, my fellow low-budget ‘parties’ discussed and debated in Spanish, Danish, Quechua, Japanese, Xhosa and, of course, the cargo language… English, whilst two awesome women negotiated and renegotiated, in Scots, the niceties of a full Scottish breakfast – ‘haggis, black pudding AND a tattie scone?’ – with the intrigued, the principled and the down-right hungry.
“Worst fortnight o ma life, so it wiz!” she said to me. “Still, whit can ye dae?”
To avoid climate catastrophe? Negotiate, renegotiate, compromise…don’t compromise. Listen.
“Jist the eggs an the tattie scone then? Whit aboot beans?”
Maybe it was the worst fortnight of many of our lives…so far. Yet a few miles from the conference centre at Finnieston, the world seemed ‘normal’. A bit quieter than usual, they said. Like Glasgow was holding its breath…or under martial law…high viz policing in twos and threes on all the major thoroughfares.
Between the radio interview and the hotel, I stepped in for a dram and a scribble at the Pot Still. Afterwards, at the Number 3 bus-stop on Hope Street, I bumped (in a socially distanced way) into a young Canadian woman and her mother. The younger woman was incensed that the previous Number 3 had driven past her.
“He saw me. He shook his head and just kept driving.”
I shrugged it off with native indulgence : “Glasgow. What can you say?”
They weren’t in Glasgow for the COP. The younger woman was studying in Glasgow and her mother had come over to visit. They had been to Edinburgh that day. We had the standard exchange about the pronunciation of ‘burgh’ in Scots.
Four minutes before the next Number 3 was due, they lost patience and called an Uber.
“Places to be and things to do,” she said as the Uber pulled into the bus-stop and blocked the way for the Number 3 which pulled up simultaneously.
Over the previous week I had been reading David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, The Dawn of Everything. In it the authors propose three fundamental freedoms:
The freedom to move
The freedom to disobey
The freedom to redefine social relations
Fundamental freedoms that few in the modern world possess. As I sat on the number 3 to Drumchapel, the brilliance of the moment exploded in my imagination. The young Canadian’s body language, the way she hailed the bus, the way the driver of the previous Number 3 exercised, in that moment, his freedom to move, to disobey and to redefine social relations by driving straight past her.
Ay, gaun yersel, Glesga!
At 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels, billions of creatures, human and otherwise, will find themselves in conditions of untholeable heat or rising water-levels, starvation or violent conflict. And, of course, for many it will not be either-or.
The freedoms to move, to disobey, to redefine social relations have never been so vital. The survivors on Piper Alpha on the night of 6th July, 1988 exercised exactly those freedoms. They left the ‘temporary refuge’ in which they had been urged to remain. They broke with procedure and the chain of command. They re-asserted their humanity – their fundamental freedoms – and jumped. And on the sea-below, others – bosuns, ordinary seamen – waited, heroically, to rescue them, drag them to safety, give them aid and comfort.
In that sense, there is hope in the dismal fudge of COP26. Might it be the tipping point in which we realise we need to be free to live?
From Eilean a’ Cheò to Innse Gall
So here we are. About to start the production process for Pibroch – the Performance and eagerly awaiting a printer’s proof of Pibroch – the Collection. It has been a long, fascinating journey, summarised in part in the Developing Pibroch page of this site. The journey onwards, however, will be recorded here as an artist blog as we struggle with the meaning and articulation of Pibroch post-COP26.
From the outset, back in 2019, my focus had always been on launching both elements just before COP26 in Glasgow, an act of activism and engagement intended to raise awareness and, especially, encourage audiences to reflect on the meaning of Climate Justice and a ‘Just Transition’.
COVID-19, of course, intervened. COP26 slipped back a year and, as a consequence of cancer treatment during 2018, I was ‘locked down’ for most of 2020 as one of the ‘highly vulnerable’ in Scottish society. It was a year of frustration but also an opportunity to deepen my thinking and practice around the Pibroch project.
It was also a time of (virtual) engagement with other artists who acted as mentors, guides and supporters in developing the various elements of the project especially the performance, musical and audio-visual aspects.
Timelines slipped to the right, however, in the face of pandemic uncertainties (which still haunt us) and the nitty-gritty detail of any collaborative art. The latter element was much aggravated by my inexperience in the processes and economics of theatrical production.
Now, however, we are finally ready to begin the next stage of the journey with a great team onboard including
Mark Thomson, award winning director and former Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh,
Graeme Roger, an award-winning audio-visual designer from wildbird based in Moray,
Arthur Coates, a talented young multi-instrumentalist from Aberdeenshire
and the collective talents of Open Road, a creative, entrepreneurial organisation rooted in North East Scotland (‘the North’), but with a global vision. Opern Road uses arts, culture, heritage and the natural landscape to contribute towards health and wellbeing, tourism and environmental sustainability. .
Rehearsals for the show will be during January 2022 with a view to a premiere at Glenbuchat Hall in Strathdon on 15th January 2022.
I am grateful to Creative Scotland and the National Lottery for funding to support the development of the performance elements of the Pibroch project and to Red Squirrel Press for their support in editing, collating and designing my second collection.
Wish us all luck!
It’s ALIVE… poetry festival
Coming up next week! The Wee Gatherin, an ‘in real life’ poetry mini-festival organised by The Poet’s Republic in venues around Stonehaven in the North East of Scotland.
Poets are coming in from Scotland, Ireland and England for an opportunity to read, share, laugh…and probably drink.
First event in the bill will be a world premiere reading of poems from the new collection, Pibroch, which will be published by Red Squirrel Press in September…but I can’t wait to share work I’ve been focussed on for the last 2 years.
Pibroch explores parallels between the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 and the unfolding climate catastrophe driving the extreme weather events occuring with increasing frequence and fatal consequences. The title alludes to the pibroch Lament for the Children (Padraig Mor McCrimmon c1640).
The poems in Pibroch have been created as a mix of found poems and imaginative voicings based on :
- The extant official enquiry and documentation associated with the disaster (e.g. the Cullen Report, Cabinet Papers, newspaper articles);
- Interviews in the public domain from survivors and relatives;
- Emotional, behavioural and scientific parallels between the disaster and the current climate crisis as documented in various intergovernmental reports and scientific papers.
As a former oil worker, a scientist and a climate activist, I feel the tensions between my responsibility for the situation, my empathy for the working men and women involved in the fossil fuels industry over the past century and my fears for the future of my children, grandchildren and the sustainability of most of the life on the planet. It is widely recognised that swift action is needed to mitigate and adapt-to the evolving ecological crisis. Pibroch is my attempt to engage with the lived experience of the last three generations in both the global North and South in promoting the need for a genuinely Just Transition.
For me, the parallels between the unfolding climate crisis and the events around the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster are striking. It’s a common place to say radical change demands a ‘burning platform’. In Piper Alpha there is a well-documented concrete metaphor for the emerging catastrophe which requires critical reflection and vivid, accessible expression. On the night of 6th July,1988, 167 men died and 47 survived. Two weeks ago, around 500 people died on the West Coast of North America. This week, over 150 lost their lives & livelihoods in extreme flooding in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Every year, thousands are forced to flee in the face of environmental degradation and the conflicts provoked by hunger, thirst and poverty arising from the climate emergency.
Perhaps the work can best be summarised by the poem Teach Your Child to Swim. One of a number which will be featured in the Wee Gatherin reading.
Making it clear, making it present: STEM Poetry and Climate Change
Poetry and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) engage in the work of three established poets whose work explores themes of geophysics, engineering, ecology and climate. John Bolland, Mandy Haggith and Eveline Pye – members of the STEM Poets group and the Scottish Writers Centre – bring a variety of styles and voices to make climate realities clear and present.
https://www.waywordfestival.com/stem-poets
Poetry @ Books & Beans
Pleased to be reading new work from Pibroch at the May online event for the fabulous Poetry @ Books & Beans in the company of the marvellous Sheila Templeton reading from her new collection, Clyack, published by Red Squirrel Press.
The Long Grass
Perhaps it is not slang. The expression is not referenced in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. Perhaps it is just idiomatic. To ‘kick into the long grass’ – which I understand to mean to take an issue or a problem out of play, ignoring it.
The problem is displaced in space – in the discursive space, the problem space – banished into the wilderness, the rough. It is not simply a matter of deferral, not like the term so often used around recent financial crises – ‘to kick the can down the road’ – we’ll deal with it, eventually, it’s still in play…but not just yet.
The long grass lies to either side of the road, the playing field – the game. Or all around it.
The long grass is also, of course, a place to hide. A locale of concealment – and sometimes ambush. Its creatures lurk, stalk or observe – calculate.
I have always felt safest in the long grass. Camouflaged. It is not like the jungle or the forest. It is liminal. Like the edge of the firelight, the feral boundary. You can see the long grass from the road. You can see the road from the long grass.
Camouflaged yet glimpsed. Willing to be visible but not too much. Withheld. Reserved. Unbelonging.
It is a place of refuge. It is not the underworld. It is not occult. It is the long grass where those who do not belong, but are not wholly wild, move cautiously, wait motionless, watch, review, reflect. Sometimes prepare to pounce. It is the long grass where discarded themes and challenges – all of those issues in the ‘too-difficult box’ – lie.
Viewed from the long grass
the road runs from left to right
taking us nowhere
So here we are in the long grass.