Archive for May, 2008

Poetry and politics in the city

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It has happened. Thanks to a great group of people led by Ewan, a fantasy lurking at the back of my mind has made it into real life. Yesterday in the Scottish Poetry Library, a treasure of a place tucked out of sight down a close in the Royal Mile, a cluster of literary souls signed up to a brave new creative adventure bang smack in the middle of commercial Edinburgh. Some odd political sensitivity requires us to call it Poetry in St Andrew Square but the people who made it happen know it simply as The Poetry Garden.

And I am dead chuffed because it began as my idea. It is undoubtedly one of my better ideas but it is happening only because I chanced to mention it to an unusual politician who knew exactly how to make it work. Of course it wasn’t complete chance. When he was the Labour council leader, I had heard Ewan Aitken speak with real passion about education and the opening of Edinburgh’s Refugee Centre. He seemed the kind of man who combines political ability with a deeper belief in the things that matter in life. What you might expect (but don’t necessarily get) from a worker priest.

When I bumped into him at the Andy Warhol exhibition last year, we agreed that the city has a terrific buzz during the festival and wasn’t it great that St Andrew Square wascolumn.jpg opening to the public at last? That’s when I mentioned my idea that we should dedicate the new space as a Poetry Garden to balance the Book Festival at the other end of George Street and introduce something more uplifting than shopping to the heart of Edinburgh. (As a director of Edinburgh City Centre Management Company I have never been convinced that retail is the most important element of the capital city.)

I spoke to the right man. Ewan – newly liberated, perhaps, by becoming leader of the opposition – is a fantastic ambassador for the Poetry Garden. When we had a more businesslike meeting a month or so later he very quickly identified the path we should take through ECCM (soon to become Essential Edinburgh who manage the public space) to Coffee Republic (who run the cafe which will host poetry readings), to the talented but often under-funded group of literary organisations who will bring expertise and spark to the plan.

It worked. Everyone is enthusiastic, not least ECCM‘s manager Ian Broadfoot and Coffee Republic’s Paul Anderson. I have never been to such positive, heart-warming meetings, dedicated to making something happen. And at the Poetry Library yesterday I tried to give credit where it is really due.

There’s much more to say about ECCM’s vision for public space in the city. But right now, here’s to the steering group chaired by Ewan. The people who signed our ‘common commitment’ are The Unesco City of Literature, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scottish Poetry Library, Scottish Writer’s Museum, Scottish Book Trust, Edinburgh Makar, ECCM and Coffee Republic. I hope, when the The Poetry Garden officially opens some time in June or July, they will all get the much fuller recognition they deserve.

I am interested to see that the opening statement on Ewan’s blog says: “The idea of Edinburgh is a combination of place, soul and symbolic leadership of a nation.” Very fitting.

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4 comments May 28th, 2008

The unimaginable strength of Chinese women

I could hardly watch tonight’s Channel 4 News report from China; it is impossible to imagine the grief of mothers finding the bodies of their children in the rubble of the earthquake. And now I find it difficult to write about the story of an earlier earthquake in China. Of course it is not my story but it stayed in my memory long after I finished reading The Good Women of China by Xinran.

I picked up the book tonight thinking I might take a few extracts from the chapter called The Mothers who Endured an Earthquake. Xinran discovered their stories in 1992 when she went to Tangshan, an industrial city which had been completely rebuilt after it was destroyed by the 1976 earthquake. 300,000 people died.

I went looking for the book because of the reaction of the Chinese government this time: quick to accept help, apparently openly allowing criticism and comment in the press. In contrast, after the 1976 disaster the government – struggling to cope with the death of Mao Zedong – did not respond at all. In fact communication was so bad they knew nothing about the earthquake until it was reported in the foreign press through information from international monitoring centres.

Xinran went to Tangshan because she was curious to find out more about the women there for her late night radio programme Words on the Night Breeze. She went to an orphanage founded and run by women who had lost their own children in the earthquake and she interviewed two mothers who had watched their children die, trapped in the ruins of the city, unable to reach or help them.

In The Good Women of China, Xinran tells their stories with simple, understated sympathy; at times I think she is numb with horror. She found it difficult to write and it is difficult to read. It feels intrusive and unnecessary to select extracts to post on my blog, so far removed from the suffering. But it is worth saying that her radio broadcast inspired an outpouring of emotion in the much more suppressed and secretive China of 1992, and the last words of the chapter are inspiring now in their human understanding.

“On the train home, I cried all the way. I cried again when I took up my pen to write down the experiences of these mothers…

“They did not lock their mother’s kindness away in their memories of their children; they did not immerse themselves in tears of suffering and wait for pity. With the greatness of mothers, they made new families for children who had lost their parents. To me those women proved the unimaginable strength of Chinese women.”

Add comment May 14th, 2008

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