Livewire was the name given to the event that opened day two of Dundee Literary Festival.
It is not a word students involved, or yours truly, would likely use to describe ourselves at 9am not even in our most creative writing.
The creative writing course at Dundee University is one of the most innovative and exciting in the country, producing fabulous work from the students.
The event allowed seven M.Litt students and one PhD researcher a rare opportunity to read their work in a public arena.
There was a monologue on a stuffed armadillo and another on a man’s boxer shorts or more specifically what was in them.
We heard a poem on Sunnyside mental hospital, a short story on wifehood, and witnessed the development of travel writing skills.
A growing grasp of the craft shone through the freshness of the readings, and hopefully all eight participants derived inspiration and confidence.ExtraordinaryNext in the programme was the Scottish writer and dramatist Jackie Kay, who spoke about her extraordinary life which she has crammed into the hilarious autobiography Red Dust Rose-Radio 4’s book of the week in July.
Excerpts included the tale of how Jackie was adopted by a Glaswegian family in her childhood.
She later Googled her real father’s name, and found he was an authority on trees, living in his native Nigeria.
Off went Jackie to a meeting in Nigeria, her heart racing as she looked at every black man who entered the hotel lobby, wondering if it was her father.
To muddy the waters, her “mother” in Glasgow had imagined him as a cross between Sidney Poitier and Nelson Mandela.
Instead, her father turned out to be a born-again Christian very much given to self-absorbed religious proselytising.
He spent the first hours of their reunion dancing around her, eyes to the heavens, chanting biblical abracadabras.
She concluded that her birth father was “barking mad” before downing several glasses of wine in readiness to tell him that her partner back in Scotland was a woman.ComplexA question from the capacity audience reminded Jackie of her long spell working in London: had this made her more aware of the distinctions between Scotland and England, in the way her own background was a complex racial mix?
“Well, yes,” she replied. “I even found myself cheering when England scored in the World Cup.”
Stony silence… then, “Admitting being pleased that England got a goal was harder than me coming out as a lesbian.”
An Orcadian Summer had three writers associated with the Orkney Islands.
First up was John Aberdein reading excerpts from his novel Strip The Willow, which won the Scottish Arts Council Novel Award this year.
John, who only took up writing aged 47, has been heralded as the new Grassic Gibbon, yet not a few were surprised to hear that he never gave his characters descriptions “because how can I tell what they look like?”
Alison Flett, writer and TV and radio performer, swapped living in Scotland’s central belt for life on the Orkney mainland 11 years ago.
The stark contrast of her short, edgy early work and her gentler narratives of Orkney life thrilled the large audience.
Duncan McLean, who has lived in Orkney since 1992, has published short stories, novels and plays.
Recent projects include two plays for the National Theatre of Scotland.
His sagas of North Ronaldsay brought the readings to an impressive end.InterrogatedAll three were interrogated for the audience by creative writing course director Kirsty Gunn.
Dundee Poets, the first of the afternoon sessions, provided the pleasure of listening to the university’s Royal Literary Fellow Tracey Herd and the manner in which her poetic themes were portrayed in powerful form.
With contributions from Jim Stewart, the audience relished the chance to hear local poets.
Yesterday’s programme also included readings by the novelist Alan Warner, biographer John Carey and the Costa book award winner Christopher Reid, with a publishing panel ending day two’s events.
An essential concomitant of a successful festival is a suitable venue.
The opening event on China on Wednesday took place with an iffy acoustic and with more fans than you’d see in the Forbidden City, and it was standing room only for the poets yesterday.
The thought occurred that the marquees put up for this week’s graduation might double up as a venue for next year’s festival.
Or is that overly creative thinking?
Today’s programme is available at www.literarydundee.co.uk.