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Musings

Lowland Writer in Residence: Chapter One

by Stuart A. Paterson, Lowland writer in residence

Cometh the hour, cometh the town centre regeneration arts hub, cometh the associated projects and cometh its first Writer in Residence – me. Welcome to Lowland, described thus by its lead artist Martin O’Neill –

A 3-year project conceived and delivered by the Stove Network. It seeks to place writers at the core of the Stove’s and local community’s activities to reflect and celebrate a town in a transitional phase of its history. Generating a contemporary narrative of place, by interacting with and responding to activity in the town through the written word. The central idea of Lowland is to generate an evolving narrative through a series of engagement opportunities and outputs, whether a song, a book, a map, or a play – these outputs will create a collage of work and output that will form the backbone of our future activity.

I’m delighted to have been chosen to launch the Lowland ship into the uncharted waters of the next three years. If it’s only half as successful as The Stove has been in the previous three years, it’ll prove to be something well worth waiting for, for everyone.

What exactly does ‘place writers at the core of….the local community mean’? For me, it means not so much putting writers into the town regeneration spotlight, more about giving words, writing, ideas the platform to inspire, instil inspiration & hope into Dumfries & its future. For we’re all writers, really, all poets of the everyday, although most of us will never write it down. Poetry is in the stories at the bar, the chat at the shop counters, the sharing of memories about the place, the blether on the benches. Aye, it might not always be positive & that’s understandable. Like many towns the length & breadth of the country, Dumfries has had more than its fair share of knocks, disappointments & let downs from those to whom we trusted the future health of our towns & communities. It turns out that that trust was misplaced for much of the time. And external trends & markets haven’t been kind to the business, spirit & lifeblood of town centres. Out of town shopping, death by rates, the internet, a lack of incentives, accompanied along the way by ‘improvements’ to the very fabric of our town centres have been wrecking balls we’ve been powerless to avoid.

I believe that in Dumfries, contrary to what many might think, there is still more than enough of a history, spirit, pride & culture to kick-start it into a brighter future than many towns might hope to inhabit. Not just history in old buildings, stories in stone, memories of the good old days, pride lost & never to be recaptured, glories gone & the old days always being better than now (what was the old joke? Nostalgia’s not what it used to be?). We can do something about that & we’re actually doing it now. Not just talking but doing. The Stove is the acorn from which a hundred wee oaks have started to grow, mostly nurtured & encouraged by the town’s young people, from the outskirts to the centre. Lowland, like Brave New Words, Nithraid, Blueprint100 & the Midsteeple Quarter, is one of those wee oaks, putting down roots in the town centre & beyond. The words I’m harvesting from the people & workers of Dumfries are themselves branches into past, present & future. They’ll hopefully be here long after town centre planners & absentee landlords have sold up, moved on & been forgotten about.

There are, I hope, some good things lined up for the next 3 months. Nithraid is almost upon us again – the boats, the crowds, the Salty Coo. I’ll be getting involved & hope to see you there as I man the Word Oven & keep hearing & gathering the words & stories from any Doonhamer who’ll give me the time of day. There’s a Word Walk planned, a tour of Dumfries & its past inhabited by the writers now no longer here. I’ll be hosting High Street Writers on the first Wednesday of each month, 6-8pm in The Stove, meeting & encouraging the writers who are coming through & here now. I’ll be linking up with Crichton Writers & Dumfries Writers groups to add to the Flood of Words, which we’ll be creating from the feedback on the Lowland postcards – fill yours in now, put it in the box in The Stove. We’re going to have words on windows, poems in shops, stalls on the street – & Latvia 100! on September 5th, which will be amazing & a cultural crossover which’ll have the Norwegians shaking in their boots. And of course, Brave New Words on the last Friday of each month. It goes from strength to strength & shouldn’t be missed. Come along, no matter if you’ve never read in public before. You’ll be among pals.

Before we know it, it’ll be October & my 3 months will be up. I hope to leave a few building blocks for others to add to, as well as the beginnings of a legacy of the town’s narrative in the present day. Nostalgia’s great – but let’s make our own good old days first.

Stuart A. Paterson, Lowland writer in residence

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News

Lowlands Writer in Residence

The Stove Network is delighted to announce the appointment of poet Stuart. A Paterson in the post of writer-in-residence as part of their new Lowland project which looks to create a living story of Dumfries over the next three years by placing professional writers within the community to reflect a town in an important place in its history. Former BBC Scotland Poet in Residence, Stuart commented:

‘I’m delighted to become writer in residence for the Stove’s Lowland project for the next three months. Putting creativity and art at the heart of Dumfries’s town centre regeneration is an exciting thing in which to be involved. Poetry and art ought to be accessible and enjoyable for everyone, no exceptions, and relevant to the place it’s in. I’m really looking forward to engaging with the people of Dumfries to create and share ideas of what we want our town to be, to produce work which will make folk smile, think and feel they’re part of, not apart from.’

Lowland is a project to help connect people with literature activity in the town and help contribute to an evolving series of installations, artworks, readings and events which will stimulate and grow creative responses of what it is to live in Dumfries right now. Working alongside community groups and other town related activity, Lowland hopes to ignite Dumfries’ creative ingenuity in the written word and highlight a town at a peak of ambition and creativity.

Lead artist, Martin Joseph O’Neill of the project commented:
‘It’s a really amazing opportunity to be able to not only support our local professional writers over the next few years in different ways, but is also is an opportunity for people with an interest in reading and writing to break through. With the Stove’s Brave New Words open mic events growing month after month, this is a chance to really make our mark, showcasing emerging and professional writers on the national stage in an innovative and exciting way.’

For further information on the Lowland project email [email protected] or pop along to Brave New Words, hosted every last Friday of the month at the Stove, 100 High Street

Categories
Musings News

Lowland | Building a contemporary narrative of Dumfries town

Lowland
Building a contemporary narrative of Dumfries town
by Martin O’Neill

“I wrote about what was around me. But some people are so daft they don’t understand that writing about Prestwich is just as valid as Dante writing about his Inferno.” Mark E. Smith

A friend sent me this quote around the time of Fall front man and debauched hero Mark E. Smith’s death. It was a photo of the quote crudely written in sharpie. A cardboard epitaph by a postbox, adorned with flowers left to wilt. It reminded me of the sad street-lit shrines we see by the side of a road, marking a life cut-off too quickly by a road traffic accident. As if his death in the city was just as tragic. That his legacy should be marked in cardboard felt a fitting tribute to a man who dwelled between genius and joker.

At the time, I’d been going through a lot in my own practice – how much what surrounded me affected my own unconscious ranting – that first stage before actually forming something which might be deemed as poetry or art, and how much my own sense of place lead me to its final form.

Whether it was in the worlds unveiled in a hospital waiting room, or a past reflected in the walls of St. Andrew’s church. These worlds of words which when stringed together created in me that place always real and half-imagined like a dream, rippled from the walk of a day through the High Street, by the river or upward to the museum, the omnipresence of Burns carved in stone or engraved in a window, fogged by the rising smoke of a cigarette, his work obscured only in the presence of a poorly painted portrait.


These places that resonated on the page, and for which I couldn’t have explored the other parts, hidden from view. And it was the same for most every other writer I met in this town. They wrote what was around them, so as to peer further into themselves and understand better the lives of others.

There came a point, whilst compering Brave New Words which is now fast approaching its third year, growing in excellence, audience and value every month thanks only to those who contribute, and the communities which have grown from this that I was struck how important the living word, and its profound connection to place was.

With that, it seemed important to examine our current sense of belonging, through a platform engaging professional writers and artists, responding in their chosen practice, a contemporary account of Dumfries. It struck me that the hierarchy of writers was marked by death, and that their shadowed legacy was inscribed in the minds of those ‘in the know’, or on a white tomb, or in the pages of a tourist brochure and that little infrastructure existed to engage current writers to engage in the intricacies of writing place. What with the weight of a bard carved into marble.

To connect with our communities through the arts is the Stove’s ethos. To see that our opinions, thoughts, emotions and lives matter and to break down whatever barriers exist between culture and community is pivotal to creating a town everyone can be part of. And the form of the written word is just as valuable as any other form by which to do that.

With that, came Lowland. A 3-year project conceived and delivered by the Stove Network. It seeks to place writers at the core of the Stove’s and local community’s activities to reflect and celebrate a town in a transitional phase of its history. Generating a contemporary narrative of place, by interacting with and responding to activity in the town through the written word. The central idea of Lowland is to generate an evolving narrative through a series of engagement opportunities and outputs, whether a song, a book, a map, or a play – these outputs will create a collage of work and output that will form the backbone of our future activity.

Launching with a writer-in-residence, the project hopes to create a valuable strategy for literary activity in the town and seeks to work with our community, our partners, artists and other writers to reflect the varying perspectives of the place we call home in new and inspiring ways.

With this, and the continued presence of Brave New Words, is where we build a legacy not formed by marble but by people, and the stories, which weave between the bricks of our buildings and the voices in the streets.

For further information on Lowland, please contact [email protected]

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