Of Flame Keepers and Writers

Tags

Charles Trevelyn, Dundee, Dundee Play, Frankenstein, John Quinn, Joseph Lee, Jute, Mary Brooksbank, Mary Slessor, O halflins an hecklers an weavers an weemin, Play, Shoestring Theatre, William McGonagall, William Wallace, Winston Churchill, writing

 

 

Ken : – In 1942 Annie’s grandson is in the North African desert. Near a place called El Alamein. He’s never been abroad before… (Exit put on Churchill hat.)

Em : – … unless you count a summer holiday to the seaside…at Broughty Ferry! Now in the North African Desert  Boab’s future career plans don’t involve jute. ( Three WW2 soldiers kick  ball.)

Boab : – What a goal! When the war’s ower I’m gonna be a professional – I’m no goin back to work in a mull an deh afore meh time like meh granny.

Tam : – Deh afore yir time? Yir in a war!

Boab : – Hope an faith! Besides jute’s on the wey oot.

(Kick the ball again. Enter Officer.)

Officer : – (Bellowing) Get that ball away and get fell in. On parade now!

Boab : What’s this aboot, Sir?

Officer : Yours not to reason why soldier!

( Churchill enters.)

Officer : – The men are ready for your inspection now Prime Minister (Churchill stops to speak to Dan )

Churchill : – Where are you from soldier?

Dan : – Dundee! (Churchill shudders and turns to Tam)

Churchill : – Where are you from soldier?

Tam: – Dundee!

(Dan walks round Tam so he is next in line.)

Churchill : – Where are you from soldier?

Dan : – (Cheeky.) Dundee.

(Tam walks round Dan.)

Churchill : – (Horrified) Where are you from soldier?

Tam – Dundee…..

Churchill : – (To Boab.) Where are you from soldier?

Boab : – Dundee. Got flung oot o’ the mulls– but you got flung oot o’ the toon!

(Exit horrified Churchill.)

Officer : – It’s the guardroom for you soldier! OOT. (Exit. Dragging.)

Em : – Bob, from a heckling tradition was sentenced to fourteen days in a military jail for insulting the Great War Lord and the leader of the Nation. Bob never became a professional footballer but…he had a story to tell his grandchildren. (End of scene. Song. ‘If Dundee Was Africa’)

 

Playing Space

Shey’s guidebook and bag

The Indian servants get ready to deal with the jute wallah. Today Shey’s the only one here handing all the props to herself.

Our stage and property manager takes a permanent break from acting by joining the management instead.

 

The back o’ Shey’s book

 

The official tour guide takes charge

Our sound guy from last year smiles with relief that this year he’s got a gig elsewhere

As we set up for the Indian rammy, it looks friendly

 

Get up the road ye young ****** ……

An American visitor is selfie daft where the official guide, Ken the Irish famine contingent  and the Dundee jute workers are  concerned.

Shey struts it as  a singing suffragette, belting out Vote, Vote, Vote for Neddy Scrymgeour. Broad Dundee words BUT with a post accent….

one of the new crop of placards after  a few of last year’s bloopers….

 

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Halflins, Hecklers and Dundee’s Literary Figures

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Dundee, Frankenstein, Ian Fleming, James Bond, John Quinn, Joseph Lee, Literary Heritage, Mary Brooksbank, Mary Shelley, O halflins an hecklers an weavers an weemin, The Jute Mill Song, Verdant Works, William McGonagall

 

 

James Bond and the Dundee connection https://shehannemoore.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/james-bond-and-the-dundee-connection/

Mary Brooksbank and Susan Devine, the mysterious woman in the green felt hat. From ‘O Halflins and Hecklers an Weavers an Weemin,’ by John Quinn.

Susan Devine : – Mary Brooksbank! What are you daein here – you’re still a lassie!.

Mary : – Eh’m here tae learn fae you Susan Devine how tae fight back against the brutality o’ Capitalism and the Jute Barons!

Susan : – Well said. We’ve got a good crowd today.( Policeman appears. Susan gives him the finger. )

Policeman : – What’s going on here?

Susan : – (Ignoring him) Cox Brothers have decided to cut the number in a squad fae ten tae eight and lay off thousands. For the people that remain that means mair work for less money!

(Chants from everyone onstage. ‘Everybody Out! Everybody Out! Everybody Out!)

Susan : – Right you are – and we’re staying out until everybody’s re-instated. (Starts chant. All join in )  ‘March doon the Lochee Road girls. March doon the Lochee Road!’

Policeman : – You can’t do that without permission – you need a licence!

Mary Brooksbank : – Is that so? Well there’s a lot o’ women here and no many men…..

Policeman : – I’ll need reinforcements!(Blows whistle. Exit.)

Susan : – Roond tae Cox’s hoose at Clement Park. An we’ll tour the ither mills fur support. (All chanting  and marching round) ‘We’re gonna win an we’ll pit their windees in. We’re gonna win an we’ll pit their windees in.. .fur we are the weemin o’Lochee! (Takes off green felt hat and throws to Em. Marches off  brandishing shuttle.)

Mary Brooksbank : – And they didnae go back until the fowk that had been laid aff were re-instated. There were major disputes elsewhere such as the  Carters’ Strike. The spirit of revolution was in the air. But of course the Jute Empire struck back.  Black Watch soldiers were brought into the City of their heartlands to keep order. Early in 1912 Cox Brothers sanctioned the purchase of revolvers for their foremen. And Susan Devine? She melts back into history.  Me? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

(Exit.)

Em : – Susan Devine didnae quite melt back into history. (Brandish hat.) This is still remembered round here sometimes. (Get Suffragette hat and shawl.)

Ken : – As for Mary Brooksbank she was quite a woman – mill girl poet orator revolutionary family woman and voice of the poor. She was blacklisted and jailed for standing up to be counted. What can never be jailed though is her legacy

 

Of hecklers and hamsters and golden spinning girls. A city and a world.

Tags

Cox's Stack, Dundee, Frankenstein, John Quinn, Joseph Lee, Mary Brooksbank, Mary Shelley, poetry, Seagate 111, William McGonagall, Writers, writing

 

 

 

 

Mr Shey.

It’s an anthology of poetry from in and around the City of Dundee in the early 21^st Century –‘a cast of voices who speak for and about Dundee in poetic terms’.

This is no longer the Dundee of the Jute Mills – it is the Dundee of the V&A on the Waterfront (without forgetting the struggles of the past and the poverty which still stalks) The anthology expands on earlier anthologies Seagate and Seagate II and  Whaleback City which was inspired by the city its history its architecture and its landscape and its people.

Times being hard and poetry sometimes being a difficult sell it has taken poet Andy Jackson the Editor a couple of years to get off the ground. In the 20^th Century Dundee’s poetic and literary reputation was overshadowed somewhat by the ghost of McGonagall.

But scratch below the surface and we can boast Mary Shelley having lived worked and conceived Frankenstein here,

War Poet and Fighter Writer Joseph Lee judged on a par with Owen and Sassoon,  The Republic of Letters in the 19^th Century the poetry and songs of Socialist icon Mary Brooksbank and more recently the work in word and song of Michael Marra two distinguished Professors of Poetry in WN Herbert and Don Paterson. AL Kennedy anyone? Then there’s prize winning poet John Glenday, Ellie McDonald Street Poets Gary Robertson and Mark Thomson.  There’s the comic genius of DC Thomson’s Dudley Watkins creator of Oor Wullie  Desperate Dan etc and contributors to human happiness thereby. And you’re still at the tip of the iceberg! Hence I’m honoured to be in this company. The Official launch where I’ve been asked to read along with other poets takes place at the burgeoning Dundee literary festival in October. The festival this year has drawn Hollywood actor Alan Cumming Poet and former Makar (Scots Poet laureate) Liz Lochead, prize winning author James Kelman and more.

MARY BROOKSBANK– The Jute Mill Song

Michael Marra If Dundee was Africa.

Mr Shey.

The Seagate is today one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of the city – effectively its first street dating back over a thousand years. The name originally ‘Seagait’ means road to the sea.

 

 

Mr Shey.

A good question. I suspect there is one but that it may be buried away beneath the streets of the City with other hidden history such as that of our hamster forebears! Put it this way – if there isn’t one there should be!

Mr Shey

Cox’s Stack is an iconic city landmark today an Italianate campanile chimney towering around three hundred feet above the skyline. It’s in Lochee aka Dundee’s little Ireland and at one time it stood above the largest jute mill in the world when the industry employed near fifty thousand people mostly women and children on what were known as the killing floors. Cox’s is the one chimney left out of over a hundred.

I wanted to write it because it speaks to the history of the City of Dundee and the spirit of innovation and survival which has characterised its people my forebears among them down the centuries.

Mr Shey

Urbi et Orbi – the city and the world. At least that’s what I aim for. One of my fellow poets in it Beth McDonough said she thought of me as an ‘urban poet’ which I took as a huge compliment. Edinburgh Glasgow London Rome and York have also inspired me. As does History particularly as a Scot of Irish descent the history of both countries. The first ever poem I wrote was about the battlefield at Prestonpans. I’d gone to the nearby sports centre to watch my daughter in a badminton tournament and at the break I went for a walk and was struck by the juxtaposition of past and present.

The Battle of Prestonpans was the first significant conflict in the Jacobite Rising of 1745. which ended at Culloden in 1746

 

 

Mr Shey.

A man more sinned against than sinning. Scratch beneath the cliché about ‘best writer of bad poetry’ and you might be surprised. He was probably autistic and he may have been playing the ‘daft laddie’. In addition he has stood the ultimate test – that of time. WN Herbert Dundee’s makar(official poet) a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University described him as a ‘journalist’ with an amazing ‘ability to be inspired by absolutely everything’. That said some of his rhyme and meter would give you a migraine!

Mr Shey.

Not one – unsurprisingly I’m particularly fond of some of the greats in the canon – Yeats, T.S.Eliot, Dylan Thomas and John Donne. And Bob Dylan. I’m also partial to Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Mr Shey.

I’ve written a play about the jute story – ‘O Halflins an Hecklers an Weavers an Weemin’. We’re planning to stage it in the High Mill at Verdant Works Museum Dundee next year. There are some poems in the pipeline on different subjects – I’ve just had three accepted for the Hampden Park Football Museum Memories’ Project in conjunction with Alzheimer’s Scotland. And I’ve written a modern historical novel about a Dundonian in Edinburgh in the politically turbulent Scotland of the early 1970s (UCS work-in/Miners’ Strike/Bloody Sunday etc). He meets a beautiful English girl who reminds him of Maddy Prior lead singer of Steeleye Span. They make a date for during the blackout in a Catholic Teachers’ Training College/Convent but instead he meets an Irish girl. When he sees her in trouble at a protest march about Bloody Sunday he goes to help and it complicates from there…so I may have some edits to do soon. It’s called ‘The Eyes of Grace O’Malley’.

                  An EXTRACT from Cox’s Stack by John Quinn part of the Seagate 3 Anthology.

‘The ramrods gone the vandals come

to silent killing floors

where halflin forebears

scurried like morlocks

between nether worlds of dust machines

and infanticide of hearing.

Spinning girls of golden fibre

and bronze farthings

watched women weave

a woman’s town sans suffragettes

and grown boys become men elsewhere.’

A Scottish ex-English Teacher of Irish extraction. Tour Guide at Scotland’s Jute Museum Verdant Works Dundee, John has had work published in  ‘Poet and Geek’ ‘South Bank Magazine’ ‘Poetry Scotland’ ‘Dundee Writes’ and ‘Then Dawn Treader’, not to mention Seagate 3.

http://www.seagate3blog.wprdpress.com

https://en-gb.facebook.com/SeagateIII/

Mr Shey.

Definitely – even Shey couldn’t make that up!

 

 

 

Stop three. Fury, Mary Shelley and Genoa

Tags

Antonia Van Zandt, Dundee, Frankenstein, Genoa, handsome organ grinders who resemble Gerard Butler, Lanterna, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Noelle Clark, Percy Shelley, Shehanne Moore, The Unraveling of Lady Fury, Vienna, whaling ships

So here I am back with a different set of balloons. Now readers, this is NOT YOU. This is for Noelle Clark, my last guest, pertying as we speak  with her official release for Let Angels Fly. All right so maybe I should send her these instead..I do accept it.  I’m just reminded here of my own little shindig and how I squinted at the PC the following morning to be greeted by an email from Antonia Van Zandt–very nice, very cheerful –about doing promo.  Do I write? I asked myself. Book? What book? Ou est le disprins…..?

Anyway the hot air balloon now hovers over Genoa. If Ottoman Dandy is reading this post he already got the low down on why I chose Genoa as the setting for The Unraveling of Lady Fury. But Mr Shey doesn’t and I don’t want him looking blank. that is even blanker than he sometimes does, the next time someone asks him.

On the subject of a location, to paraphrase the lady herself on the subject of finding someone to father the heir, I could have put a pin in a map and chosen a location. Anyone remember this?

I could have sworn Genoa was a port in this game but hey, I am probably mistaken. Marseilles was. Cadiz too, Putting that aside I’ve brought along the gal herself, plus an interviewer to tell you about the sights and give you the lowdown on her Genoa. Interview her myself? Are you kidding?

You can see she’s been busy though, launching a series of Where Am I Now? postcards, though I’m not really sure she should be showing this one  unless she wants the answer to be at the end of a rope.

Lady Fury’s Genoa.

                 

 Q. So Fury, I may call you that?

Fury. No.

Q.  Lady Fury, we’ve had some tremendous posts in this tour. Cambodia and of course Antonia gave us Sisi’s Vienna. is this to be similar?

Fury. Well, I should very much like to speak of the famous English poets and writers who made  Italy their home, round about the time I was living there myself, part of a sort of émigré community, featuring a large proportion of…well you’ve seen the pictures haven’t you, of my potential ‘helpers’? But I thought I was here to show you the sights?

This one , down at Porto Antica, the harbour area, is very nice.

Q. Fury, if you can’t behave yourself any better than Shehanne, here, then maybe it would be a mistake to continue.

Fury. Sorry, but she was the one who mentioned the handsome Italian organ grinder down on the harbour there.   So far we’ve had a picture of everyone else.

Q. There are none of Thomas.

Fury. Hardly  surprising when he looked like this.  Do you want Shehanne arrested, the things she sometimes tries to google?

Q. The other picture above is of the landmark Lanterna lighthouse?

Fury. Well if you’re not meaning  immediately -indeed..yes…. And here is the odd boat. It was absent from the above as Flint probably stole it.

The harbour was of course a place I spent a lot of time, especially when Flint decided to get awkward  Oh, and this is the stunning interior of the cathedral.

Shehanne had some line about the villa being a place at the mercy of cicadas and church bells. Obviously my head quite rung a lot of the time, rather like hers the other week.

Q. And you were in the cathedral a lot?

Fury. Er no. No Shehanne never chose Genoa because of that although given her obsession with pirates, she did want an old sea port, rich in history. And she is very partial to the Med. The light, the color, the heat, the people. Also it was very necessary the dowager toad– that is my mother-in-law.–didn’t turn up on the doorstep. So Shehanne told me anyway.

But we started with the poets and writers and really, being a woman myself I want to talk about Mary Shelley, who actually stayed for a time in Shehanne’s home town, of Dundee. Then a place of book shops, radicalism and whaling ships. Not only did she stay but Frankenstein was in many ways born there when Mary saw these totally crumpled by icebergs ships return, having been locked for months in ice…sound familiar as the opening of this book anyone?

People may know about how her son died in Rome in 1819 and her husband, the poet Percy Shelley drowned off the coast of Livorno  afew years later.

Not so commonly known is that after his death, Mary  lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious–something I can completely identify with.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that one Dundee girl to one Dundee visiting girl, the roving lifestyle of Mary was probably what inspired Shehanne to write a book set in just such a one in Genoa.

 EXTRACT.

“Have it your own way, madam. You always do. But I’m not thinking of Lady Margaret. I’m thinking of you.”

“Then don’t. You know I don’t require it.”

“I’m thinking you should just tell that old toad where to stuff her money. You could find a protector here in Genoa. A woman like you.”

A woman like her? Fury met her reflection in the not yet paid for glass. And what was that exactly? Long ago she’d stopped wondering, buffeted by fortune’s changing winds. Forced to snatch what she could to survive. Always knowing one false foot would bring her down. However, she was certain of one thing.

“I don’t want a protector.” It was after all what Thomas had been to start with. Now look at her, without a penny to her name. Again. “I’ve had my fill of them. I want to guarantee my future. The future of…” her voice trailed off, her eyes dulling in the glass. “Well, anyway, things that are dear.”

Susan knew the dire nature of her predicament. When Thomas had first taken Fury to meet his mother, the dislike had been instantaneous. It had flourished down the years, until now, it consumed her.

Fury imagined that at night, Lady Margaret lay awake thinking of new ways to torture and humiliate her. But poisoning Thomas’ father against her? Cajoling him on his death bed into insisting Thomas must provide an heir, before succeeding to the dukedom? Well, it was one blessing at least that Lady Margaret lived in England and Fury here.

“You know what I must guarantee, and why.”