Detailed maps of the routes taken by the poet Robert Burns on his celebrated journeys around Scotland in 1787 have been produced by the Library.
Burns was at the height of his powers at the time and kept a journal detailing the places he stayed and the people he met along the way, along with reflections on Scottish society, history and culture.
The journal and the accompanying maps have now been published in a joint project between Glasgow University and the Library.
Professor Nigel Leask of Glasgow University said the journal and maps “offer us an insight into the life of a poet who was operating at the peak of his powers and reaping the benefits of his new found fame.”
Can you recognise a “special” book when you see one?
There is nothing like a charity book sale to highlight last year’s “must reads” – the bestsellers that flew off the bookshop shelves but which many of us do not want to keep on our own bookshelves. Would their authors be depressed to see countless copies of their “bestseller” stacked high at second-hand booksales? Maybe they’re just pleased that they’ve been read and are available to be read again!
If you are interested in a particular subject – art, history or travel, for example – would you like to help sort, price and arrange these books for a book sale?
Of more interest to many veteran book-sale attendees are the “specials”. Often arriving in a box of mixed books from a house clearance, these books can be first editions, signed copies, rare annuals, maps or sought-after Scottish materials.
If you have the skills to spot “specials” amongst the thousands of books that arrive at the Holy Corner Christian Aid Book Sale, and would like to be part of a happy and fulfilling few weeks of voluntary work, please contact Elspeth Yeo, who can provide more information – contact details are below.
Even if you can’t spot a “special” but would like to be part of a great team that delivers a unique book-sale experience at Holy Corner, please get in touch. It doesn’t matter how many or how few hours you can do – it is the taking part that is important.
The Holy Corner Christian Aid Book Sale will be in Morningside United Church, Holy Corner from Saturday 9th May–Saturday 16th May this year. Volunteers are required during that week, but also during the three to four weeks before the sale (including in the evenings). Work at clearing up after the sale continues from Monday 18th –Wednesday 20th May.
For more information please contact:
Miss Elspeth Yeo
Tel: 0131 229 6652
Email: Elspeth Yeo
We would like to alert you to the following 4 events. All of these are free of charge but booking is required:
Information Literacy in Scotland: Challenges and Opportunities
Information Literacy is a term common to Librarians but what does it mean to be information literate in Scotland today? As more information and services move online, how can we ensure that there is equality of access to information across the country and reduce the gap between the information rich and information poor? The Right Information, the Scottish Information Literacy Community of Practice and Scottish Library and Information Council, invite you to attend a symposium at the Scottish Government Offices on 13th February 2015 to examine the relevance of the term in relation to health, education, housing, employability and welfare reform.
Learning outcomes: * Improved understanding of how to progress towards the relevant qualification and what you will gain by doing so * Awareness of the Regulations and assessment criteria * An understanding of what constitutes a portfolio and why CILIP requires this for submission for its qualifications * Ideas about how to construct a portfolio and the types of evidence that can be included in it * An enhanced understanding of the benefits of Continuing Professional Development * Awareness of the support networks and information available to help candidates * Confidence to progress towards gaining a CILIP qualification successfully
Room1130, National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EW For any further information or to book, please contact Alison Turriff or Val Walker the Mentor Support Officers for Scotland.
A television documentary, Fergusson: Burns’ Forgotten Hero, was screened on BBC1 Scotland last Sunday.
In this documentary marking Burns Day, writer Andrew O’Hagan goes in search of the poet who inspired Burns: Robert Fergusson. Fergusson died young but his legacy was a love song to his native city, Edinburgh. Andrew tracks down his story in the streets and wynds of the Old Town. Fergusson’s vivid use of Scots led Burns to declare him his ‘forgotten hero’ and to pay a lasting tribute to this neglected Scottish poet.
CILIPS is holding a Professional Registration and Portfolio Building course on 20th March, 10-2.30pm at the National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh.
Over the last three weeks ELISA has been pleased to showcase a series of guest posts by Edinburgh’s Maker, Christine De Luca. In this final instalment Christine tells us about an unusual link between Scotland and Poland…
And finally …
In late October 2014, I was invited as Edinburgh Makar to join a small Scottish contingent at the Conrad Literary Festival in Krakow, Poland. This was a wonderful opportunity to visit a city I had long wanted to see, a city which had recently been designated a UNESCO City of Literature.
I told them a little about an unusual link between our two countries, Scotland and Poland.
There are of course lots of living links: Poles living and working here, and Edinburgh and Krakow having been twinned for almost 20 years, since 1995. But this particular link relates to that generation of Poles who escaped to Scotland from occupied Europe during World War II and who made a huge, often secret, contribution to the Allied cause. Many later settled in Scotland.
The Great Polish Map of Scotland
On a summer Sunday in 1975, I stopped off with my fiancé for afternoon tea at a quiet hotel (The Black Barony) at Eddleston in the Scottish Borders. After our refreshments we took a stroll in the grounds, crossing the Fairy Dean Burn to the other side of the narrow valley. To my surprise I came upon an old man patiently working on a massive, scaled model of Scotland. As a Geography teacher I was transfixed and looked forward to being able to bring pupils to see it as, for many, visualising a landscape from a map is difficult. The old man was checking elevations and levelling and was working with only a quarter-inch map! We got talking to him – he was Polish and was attempting to do something for his adopted country. Little did we know that, not only had he bought the hotel and grounds, but it had been the secret headquarters of the Polish soldiers during the war.
However, I never heard any more about the model and, when I returned several years later, the hotel had changed hands, the grounds were fenced off and no one seemed to know anything about this incredible feature, visible from space!
Until recently, that is… when I was driving nearby and saw a sign pointing to ‘The Great Polish Map of Scotland’. My heart skipped a beat! I was delighted to find that, although it had suffered neglect for many years, it has now been officially listed and is in the care of a trust. Work is on-going to restore it.
I wrote this ‘concrete’ poem by way of celebration and to bring to the Conrad Festival:
Very many thanks to Christine for these delightful and informative tales of Edinburgh, Kraków, poetry, geography, history and bookart. I hope she will choose to write for us again sometime – and that she will inspire other ELISA readers to have a go too! Please contact me if you’d like to contribute to this blog at any time.
Again, many thanks to Christine De Luca, Edinburgh’s Makar
During this month ELISA is privileged to present a series of three guest posts by Edinburgh’s Maker, Christine De Luca. In Part 2 Christine relates the wonderful story of the Mysterious Edinburgh Book Sculptures…
Story-telling Centre – Dragon’s Nest
Edinburgh is a city of librariesand organisations which support literature. Libraries are particularly under threat as we become ever more digitised and funding is spread more thinly. The book sculptures were made as gifts in appreciation of libraries, books, words, ideasand placed anonymously, without anyone being aware of the donor, to be uncovered unexpectedly. Surely a perfect gift? At the Conrad Festival [in Kraków, Poland] I was able to show images of the paper sculptures and explain the references to poems hidden within a few of the loveliest.
Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature – ‘Lost in a good book’
In 2011, the first mystery paper sculpture was discovered in that home of poetry, the SPL. It was an incredibly delicate gift; a tree (PoeTREE) growing out of a book, an eggshell of poems, and a little card which read:
Scottish Poetry Library – PoeTREE
@ByLeavesWeLive and became a tree…We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books…a book is so much more than pages full of words…This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…
The leaves referred to the motto of SPL (by Leaves we Live) but the sculpture also referenced one of Scotland’s great 20th poets, Edwin Morgan. The broken egg is LINED with lines from a tribute poem he wrote on the death of a friend, the Modernist poet Basil BUNTING. The poem is a play on his friend’s surname:
A TRACE OF WINGS
Edwin Morgan
Corn Bunting shy but perky; haunts fields; grain-scatterer
Reed Bunting sedge-scuttler; swayer; a cool perch
Cirl Bunting small whistler; shrill early; find him!
Indigo Buntingblue darter; like metal; the sheen
Ortolan Bunting haunts gardens; is caught; favours tables
Painted Bunting gaudy flasher; red, blue, green; what a whisk!
Basil Bunting! the sweetest singer; prince of finches; gone from these parts
Others were then discovered in major libraries and literary institutions. There was one, for example for each of:
Edinburgh Book Festival – teacup
the Story-telling Centre – “Dragon’s Nest”
the Edinburgh International Book Festival – a presentation teacup which says in the swirl of milk ‘Nothing beats a nice cup of tea (or coffee) and a great BOOK’. But beside the cake it says ‘except maybe a cake as well!’
Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature – “Lost in a good book”
Edinburgh Filmhouse – “all things magic” … with the film coming alive ‘out of a book’… and with a tiny Ian Rankin, the sculptor’s favorite Edinburgh author, seated in the cinema!
Edinburgh Filmhouse – “all things magic”
The tenth and seemingly final sculpture (Gloves of bee’s fur, cap of the wren’s wings) was another for the SPL. It was a most exquisitely made sculpture, based on a line in a poem by another of Scotland’s great poets of the 20th century, Norman MacCaig. This poem, Gifts – a beautifully crafted, restrained love poem – is about impossible gifts! It’s from the collection (The Sinai Sort, The Hogarth Press, 1957). It is impeccably rhymed and the rhythm is memorable. It almost hurts to read the pain and extremity of love in it:
GIFTS Norman MacCaig
You read the old Irish poet and complain
I do not offer you impossible things –
Gloves of bees’ fur, cap of the wren’s wings,
Goblets so clear light falls on them like a stain.
I make you the harder offer of all I can,
The good and ill that make of me this man.
I need no fancy to mark you as beautiful,
If you are beautiful. All I know is what
Darkens and brightens the sad waste of my thought
Is what makes me your wild, truth-telling fool
Who will not spoil your power by adding one
Vainglorious image to all we’ve said and done.
Flowers need no fantasy, stones need no dream;
And you are flower, and stone. And I compel
Myself to be no more than possible,
Offering nothing that might one day seem
A measure of your failure to be true
To the greedy vanity that disfigures you.
A cloak of the finest silk in Scotland – what
Has that to do with troubled nights and days
Of anguished happiness? I had no praise
Even of your kindness, that was not bought
At such a price this bankrupt self is all
I have to give. And is that possible?
SPL – Gloves of bee’s fur, cap of the wren’s wings
We thought that was it but, since then, there have been more and more; three recently with the theme ‘Free to Fly’ including one more for the SPL and one more for the UNESCO City of Literature Trust. All are exquisitely crafted and include rich references to the body receiving the anonymous gift. They have been created with care and love. They celebrate more than the tangible word: they commend our values, our hopes and dreams; our belief in the transformative power of books, of literature.
Gifted: The fascinating tale of ten mysterious book sculptures gifted to the city of words and ideas
Spoken word powerhouse Rally and Broad celebrate the tremendous popularity, diversity and eccentricity of the Edinburgh scene with a series of new workshops in January and February by some of the finest performance poets in Scotland.
To get the year off to a flying start, Francesca Beard and Salena Godden will run sessions for anyone who wants to develop their skills or practice.
Join Francesca on the 24th January as she shows you how to build a live set, offering an insight into how to engage a live audience.
On Saturday 20th February, Salena will focus on writing and performing memoir, including how to walk the line between the private and the public when performing or reading in a live setting.
The workshops are aimed at fairly experienced performers, although newcomers are also welcome.
Lauren Thow is Library Resource Centre Co-ordinator at Portobello High School in Edinburgh.
I have always been a regular Library user, whether that be a Public, School or University Library, but I had never considered working in one. After studying History then Law at University, I worked in a variety of advice and customer services roles. Like many humanities students I felt indecisive about my career plans post-University, but increasingly felt that I would be more fulfilled working in education or the arts. I took up volunteer work with Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle, which instantly re-ignited my passion for literature and showed me how rewarding working with young people could be. I was lucky enough to then gain employment as a Senior Library Assistant at Whitley Bay High School in Newcastle. Having had no prior Librarian training, this role involved a steep learning curve…
Detailed maps of the routes taken by the poet Robert Burns on his celebrated journeys around Scotland in 1787 have been produced by the Library.
Edinburgh Library and Information Services Agency 