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RSL president Bernadine Evaristo highlights need to change to become an organisation for all writers rather than just the white and middle class
TWO major events are set to enhance Scottish literary circles.
AN announcement was due to have been made any day now about the appointment of a new Makar, Scotland’s national poet, to replace Jackie Kay, who is coming to the end of her five-year tenure of office. The National can reveal, however, that a completely new selection process is being introduced for the post, Kay was announced as Makar on March 15, 2016, and it was anticipated in Scottish literary circles that the appointment of her successor would be confirmed shortly as she prepares to stand down, even though the usual speculation that surrounds any such announcement has been conspicuou...
“Now I must make amends.” It is often said (when people are talking of the “Auden group,” those poets who came to prominence with Auden in the Thirties) that MacNeice was the collective’s resident skeptic. Others, you will hear—from Samuel Hynes in his book, The Auden Generation, from Edna Longley in her study of MacNeice, from Robyn Marsack and Beret Strong and Peter MacDonald in chapters on MacNeice, even from Seamus Perry and Mark Ford in their recent London Review of Books podcast episode on MacNeice—flirted with political commitment (Stephen Spender is usually singled out...
Nicolas Bouvier’s “The Way of the World” New York Review Books, 2009 Two Swiss men are at the Iranian border. The year is 1953, just a few months prior to the CIA-sponsored coup. The night is dark. A customs officer emerges from his pavilion and shines his acetylene lamp on the men: “I am sorry my friends,” he says, “you must have a soldier to escort you as far as Maku.” The officer then produces “a mongoloid midget in puttees . . . as though he'd plucked him out of his slipper.” The travelers continue down the road. Nicolas Bouvier, twenty-four, is at the wheel. Thierry Ver...