Midsummer, St. Magnus, and a (knitted) mouse

Despite the low cloud, the slightly chilly air, and a lack of sun, it is in fact midsummer. Here in Orkney this means not only an excuse to celebrate what George Mackay Brown described as 'the over-brimming of the year's well of light'*, but also to enjoy this year's St Magnus International Festival. 

Today in Stromness Town Hall at 5.30pm the first performance of this year's Johnsmas Foy will take place, when Sarah Jane Gibbon will direct 'The Raven Banner, Twelve Valkyries & a Ghost Army'. This will be a commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, through song, poetry, story-telling and Old Norse writings performed by Sarah, along with poet Emma Grieve, composer Aimee Leonard and storyteller Tom Muir. 

For those who would like to know more about how midsummer and Johnsmas were traditionally celebrated, then we would recommend Midsummer, Johnsmas and bonfires on the UHI Centre for Nordic Studies website and also the excellent articles on Orcadian Bonfire Traditions  and A Year of Orcadian Tradition from the Orkneyjar site. 

In a break from tradition this year's St Magnus Festival features two workshops by Norwegian knitting celebrities Arne & Carlos. These have proved so popular that both Kirkwall and Stromness workshops have sold out, but we know that at least some of our library Yap and Yarn group members have been lucky enough to get tickets - including our library assistant Becky. During the workshop Arne & Carlos will be leading participants through their pattern for Magnus Garden Mouse, from their latest book Knit-and-Crochet Garden, which is, of course, available from the library.

We hope Becky will bring her Magnus into the library for a visit when he is finished and we'll try to get a photo to show you. If anyone else has knitted Magnus do please send us a photo and we'll share them on the blog. 

 Arne and Carlos

Magnus Garden Mouse

So it's going to be a busy weekend here in Stromness, but however, and where ever, you are going to be celebrating, we hope your solstice, St Magnus Festival, and Johnsmas  are full of midsummer magic.

*  from "Solstice of Light" in Under Brinkie's Brae, 1979, p.147

Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013)

We were very sad to learn yesterday of the death of the poet Seamus Heaney. He was festival poet at the St Magnus Festival in 1982 and 1994, and was photographed during his first visit by Gunnie Moberg.

photo by Gunnie Moberg http://gunniemobergarchive.wordpress.com/

In the book St Magnus Festival: a celebration compiled and edited by Pamela Beasant, Maureen Gray who worked at the Pier Arts Centre - venue for the festival poet readings - recalls the relationship between Seamus Heaney and Stromness' resident poet, George Mackay Brown :

Seamus Heaney mentioned that it was such an honour to come and read here with George sitting in the audience. George appeared to be in awe of Seamus Heaney too. There was great mutual respect.

The book includes an extract from  Morag MacInnes' review in The Times Educational Supplement from July 2, 1982, where she describes this reading, and Seamus Heaney's effect on the festival audience:

He looked like a piece of bog-cotton among a lot of hot-house orchids: he won his audience with his modesty, his humour, and his brogue.

The mutual respect between Seamus Heaney and George Mackay Brown is evident in each poet's reflections on the other's work. Brown writes of Heaney in The Orcadian, June 23 1994:

The supreme art of making simple events not only memorable but immortal - Seamus Heaney is a master there, like all the great poets.

While Heaney wrote of Brown:

W.H. Auden once called poetry "a way of happening" and in the work of George Mackay Brown the way is a fabulous one; he transforms everything by passing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney. His sense of the world and his way with words are powerfully at one with each other. His vision has something of the skaldic poet's consciousness of inevitable order, something of the haiku master's susceptibility to the delicate and momentary, and since the beginning of his career he has added uniquely and steadfastly to the riches of poetry in English.

Seamus Heaney went on to write the following poem in memory of George Mackay Brown  which was included in the volume Dove-Marks on Stone: Poems for George Mackay Brown which was published to mark what would have been Brown's 75th Birthday in October 1996:

A Landfall
i.m. George Mackay Brown

Far north, in sunlight,
the stone ship ran aground. Larks
sing at the masthead.

A copy of Dove-Marks on Stone is available for reference in The Orkney Room of Orkney Library and Archive in Kirkwall. A copy of St Magnus Festival: a celebration and Seamus Heaney's Open Ground: Poems 1966-1996 are both available to borrow from Stromness Library.

Seamus Heaney was also one of the patrons of The George Mackay Brown Fellowship - along with Sir Andrew Motion and Stewart Conn -  which was established in memory of George Mackay Brown with the aim of both celebrating Brown's writing and encouraging and promoting new creative writing in Orkney. 

This ongoing link with Orkney was a testament to the connection between Seamus Heaney and George Mackay Brown, and today we mourn the loss of another great poet.

photo by Iain Stewart http://www.isphotographs.co.uk/fine_art/portraits.php#../images/seamus-george.JPG

Creepy House

Apologies for our extended silence, some of us have been on holiday and with the excitement of the St Magnus Festival, June just flew by.

Here we are in July and the start of the school summer holidays can only mean one thing - the start of the  library Summer Reading Challenge 2013.

This year young readers are invited to join a gang of explorers as they discover the secrets of the Creepy House - collecting stickers as they read books from the library and adding them to their own special Creepy House fold-out poster. 

There are three floors of the house to explore and for every two books read there are stickers to complete one of the three stages:

Stage 1: The Awful Upstairs, 

Stage 2: The Gruesome Ground Floor 

Stage 3: The Spine-tingling Cellar. 

Read six books over the summer to collect all the stickers and complete all three levels -  you'll also get a certificate at the closing event in Kirkwall Library on Saturday 17th August. 

The stickers have special codes which will unlock extra features on the Creepy House website www.creepy-house.org.uk  . On the website you can share your favourite books, send messages, meet some famous authors, and even enter a competition to complete a short story started by a famous author  and win fabulous prizes.

Are you brave enough to enter the Creepy House? Beware -  those stinky stickers really are smelly!*

* No really, they are. We have to store them in a special sealed box and wear hazmat suits to handle them**

** Okay we may be exaggerating a bit -  but they are really pongy

The Magnetic North

In our look at St Magnus Festival events we forgot to mention a performance, which although not taking place in Stromness, does have Stromness connections.

Erland Cooper who grew up in Stromness and whose parents still live here, is part of the band The Magnetic North along with Simon Tong (ex Verve and Gorillaz) and Hannah Peel. They will be performing their debut album Orkney Symphony of the Magnetic North on Thursday 28th June in St Magnus Catherdral at 7.30pm.

The album is inspired by the landscape and legends of Orkney and was recorded locally on location and in Erland's family home in Stromness. It features contributions by the Stromabank Pub Choir from Hoy who will join the band for Thursday's performance.

Here is the video of  The Magnetic North's track Stromness from their album.

St Magnus Festival

Tomorrow sees the start of the St Magnus International Festival 2012. With lots of exciting events, from a production of Carmen at the Orkney Auction Mart to the chance to join in with the CLIC Sargent sponsored Street Conga, as usual there is something to suit all tastes.

Festival events take place in many venues through out the islands but we thought you might like to hear about those taking place in Stromness. These begin on Friday 22nd June with an event at an exciting new festival venue,when the Ness Battery hosts It Ain't Half Cold Mum. This is the first venue on a tour by a concert party of singers, a magician and musicians who will re-visit the haunts of the ENSA troupes of the Second World War, with a show which promises to take the audience back to the 1940's.

On Saturday there is a reading by Festival Poet Alice Oswald in Stromness Parish Church at 11am, and at 2.30pm there is a Celebrity Recital by mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, accompanied by James Baillieu on piano in Stromness Town Hall. Then at 5pm in the Stromness Academy Lecture Theatre there is A Johnsmas Foy entitled The Young Ones, performed by young folk from Orkney. Then on Sunday 24th June in the Stromness Town Hall the Aronowitz Ensemble will perform works by Judith Weir, Korngold and Shostakovich at 2.30pm.

But perhaps the event we are most excited about will take place on Sunday at 4.30pm in the Stromness Hotel when the participants from the Orkney Writers' Course will read from the work they have produced during the course; which starts on Thursday 21st and is directed by Pam Beasant and Jen Hadfield. The event is called "Poems with tunes, tea and cake" - how could we resist all our favourite things at one event?!

Open Windows

You may have noticed something a little different about us recently as we are delighted to be part of the Open Windows exhibition currently running along the street in Stromness. This exciting and inovative project has placed work by 45 artists in 45 windows along the street, from The Pierhead to The Museum. Each of the participating windows is marked with brightly coloured streamers attached outside - just so you know which windows you are supposed to be looking in!

As you can see we got two works to display, making use of our large windows looking down the street. The works are:

Nousts  by Yvonne Gray - a limited edition digital print on hand made Japenese paper.

Nousts by Yvonne Gray    

and

Poems  by Pamela Beasant & Alex Ashman

Poems by Pamela Beasant & Alex Ashman  

The exhibition runs until 26th June so you still have plenty of time for a wander along the street - what better way to pass the time between festival performances? The isle may be full of noises but the street is full of art.

the isle is full of noises

Today sees the start of the St Magnus International Festival which begins with a production of The Tempest including local performers. This year the festival takes its title from a line in The Tempest and a look at the events for festival goers in Stromness suggests that amongst the "noises" will indeed be "sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not".

On Saturday 18th June Festival Poet Don Paterson will give a reading at the Pier Arts Centre at 11am; pianist Alessandro Taverna will perform works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Debussy and Stravinsky in the Stromness Town Hall at 2.30pm; and at 5pm in the Stromness Academy Theatre there will be A Johnsmas Foy entitled "The Inter-County".

On Sunday 19th June at 2.30pm the Badke Quartet will perform works by Tomkins, Peter Maxwell Davies, Beethoven and Ravel, in the Stromness Town Hall; while at 4.30pm you can enjoy Poems with tea and cake in the Stromness Hotel when poets Pamela Beasant and Jen Hadfield who will be joined by participants from the inaugural Orkney Writers' Course to read some of the works created during the course.

So a full weekend of events to be enjoyed, and if you need somewhere to collect your thoughts, send a hasty email review, or read some more poetry (we have titles by Don, Pamela and Jen in stock) then pop in and tell us what we have been missing!