15 READS - summer 24
Tacit knowledge
Transmission
Local and rural
Texture
Threads
Each edition is selected and described by Dr Jane McArthur, a writer and arts producer based in Dumfries and Galloway
John Burnside
All One Breath
In this collection John Burnside shows himself as the feeling observer on the edge of things, glimpsing himself in mirrors, standing at the edge of a wood, watching a farmer from his yard at home.
John Burnside, All One Breath, Jonathan Cape, 2014.
In this collection John Burnside shows himself as the feeling observer on the edge of things, glimpsing himself in mirrors, standing at the edge of a wood, watching a farmer from his yard at home. Remembered situations expose facets of childhood incidents, his inner consciousness or the natural world around him, expanding to consider the wider human condition. Remaining open-ended Burnside’s poems avoid the traps of self-absorption as ideas, language, and imagery lead the reader to an understanding that love and mortality, visceral pleasure and loss are all part of our common lived experience. As such, he invites us in the final poem, to at least all come together in recognition of the light and shade of life: ‘all one; the living and the dead: / first catch, then canon; fugal; all one breath.’
John Burnside, All One Breath, Jonathan Cape, 2014.
In this collection John Burnside shows himself as the feeling observer on the edge of things, glimpsing himself in mirrors, standing at the edge of a wood, watching a farmer from his yard at home. Remembered situations expose facets of childhood incidents, his inner consciousness or the natural world around him, expanding to consider the wider human condition. Remaining open-ended Burnside’s poems avoid the traps of self-absorption as ideas, language, and imagery lead the reader to an understanding that love and mortality, visceral pleasure and loss are all part of our common lived experience. As such, he invites us in the final poem, to at least all come together in recognition of the light and shade of life: ‘all one; the living and the dead: / first catch, then canon; fugal; all one breath.’
Elisa Shua Dusapin
Vladivostock Circus
The novel charts the forging of relationships between four disparate characters, the Ukrainian ‘flyer’, the German and Russian ‘bases’, the Quebecois director and Natalie, fresh from her studies in Belgium.
Elisa Shua Dusapin, Vladivostock Circus, trans. Aneesa Abbas Higgins, Daunt Books, 2024.
Natalie makes the six-day journey to Vladivostock to design costumes for a trio of circus artists preparing to perform the dangerous Russian bar act at the winter circus festival in Ulan-Ude. The novel charts the forging of relationships between four disparate characters, the Ukrainian ‘flyer’, the German and Russian ‘bases’, the Quebecois director and Natalie, fresh from her studies in Belgium. Remaining behind in the atmospheric circus buildings at the end of the season, despite differences in age, experience, culture and expectations, each learns how to collaborate and work as a group, finally developing bonds of trust and respect which are imperative for the survival of the performers.
Elisa Shua Dusapin, Vladivostock Circus, trans. Aneesa Abbas Higgins, Daunt Books, 2024.
Natalie makes the six-day journey to Vladivostock to design costumes for a trio of circus artists preparing to perform the dangerous Russian bar act at the winter circus festival in Ulan-Ude. The novel charts the forging of relationships between four disparate characters, the Ukrainian ‘flyer’, the German and Russian ‘bases’, the Quebecois director and Natalie, fresh from her studies in Belgium. Remaining behind in the atmospheric circus buildings at the end of the season, despite differences in age, experience, culture and expectations, each learns how to collaborate and work as a group, finally developing bonds of trust and respect which are imperative for the survival of the performers.
Paul Éluard
Selected Poems
Despite his experiences of the two world wars and his close involvement with the Spanish Civil War, Paul Éluard retains his faith in hope, love and human solidarity expressed using the simplest of language yet without compromising the poetic form.
Paul Éluard, Selected Poems, trans. Gilbert Bowen, with an introduction by Max Adereth, Calder Publications, 2023.
Despite his experiences of the two world wars and his close involvement with the Spanish Civil War, Paul Éluard retains his faith in hope, love and human solidarity expressed using the simplest of language yet without compromising the poetic form. For him similes are often redundant, as he endows everyday objects and places with their own often surreal characteristics: a street is rusty, the city stretches out its hand, ‘My brow a surrendered flag’. The lack of punctuation and the repetition of words occasion a sense of immediacy and active thought, suggesting the effortless transmission of reflections captured as if in the moment on the page.
Paul Éluard, Selected Poems, trans. Gilbert Bowen, with an introduction by Max Adereth, Calder Publications, 2023.
Despite his experiences of the two world wars and his close involvement with the Spanish Civil War, Paul Éluard retains his faith in hope, love and human solidarity expressed using the simplest of language yet without compromising the poetic form. For him similes are often redundant, as he endows everyday objects and places with their own often surreal characteristics: a street is rusty, the city stretches out its hand, ‘My brow a surrendered flag’. The lack of punctuation and the repetition of words occasion a sense of immediacy and active thought, suggesting the effortless transmission of reflections captured as if in the moment on the page.
George Ewart Evans
The Horse in the Furrow
The author places the Suffolk Punch, the powerhouse of Suffolk farming at the centre of this social history gathered from oral and written accounts given by farm workers, farriers, clothiers, horse whisperers, grooms and farmers.
George Ewart Evans, The Horse in the Furrow, (1960), Faber & Faber, 1979.
The author places the Suffolk Punch, the powerhouse of Suffolk farming at the centre of this social history gathered from oral and written accounts given by farm workers, farriers, clothiers, horse whisperers, grooms and farmers. It was due, he notes, to the settled rural communities that the age-old practices and folklore relating to working the land with horses persisted, to be passed down through the generations. Although in decline, despite the changes wrought by the first world war and the introduction of mechanised machinery, memories dating from the Napoleonic wars to the post-war years describe the fundamental role the Suffolk Punch played in daily rural life.
George Ewart Evans, The Horse in the Furrow, (1960), Faber & Faber, 1979.
The author places the Suffolk Punch, the powerhouse of Suffolk farming at the centre of this social history gathered from oral and written accounts given by farm workers, farriers, clothiers, horse whisperers, grooms and farmers. It was due, he notes, to the settled rural communities that the age-old practices and folklore relating to working the land with horses persisted, to be passed down through the generations. Although in decline, despite the changes wrought by the first world war and the introduction of mechanised machinery, memories dating from the Napoleonic wars to the post-war years describe the fundamental role the Suffolk Punch played in daily rural life.
Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men
Using the language of her time, Zora Neale Hurston documents her return to the American South to collect stories or ‘lies’ as her subjects call them.
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, (1935), Harper Perennial, 2008.
Using the language of her time, Zora Neale Hurston documents her return to the American South to collect stories or ‘lies’ as her subjects call them. Many hark back to African folklore, which by the 1920s had become the collective folk tales embedded within southern African American culture. Recollected by the men and women sitting on the stoop drinking beer with Neale Hurston, at parties, or in places of work, these stories are relayed from her own involved perspective, one which reflects her part in the telling and listening process inherent in oral history gathering. Expressed using the vernacular of the deep south, subjects range from the antics of Brer Rabbit and Lion to hoodoo, from the ridiculousness of white men to the misery of poverty, to stories which tell how the Devil wins out against God but where the everyday hero outsmarts the Devil. Dismissed in her lifetime and later accused of perpetuating stereotypes, now re-instated, this work shows realities of African American life in all its humour and pathos, recorded at a time when slavery was still a living memory.
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, (1935), Harper Perennial, 2008.
Using the language of her time, Zora Neale Hurston documents her return to the American South to collect stories or ‘lies’ as her subjects call them. Many hark back to African folklore, which by the 1920s had become the collective folk tales embedded within southern African American culture. Recollected by the men and women sitting on the stoop drinking beer with Neale Hurston, at parties, or in places of work, these stories are relayed from her own involved perspective, one which reflects her part in the telling and listening process inherent in oral history gathering. Expressed using the vernacular of the deep south, subjects range from the antics of Brer Rabbit and Lion to hoodoo, from the ridiculousness of white men to the misery of poverty, to stories which tell how the Devil wins out against God but where the everyday hero outsmarts the Devil. Dismissed in her lifetime and later accused of perpetuating stereotypes, now re-instated, this work shows realities of African American life in all its humour and pathos, recorded at a time when slavery was still a living memory.
Patrick Langley
The Variations
Anya, her son Wolf and Ellen the director of Agnes’s Hospice for acoustically gifted children are bound together through Selda Heddle, a famous composer whose music was crafted using resonances transmitted from the past.
Patrick Langley, The Variations, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023.
Anya, her son Wolf and Ellen the director of Agnes’s Hospice for acoustically gifted children are bound together through Selda Heddle, a famous composer whose music was crafted using resonances transmitted from the past, a gift her grandson Wolf has inherited. ‘Harmonic intervals exist not only between ourselves and our living family, friends and tribe but between the living and the dead’ Ellen explains as she tries to rouse Wolf from a trance as she has done for Selda in the past. Threaded through the novel is Wolf’s own battle with the similarly ethereal voices and his search for a solution to their interference as he seeks explanations as to why Selda left her Cornish home to perish in the snow.
Patrick Langley, The Variations, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023.
Anya, her son Wolf and Ellen the director of Agnes’s Hospice for acoustically gifted children are bound together through Selda Heddle, a famous composer whose music was crafted using resonances transmitted from the past, a gift her grandson Wolf has inherited. ‘Harmonic intervals exist not only between ourselves and our living family, friends and tribe but between the living and the dead’ Ellen explains as she tries to rouse Wolf from a trance as she has done for Selda in the past. Threaded through the novel is Wolf’s own battle with the similarly ethereal voices and his search for a solution to their interference as he seeks explanations as to why Selda left her Cornish home to perish in the snow.
Scholastique Mukasonga
Kibogo
Set in a Rwandan hillside village, Mukasonga’s episodic novel is a delicate examination of the conflict between ancient ways and Christian teaching, between tacit knowledge and the colonialisation of established traditional ways of living.
Scholastique Mukasonga, Kibogo, trans. Mark Polizzotti, Archipelago Books, 2022.
Set in a Rwandan hillside village, Mukasonga’s episodic novel is a delicate examination of the conflict between ancient ways and Christian teaching, between tacit knowledge and the colonialisation of established traditional ways of living. Mukasonga narrates attempts by the muzungu missionaries to destroy the area’s societal structure, and in doing so how they sought to eradicate the villager’s beliefs and sacred places. Half-remembered stories are revitalised as a drought lengthens, famine deepens, and a group of villagers are finally forced to seek advice from a female sage. This woman, legend tells was the bride of Kibongo their last king and rainmaker. She has become an outcast, shunned by the villagers but in their moment of need, may in fact be their salvation.
Scholastique Mukasonga, Kibogo, trans. Mark Polizzotti, Archipelago Books, 2022.
Set in a Rwandan hillside village, Mukasonga’s episodic novel is a delicate examination of the conflict between ancient ways and Christian teaching, between tacit knowledge and the colonialisation of established traditional ways of living. Mukasonga narrates attempts by the muzungu missionaries to destroy the area’s societal structure, and in doing so how they sought to eradicate the villager’s beliefs and sacred places. Half-remembered stories are revitalised as a drought lengthens, famine deepens, and a group of villagers are finally forced to seek advice from a female sage. This woman, legend tells was the bride of Kibongo their last king and rainmaker. She has become an outcast, shunned by the villagers but in their moment of need, may in fact be their salvation.
Sheila Paine
The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindi Kush to Razgrad
Crossing the unstable borderlands of Iran, Iraq and Turkey Paine goes in search of the origins of an embroidered amulet first seen in a London textile dealer’s shop.
Sheila Paine, The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindi Kush to Razgrad, Penguin
Books, 1994.
Beginning in 1990, Paine makes three journeys into the troubled Stans and eastern Europe. Crossing the unstable borderlands of Iran, Iraq and Turkey she goes in search of the origins of an embroidered amulet first seen in a London textile dealer’s shop. During her travels Paine gains insights from the women she meets, into the traditions handed down through generations relating to the embroidered symbols on their clothing. Yet amongst the fertility goddesses, amulets, bulls and Zorastrian symbols, the amulet Paine seeks remains elusive, the key to solving its mystery always waiting across another border, always in another Kohistan – land of the mountains.
Sheila Paine, The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindi Kush to Razgrad, Penguin
Books, 1994.
Beginning in 1990, Paine makes three journeys into the troubled Stans and eastern Europe. Crossing the unstable borderlands of Iran, Iraq and Turkey she goes in search of the origins of an embroidered amulet first seen in a London textile dealer’s shop. During her travels Paine gains insights from the women she meets, into the traditions handed down through generations relating to the embroidered symbols on their clothing. Yet amongst the fertility goddesses, amulets, bulls and Zorastrian symbols, the amulet Paine seeks remains elusive, the key to solving its mystery always waiting across another border, always in another Kohistan – land of the mountains.
Annie E. Proulx
The Shipping News
After the death of his faithless wife, Quoyle leaves the drudgery of life as a two-bit journalist in New York to move with his aunt and two young daughters to their ancestral Newfoundland home.
Annie E. Proulx, The Shipping News, (1993), Fourth Estate, 2009.
After the death of his faithless wife, Quoyle leaves the drudgery of life as a two-bit journalist in New York to move with his aunt and two young daughters to their ancestral Newfoundland home. In this rocky land of fogbows, ice storms, treacherous waters and long memories, Quoyle finds acceptance for the first time and begins to make his place in the close-knit community where the lore of the sea prevails and where the skills of fishermen and boatbuilders ensure survival.
Annie E. Proulx, The Shipping News, (1993), Fourth Estate, 2009.
After the death of his faithless wife, Quoyle leaves the drudgery of life as a two-bit journalist in New York to move with his aunt and two young daughters to their ancestral Newfoundland home. In this rocky land of fogbows, ice storms, treacherous waters and long memories, Quoyle finds acceptance for the first time and begins to make his place in the close-knit community where the lore of the sea prevails and where the skills of fishermen and boatbuilders ensure survival.
Andrew Ross
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
Grounded in the hundreds of interviews Ross recorded, he relays experiences told to him by the Palestinian men who practice the ancient craft of limestone cutting.
Andrew Ross, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, Verso, 2021.
Grounded in the hundreds of interviews Ross recorded, he relays experiences told to him by the Palestinian men who practice the ancient craft of limestone cutting. In doing so, he exposes the paradoxes of the Israeli demand for stone from the West Bank quarries and the exploitation of Palestinian labour both of which sustain the continued expansion of the Israeli state. By establishing a thesis which shows the interconnections between the Kibbutz Movement, the loss of Palestinian land and the exploitation of the people, Ross positions stone at the heart of the Palestine Israel conflict, weaving a story which Eyal Weizman writes in his review ‘brings together geology, military occupation and environment, a story at once specific and expansive’.
Andrew Ross, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, Verso, 2021.
Grounded in the hundreds of interviews Ross recorded, he relays experiences told to him by the Palestinian men who practice the ancient craft of limestone cutting. In doing so, he exposes the paradoxes of the Israeli demand for stone from the West Bank quarries and the exploitation of Palestinian labour both of which sustain the continued expansion of the Israeli state. By establishing a thesis which shows the interconnections between the Kibbutz Movement, the loss of Palestinian land and the exploitation of the people, Ross positions stone at the heart of the Palestine Israel conflict, weaving a story which Eyal Weizman writes in his review ‘brings together geology, military occupation and environment, a story at once specific and expansive’.
Amalie Smith
Thread Ripper
Moving also between weaving and data, Ada Lovelace, DNA and radiation Amalie Smith constructs a multi-stranded story, as she records the creation of her first digitally woven tapestry.
Amalie Smith, Thread Ripper, trans. Jennifer Russell, Lolli Editions, 2022.
The narrative leads from the ancient technology of Penelope’s loom and Jacquard’s punch card looms to the machine learning that now create a fabric’s warp, weft and design. Stories of science, creative endeavour, women’s histories and new technology traverse the concrete certainty of the loom, the vagaries of neural networks and the possibilities created by the AI Deep Dream generator. Moving also between weaving and data, Ada Lovelace, DNA and radiation Amalie Smith constructs a multi-stranded story, as she records the creation of her first digitally woven tapestry.
Amalie Smith, Thread Ripper, trans. Jennifer Russell, Lolli Editions, 2022.
The narrative leads from the ancient technology of Penelope’s loom and Jacquard’s punch card looms to the machine learning that now create a fabric’s warp, weft and design. Stories of science, creative endeavour, women’s histories and new technology traverse the concrete certainty of the loom, the vagaries of neural networks and the possibilities created by the AI Deep Dream generator. Moving also between weaving and data, Ada Lovelace, DNA and radiation Amalie Smith constructs a multi-stranded story, as she records the creation of her first digitally woven tapestry.
Virginia Woolf
A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction
Threaded through the collection are characters, scenes and concepts which re-emerge in Virginia Woolf’s novels or follow on after their completion in what she described as ‘side-stories’ as if Woolf hadn’t quite let go of the characters or situations once the novel had been completed.
Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Susan Dick with an Introduction by Helen Simpson, Vintage, 2003.
Threaded through the collection are characters, scenes and concepts which re emerge in Virginia Woolf’s novels or follow on after their completion in what she described as ‘side-stories’ as if Woolf hadn’t quite let go of the characters or situations once the novel had been completed. These iterations appear differently, seen as if through a prism, fragmented, inconclusive and from a different viewpoint. Here Mrs Dalloway appears in a series of sketches, or the concept of a scene reflected in a mirror so poignantly written in To The Lighthouse, takes centre stage in the short story The Lady in The Looking-glass: A Reflection. Visual, textural, sometimes enigmatic, the collection traces the trajectory of Woolf’s writing life, from her early more traditional stories to the piece written shortly before her death.
Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Susan Dick with an Introduction by Helen Simpson, Vintage, 2003.
Threaded through the collection are characters, scenes and concepts which re emerge in Virginia Woolf’s novels or follow on after their completion in what she described as ‘side-stories’ as if Woolf hadn’t quite let go of the characters or situations once the novel had been completed. These iterations appear differently, seen as if through a prism, fragmented, inconclusive and from a different viewpoint. Here Mrs Dalloway appears in a series of sketches, or the concept of a scene reflected in a mirror so poignantly written in To The Lighthouse, takes centre stage in the short story The Lady in The Looking-glass: A Reflection. Visual, textural, sometimes enigmatic, the collection traces the trajectory of Woolf’s writing life, from her early more traditional stories to the piece written shortly before her death.
Beatrice Searle
Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology
One year after qualifying as a stone mason at Lincoln Cathedral, Beatrice Searle set off on a mission to take a 40 kg siltstone (chosen from a beach in Orkney), on a homemade trailer from Orkney to Norway.
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For Young Readers:
Seamus Heaney
100 Poems
Selected by his family, this book fulfils Seamus Heaney’s unrealised desire to create a collection of poems reflective of his writing life.
Seamus Heaney, 100 Poems, Faber & Faber, 2018.
Selected by his family, this book fulfils Seamus Heaney’s unrealised desire to create a collection of poems reflective of his writing life. As such they document his lived experiences from childhood recollections to the birth of his daughter, from the First World War and the Troubles to travels abroad and literary friendships, yet never straying far from his rural roots. We are introduced to these through what he termed ‘hearth language’ the dialect of his home county Derry as well as his insistence of the use of everyday language. In the opening poem ‘Digging’, Heaney describes watching his father in the garden, who like his father before him worked the soil. This generational knowledge appears in Heaney’s writing as a fascination with peat and an affinity with the natural world, his working tools metamorphosed to pen and ink: spade become pen as ‘Between my finger and thumb / The squat pen rests / I’ll dig with it’.
Seamus Heaney, 100 Poems, Faber & Faber, 2018.
Selected by his family, this book fulfils Seamus Heaney’s unrealised desire to create a collection of poems reflective of his writing life. As such they document his lived experiences from childhood recollections to the birth of his daughter, from the First World War and the Troubles to travels abroad and literary friendships, yet never straying far from his rural roots. We are introduced to these through what he termed ‘hearth language’ the dialect of his home county Derry as well as his insistence of the use of everyday language. In the opening poem ‘Digging’, Heaney describes watching his father in the garden, who like his father before him worked the soil. This generational knowledge appears in Heaney’s writing as a fascination with peat and an affinity with the natural world, his working tools metamorphosed to pen and ink: spade become pen as ‘Between my finger and thumb / The squat pen rests / I’ll dig with it’.