Scottish Women Poets & Writers

 Over the centuries it is the women of Scotland who passed down the oral stories and folk ballads. Most histories were told in poem form.  There were Oral Folk Poets; Ballad singing and Song composition.  Here are a few Scottish Women Poets, we never hear of – strangely. I am certain there must be many more! 

When students study literature – it is the literature of men that is studied.  Many wonder – where are the women writers? 18^th century Scottish culture was transitional and interactive with regard to both oral and written literature.

**Poet Jenny Little

Little was born in 1759, the same year as Burns. She was also a servant to Mrs Dunlop, Burn’s patron. She was the daughter of a farm worker and as a servant to a local clergyman, she had received a good education. She developed a love of reading and became a local poet.  She wrote in both Scots and English as Burns did too. She even wrote an ‘Epistle to Mr Burns. ‘

Because of their class both Burns and Little struggled to be taken seriously. Burns was the ‘Heaven taught ploughman’ and Little was the ‘Scotch Milkmaid’ poet.  She came out with a Poetry Collection in 1792. She is studied in North American universities as significant in the study of 18^th century studies, while she is mostly untaught in Scotland.  She wrote of gender, class and nation.

**Lady Anne Bernard

She was from a noble family of Fife Scotland, born 1750 and wrote the well known ballad ‘Auld Robin Gray’. She lived in Georgian society during the Scottish enlightenment. To reward the nobility of Edinburgh a grand new town was built.

The Scottish aristocracy sold out. Her family were the Lindsay’s of Balcarres and these families carried the Union flag around the globe and helped to shape Britain’s empire. Her father said, “You were born after the Union, Scotland is no more and never likely to revive.”

Was it so great though? Of her 8 brothers, 4 entered the army and 2 went to sea and one joined the East India co. Three died in different corners of the world and a fourth spent years in a Mysore dungeon. Eventually Bernard moved to London, married at 42 and went to live in the Cape of Good Hope.

**Willa Ewina Muir

Willa was a writer and poet, born 1890 – 1970. She and her husband Edwin Muir were part of the Montrose Scottish Renaissance between the great Wars. The Muirs were part of the “restless intellectual group of writers and thinkers” in 1920-30s active during the Renaissance of Montrose along with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

Born Wilhemina Anderson in Montrose of Shetlandic parents (unlike her husband Edwin who did not attend secondary or higher education) Willa earned a 1st class degree in Classics from University of St Andrews in 1910. She taught languages before marrying Edwin 1919. For 40 years the couple travelled and worked in Europe before their five years at Newbattle, and went from there to Edwin’s post as Norton Professor of Literature at Harvard University in the United States.

Much of her work explores feminism, gender & the position of women of 1920-30s and is said to contain “perceptive comments of the patriarchal world she existed in”. There has been a recent re-evaluation of her published and unpublished work, including Aileen Christianson’s 2007 Moving in Circles: Willa Muir’s Writings. 1996 Imagined Selves: Willa Muir and many translations with her husband and under the pseudonym ‘Agnes Neill Scott’

Her publications include: Women: An Inquiry, Imagined Corners, Mrs Ritchie, Mrs Grundy in Scotland, Living with Ballads, Belonging

Celtic Connections announces its 2017 program today!

CELTIC CONNECTIONS 2017, from 19th January - 5th February 2017

The programme for Celtic Connections 2017 was announced Thursday 27th October by its Artistic Director, Donald Shaw.

This year Celtic Connection will celebrate women musicians with many one off concerts.  The Opening Concert will star award winning folk singer songwriter Laura Marling performing the world premiere of orchestrations of her songs by Kate St. John with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Other women performing are - Roberta Sá, Olivia Newton John, Beth Neilson Chapman, Karine Polwart, and legendary singer Shirley Collins are among other highlights.

The festival also focuses this year on artists who have lived through personal hardships and found success and strength in music - such as world music star Aziza Brahim who grew up in an Algerian refugee camp. Stars of Americana & Bluegrass will also be at the festival - Margo Price, St Paul & the Broken Bones, Darlingside, Hurray for the Riff Raff, the Mark O’ Connor Band and Calexico.  And travelling further down the path to explore connections between Scotland and the deep south of America, Jon Cleary and Dirk Powell will celebrate the Louisiana sound, inspired by Booker Prize winning author James Kelman’s Dirt Road.

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry will perform classic railroad songs featured on their album Shine A Light which was recorded on a four day journey by train across America. 

The core of Celtic Connections is always Traditional and Folk music and this year is delighted to include the popular fiddle super bands – such as La Banda Europa led by Jim Sutherland, Unusual Suspects, Session A9, Dallahan, top piping project Tryst, Ireland’s Sharon Shannon and Four Men & A Dog, Gaelic rockers  Manran and Phil Cunningham’s Highlands & Islands suite. Also Shooglenifty and guests come together for A Night for Angus, paying tribute to their inspirational fiddle player Angus R.Grant who so sadly passed away this month.

(This will be my 10th year shooting at Celtic Connections Glasgow, I am pleased to say! Over the years I have attended some of the best concerts and taken some of my top portfolio images at Celtic Connections. I enjoy the buzz, the unique collaborations, the friendly banter, the top quality instruments and musicianship, the late sessions and the exciting young artists, the moving Gaelic songs and perfect singers, the fun and foot-tapping ceilidh bands at the Fruitmarket, the musians that come from many other countries. I meet so many interesting music fans, photographers and folk musicians there. so Big Thanks to the Celtic Connections team for all their hard work each January!) 
My extensive CELTIC CONNECTIONS PHOTO GALLERIES - http://pkimage.co.uk/celticconnections

The festival will celebrate the 150^th anniversary of Canada with leading Canadian artists Martha Wainwright, Le Vent Du Nord, De Temps Antan and Russell deCarle. The 70^th anniversary of the Partition of India will be marked with a premiere of leading world percussionists Trilok Gurtu & Evelyn Glennie and classical violin star Jayanthi Kumaresh.

Other artists appearing this year include - C Duncan, Pictish Trail, Fairport Convention, Liz Lochhead, Aidan Moffat, Seth Lakeman, Tom Paxton, King Creosote, Siobhan Miller, Orchestra Baobab, Robyn Stapleton, and Anna Meredith.

The festival will also host the important Showcase Scotland when musical directors and music promoters from around the world will attend performances by Scottish musicians. The concerts along with a trade fair provide invaluable opportunities for Scottish musicians to gain new worldwide opportunities thanks to this leading industry delegate event.  Plus Celtic Connections Education Programme when more than 11, 000 children across Scotland will take part in five concerts and workshops led by leading Celtic musicians. 

The Education Programme has reached more than 200,000 children across the country since it began in 1999.  Its work is supported by membership fees from the festival’s Celtic Rovers scheme – which gives discounts and exclusive experiences during Celtic Connections 2017.  The always popular programme of public workshops will give people of all ages and opportunities the chance during the festival to learn new musical skills and have fun too.

This year the festival includes The National Whisky Festival which will offer a wide range of whisky tastings and music hosted at the SWG3 venue, on Saturday 28 January 2017.

And to banish the winter chills the sunshine of Brazilian sounds the festival is pleased to celebrate Brazil as the partner country for 2017, with performances by some of the country’s leading artists including Hamilton De Holanda, Yamandu Costa and Renata Rosa – and Roberta Sá.

Donald Shaw, Artistic Director of Celtic Connections, said: “A breath-taking range of styles and traditions radiates throughout Celtic Connections 2017. Artists who have shaped the present day and artists who are re-defining music for the future will take to the stage. Artists whose lives and cultures could not be more different will come together to share their stories, passion and skill. “At the heart of it all is the simple life-affirming experience of being at a live music performance during a world leading festival. We can’t wait for Celtic Connections 2017 to begin.”

One hundred musicians from across the world will  take part in 300 events at venues in Glasgow, for one of the leading annual folk, world and roots festivals.  18 days of concerts, ceilidhs, talks, art exhibitions, workshops, free events, late night sessions and a host of special one-off musical collaborations will brighten up the winter evenings.   

TICKETS ON SALE NOW - http://www.celticconnections.com/

Supported by Glasgow City Council and Creative Scotland, and  promoted by Glasgow Life. 

Our Statues of Hanoverian Kings in Scotland

Along Edinburgh's George street are the statues – King George IV, William Pitt the Younger and Prince Albert astride his horse in Charlotte Square. At the far end of George street there is a new (2008) statue to the forgotten and now remembered scientist James Clerk Maxwell. In Edinburgh’s new town the streets are named after the German Hanoverian Kings – streets Frederick, Anne, Hanover, George. I noticed on my walk there last summer for my visit to its major festival.

While on Princes street there is a tall black Gothic monument to the writer Walter Scott - some believe was a unionist but was actually, as are most of Scotland's writers and poets - a nationalist. 

I discovered recently there is a statue to our national bard, Robert Burns, at the bottom of Leith walk that I used to pass every day on my bus to secondary school at Granton. 

David Hume

Does all this matter? In some respects yes. All these labels are significantly unionist and royalist .How would it be if the streets were named after the Stewart kings and a statue of Robert the Bruce, a statue of hero William Wallace or John Knox dominated James or Stewart street instead!

Over in Glasgow's George Square there is a more relevant, if slightly strange, mixture of statues of the Victorian era and the time when Glasgow’s Tobacco Lords did well out of the Empire and union – statues of Walter Scott, James Watt, Robert Burns, chemist Thomas Graham, Prince Albert, Robert Peel, Gladstone, Queen Victoria, Jimmy Oswald, Lord Clyde, Tam Campbell, John Moore, some soldiers and those lions.  

There are also no statues to women (as if all great women are air brushed out).  There has been a campaign recently for a statue to the great female reformer Mary Barbour in Glasgow.

 

Prince Albert

And surely to have the statue to our great Robert Burns hidden down Leith is truly shocking. So my first thought is a statue to Burns at the Mound! I might wish. Or a statue to the great democracy reformer Thomas Muir.

 

George IV

In Edinburgh there are two statues of dogs and two of Queen Victoria and 200 statues of men. Up near St Giles on the Royal Mile are more statues to great men – David Hume (philosopher and economist), Duke of Buccleuch, Adam Smith, James Braidwood, Charles II.  

Burns in George Square Glasgow

Yes I know we have mostly lived in a patriarchal society, where women’s roles have been swept aside – as mothers, supporters, carers. The more I read though, the more I discover that women have been essential to many great men and also for society in general – and sadly their input has mostly been forgotten and air brushed out.

Of course its not long ago that women were given the vote (and non-land owning men) and given entry to university education - so I guess it takes time for change to happen!  I just read that there will be a statue to singer Cilla Black in Liverpool.

BLOG to follow on Great Scottish Women

The Forgotten Stories of Women

 

Maya Angelou

I wondered recently - Why are the lead characters of most fairy stories female and when were these stories written and who by?  

Is this because many of the traditional stories belong mostly to women and that women through the centuries passed down the oral traditions in ballads, songs and stories?  

Many characters in the old fairy tales though are now out-dated role models for today's young girls. They are not proactive or action women, but rather submissive ones, who have to respond to what life may throw at them. Meanwhile the action women are too often portrayed as either a deranged witch or a wicked step mother. 

Do these stories of pretty princesses in shiny pink frocks wishing for prince charming to kiss them one day have the best effect on young girls? They give the impression that success in life is about relying solely on good looks rather than what they can achieve in the world.  Looks fade while character and actions remain. Many of the real stories of women appear to be lost.    

I read of Agnes Broun, the mother of the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns, who introduced to him his love of songs. 

This meant Burns learned the joy of music and words and he later would become not only Scotland's greatest bard but one of the greatest poet of love, nature, and democratic political views. She passed on the old stories, rhythms and rhymes. Agnes gets little mention.

I began to realise that it was often through the women that stories and stories in song were passed down the generations.

I also read similar of Scottish poet James Hogg, who also learnt poetry and language from his mother's vast oral knowledge of the ballads and traditional tales. 

The week before this I had heard of folklorist Margaret Bennett who was key to influencing her talented musician son Martyn Bennett. I was at the wonderful opening concert at Celtic Connections 2014 which was the first orchestration of Martyn's incredible Grit album - one of the best concerts I have been at when I wondered where he got all these references for his music from, as if he'd pluck them out of the air - now I know it was from his mother. 

Her background is Scots/ Irish and on her mothers side from Skye and the Stewarts. Her father was a piper. Her talented son Martyn Bennett went with her everywhere and heard as a child all these traditional singers and pipers. Martyn sadly died at the young age of 32 and he was influential in the evolution of Celtic fusion music

Margaret Bennett

I read too of Mrs Bach, or rather Anna Magdelena, who was revealed as the author of the wonderful cello suites by forensic musicologist Professor Martin Jarvis of Charles Darwin university in Australia, in a recent film documentary by Glasgow films.

In the Age of Enlightenment (8^TH Century’) most women would never write under their own name and so they have been forgotten by history.  Many women writers used pseudonyms.

Why have so many women's voices been lost or ignored?  One problem has been the lack of women reviewers. There is an unconscious bias with regard to literature - a male writer's book will be described as 'an epic sweep', while a women author has written 'a domestic drama'.

I remember my daughter asked if they might study a women author in her English class, to which the boys loudly protested!  Apparently 90% of books studied at school are by male authors! I feel sure it would be much better for girls to study English (and science subjects) separately to the boys. Studies have found that girls perform better in all girls classes, especially in the sciences.  Women read books by either men or women - wheras men mostly read male readers.

Agnes Broun kept a portrait of her poet son, Robert Burns, on her wall all her life. He died before her at the age of 37.    

These are only a tiny few examples of the many incredible lost voices of the many women who have inspired future generations.  There are a great many unsung women heroines of modern art, music and poetry. I began to realise that it was through the women that stories were being passed on. I attend Edinburgh book festival each August and I have been amazed and awed by the talented women authors who attend.   

Women Musicians

Nicola Benedetti

When I decided to write this blog and I started to go through my photos of women musicians, I felt quite emotional about these wonderful artists - over the incredible gigs they have performed and the insightful songs they have written. Women have powerful voices. Women are often the heart of any home and strong families matter. When women are not respected countries and societies are the weaker for it.

Recently we have witnessed in the UK the huge success of several female singer songwriters – Adele, Emeli Sande, Laura Marling and several others.  I have been fortuate to follow Emeli's career since 2007 and i never imagined that I would see her sing at the London Olympic Games one day!

Laura Marling

I have noted that female rock bands have come over from America - Warpaint, Haim, The Bangles and others - and there are few female rock bands here in the UK.  

Haim

I was surprised to learn recently that women's numbers generally in music though are very small.  I was pretty surprised to learn some of the statistics - a PRS (Publishing Rights Society) statistic showed that only 14%  of its members were female. Other statistics -  BBC Proms - 4% women,

BBC Introducing compilations CD - women have 7 tracks out of 32 tracks.

In February 2015 singer songwriter Beth Orton looked at the lack of women generally in the world of music and the ways women might deal with the challenges today in the music biz with an event in Manchester.

Emeli Sande

Julie Fowlis

Certainly the Grammy's and Brits are testament to this - where women are viewed as 'youthful decoration.' Some women of course play along to this stereotype in ridiculous revealing outfits.  Another issue is that women are not allowed to age (??)  Yet look at the strong older women in the film industry and the positive image and role models they create - Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfry, Helen Mirren and others.

It is better in the folk world (and for writers) for women generally speaking - where age is viewed more as an asset and gender seems irrelevant in the main

Rab Noakes & Barbara Dickson

Cara Dillon

*Beverly Martyn (or Bev Kutner)

I also read the story of Beverly Martyn who co-wrote many of John Martyn's early songs but received little recognition - John told her not to worry and that she would get the credits.  Bev played piano while they wrote songs together for the album Solid Air and John would say that he would ‘credit her on the next song!’  Bev and Martyn recorded three albums together  - Stormbringer, Road to Ruin and Bless the Weather - before John was persuaded by his record label to go solo. Beverly was then left on the house on the hill to raise their children while John toured. I wrote about her here – http://www.musicfootnotes.com/2013/06/normal-0-false-false-false.html

There are also several forgotten women poets.

Orchestra's have been mostly male - the Viennese Orchestra that plays Strauss for the New Years Day concert - it was all men until recent times when they have allowed in a few women musicians.

I read recently too of *Mrs Bach!  In the Age of Enlightenment (18^TH Century) most women would never write under their own name and so they have been forgotten by history.

Sara Watkins

Mrs Bach – or rather Anna Magdelena – has been now revealed as the author of the cello suites by forensic musicologist Professor Martin Jarvis of Charles Darwin university in Australia. Anna has been airbrushed from history (much as many women painters have been) .

The program claims that she was the composer of the Cello Suites and more perhaps. Magdalena was a gifted soprano and came from a family of musicians and it is believed was writing with Johann Sebastian Bach from the age of 12.  After her death, Bach's older sons by his first marriage, had Magdalena air-brushed from the records and no composer Day books or family portraits have survived. Bach's first biography was written fifty years after his death. Bach was also blind for much for his life. 

Jarvis has been investigating the story for 25 years and the program is narrated by composer Sally Beamish. - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04t91gf/written-by-mrs-bach

One of the greatest musicians and songwriters of modern times has been Canadian Joni Mitchell.

My Photo Gallery of Women Musicians here -  http://pkimage.co.uk/women musicians

Stevie Nicks