Brian Johnstone, director of the StAnza festival has blogged about Alastair Reid’s Scotland poem.
It’s a good article. I like the quote from Alasdair Gray, "work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation", itself a quote from Canadian poet Dennis Lee. Although I don't think I want to be quite as "free of it" (i.e. the attitude of the poem) as Alastair Reid and Brian Johnstone do.
The other day, I was in a car. One woman said, "It's such a beautiful day." The guy beside her, who was certainly no Calvinist in a religious sense, replied, "Ach, by next week it'll likely be snowing." Anyway, I turned round, gestured to the sky and said, "Yes, we'll pay for it!" and they all laughed.
3 comments:
That's a great article. Like your anecdote too. :)
There definitely is something in our national character/psyche/call it what you will that (1) sees the world as much less predictable than we would like it to be (2) doesn't like it when folk get too much above themselves (3) knows that what's for ye will no go by ye. Call it Calvinism if you like, or Zen - it's aw wan.
Those descriptions are not confined to the Scottish psyche, colin :) - you'd get that here too. We call number two begrudgery.
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