Oggspot

The Pitt Lane Sessions

2012-02-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

Until 21st Feb you can listen again to last night's edition of the BBC Radio Shetland show I co-present with Carol Anderson. Features the gorgeous old time sounds of Alison Kay Ramsey and her band live in the studio, along with some 1970s gems from the station archive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland/news/rs_shetland_mon

How Dennis Coutts captured the 1960s

2012-01-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

The sullen weather did nothing to dim the enthusiasm of those who packed into the Bonhoga Gallery last Saturday for the opening of a fascinating new exhibition of work by well known local photographer, Dennis Coutts.

Having abandoned their cars by the dozen along the slim verges of the Laxfirth road, the audience were gathered to hear Mr Coutts tell the story behind the retrospective show, titled Sixties Exposure. 'Where would I be without photography?', began Mr Coutts as he related his own journey, which started with the tale of a little boy entranced by the magical power of capturing the present on paper.

A. D Jarmson

Dennis Coutts was a pupil at the Anderson Educational Institute when The Shetland Times published his first photograph in 1951. Just fifteen years old, he had been experimenting with cameras throughout his childhood and was now getting regular work photographing local sports teams and the occasional wedding.

In 1953, year of the coronation Queen Elizabeth II, Mr Coutts left school to complete his national service with the army. Two years later he joined West Lothian weekly The Falkirk Herald as a press photographer. It was at the Herald where Mr Coutts had his first experience of industrial photography, with subjects like the Forth road and rail bridges and Grangemouth Refinery. This would later prove useful when it came to documenting the construction of the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal in the 1970s.

Willie a' Whalsay

After two and half years in West Lothian, Mr Coutts moved north to start a job with Aberdeen Journals, publishers of The Press and Journal and Evening Express. This was a formative moment in his career. These titles had a circulation of 200,000 and required their staff to cover all events, from Royal visits to the Balmoral Estate (Mr Coutts fondly remembers Princess Margaret as being 'absolutely stunning') to traffic accidents, murders and fires.

In 1959, under the encouragement of Basil Wishart, then editor of The Shetland Times, Mr Coutts returned to Lerwick to start his own photographic business in the top floor of the shop at 165 Commercial Street. The business was a hit from the start. Up to twenty families a day would visit to get their portraits taken, many blocking the stairs as they queued for their turn in the studio.

A newly wed Paul and Linda McCartney honeymooning in Lerwick.

There will be many adults in Shetland who remember Mr Coutts from their childhood as the man with the flashing box who made them giggle by pulling funny faces when visiting his studio. Working with children was a joy for Mr Coutts, especially when they asked him certain questions, such as, 'why have you got hairs up your nose?' and 'why have you got brass teeth?'

From the shop on Commercial Street, Mr Coutts pictured life in Shetland for over three decades until he retired in 1994. The business was then taken on by his son, John, who continues to operate from the same premises.

John Coutts has been instrumental in preparing his father’s work for show at the Bonhoga, hand-printing each image in large format in his studio using traditional darkroom processes.

The results are nothing short of wonderful. These photographs show the work of a prolific photographer, brilliant at capturing people, and one who had the fortuity to be operating in Shetland shortly before the coming of North Sea oil.

Gordon Hank and the Country Ramblers (Ally Bain on far left)

Many of the pictures reveal how much life in Lerwick has altered in the last 50 years. Unlike today, these photographs show a town teaming with life and activity. We see Christmas trees from Norway being unloaded at a busy Victoria Pier; hundreds of onlookers enjoying the daft raft race at the small boat harbour; and children laden with leather satchels making their way for school up Reform Lane.

Broader changes in popular culture come through in images that show the swinging zeitgeist of the 1960s being picked up by islanders. One pictures a demure Valerie Laurenson sporting a Twiggy haircut and a Mary Quant inspired Fair Isle miniskirt, while another drops in on a hippie wedding reception in Peter Leask’s cafe at the Market Cross in Lerwick. Fiddler, Ally Bain, pictured above as part of Gordon Hank and the Country Ramblers, also cuts a fine figure in cuban heels. Then there’s a personal favourite of mine, simply titled, ‘Miss Mini Skirt Contestants’.

Miss Mini Skirt Contestants

While most of the exhibition features reportage and commercial imagery, there are a few pictures that focus on Dennis Coutts’ aesthetic ability. The photographer’s gift for portraiture is most evident in his study of Robbie Inkster in repose at his home in Foula. This image, which forms the centre piece of the show, looks like it could have been taken in the early 19th century and is certain to linger in the mind long after viewing.

*Article first published in The Shetland Times, 27th January 2012.
Special thanks to John and Dennis Coutts for supplying these photographs.

First Bread of 2012, White Semi Sourdough

2012-01-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of months I've been getting into making my own bread. Now, I want to make it clear that I'm not interested in loaf making for any of the holier than thou reasons you'll find in the Guardian food section. I just want to become brilliant enough to open my own artisan bakery and employ attractive people to help me run it.

I was recently gifted The Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. It's a wonderful thing, stuffed with sweet and savory recipes, laced with mouthwatering photographs and supported by informative text on the science behind successful baking.

Bourke Street Bakery, Surrey Hills, Sydney

Most of the Bourke Street bread recipes are founded on using an organic sourdough starter. I've tried three of these so far - spelt, white and rye - and the results have been positive. The problem is that it takes almost 24 hours from start to finish to make a true sourdough bread, and I don't always have the time, nor the interest in waiting so long to see if what I've done has worked.

So today I opted for Bourke's semi sourdough white loaf. This still uses the sourdough starter, but allows the addition of some commercial yeast to bring the time down to around 5 hours.

Here's one of my loaves just as they're about to go in the oven.

Before this I'd mixed and kneaded the dough, knocked it back, let it prove a couple of times, then shaped it into batards. As you can see, I've some way to go on the shaping, but I'm getting better each time.

And here's the loaves baked and ready to eat.

I was very excited when they came out the oven. It's satisfying when you see them looking like this.

If you want the recipe then buy the book. I can't stress enough how good it is. In the meantime, you could visit the sites below to get started.

Azeliaskitchen.net

Sourdoughbaker.com

Happy baking.

* If you're ever in Edinburgh visit Peter's Yard, an excellent Swedish cafe and artisan bakery. The staff are gorgeous and the food's good too.

These Islands We Sing - Kevin MacNeil Interview

2011-10-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Published in Shetland Life October 2011 Edition.

A new collection of poetry from Scotland’s islands has just been launched, and many of Shetland’s best writers are included in the book. Jordan Ogg meets the editor, Kevin MacNeil, to discuss his thoughts on the collection.

Kevin MacNeil is in jubilant mood when we meet in Islesburgh at the end of this year’s Wordplay festival.

In the company of Shetland poets Alex Cluness, Roseanne Watt and Lise Sinclair, he has just finished launching These Islands We Sing, a landmark anthology that brings together some of the finest modern poetry from Scotland’s three island groups: Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

As the book’s editor MacNeil knows well that this is a significant moment for Shetland literature. So too, I suspect, do the many local poets in the audience, several of whom have work featured in the new collection.

For some years now, MacNeil has enjoyed a connection with Shetland. He first visited for Wordplay in 2007 on the back of his cult novel The Stornoway Way, returned in 2008 as Shetland Arts writer in residence, then spent a year living and writing from a cottage in Cunningburgh.

During this time, MacNeil became acquainted with Shetland’s literature and the effect was like that of spell; a poetic potion cast itself over the Lewis-born author, instilling a deep respect for the isles’ literary tradition.

Such feelings are clear from the introduction to the new anthology, where MacNeil writes: “Living in Shetland was an edifying experience. I saw similarities to my home island of Lewis, but I also felt the cultural differences keenly, and had to make an active effort to tune in to the native tongue as both listener and reader”.

This experienced proved worthwhile, for when tasked with editing the book – the first of its kind to collect poetry from all of Scotland’s islands – MacNeil’s local understanding, along with a deep knowledge of Gaelic literature, informed a clear sense of duty toward selecting what to include in the volume.

Shetland has done particularly well in this regard. “Fully one third of the poets represented in the book – i.e. about 20 out of 60 – have a connection with Shetland, which is extraordinary”, MacNeil explains when I ask how it feels to be back for the launch (some weeks earlier, the book had a glittering reception in Edinburgh). Many of these twenty poets are older, more established, figures – T.A Robertson (Vagaland), Lollie Graham, William J. Tait, etc. – while others, such as Jim Mainland, Lise Sinclair and Mark Ryan Smith, are more recent arrivals.

Ensuring a broad coverage was fundamental to MacNeil’s project. “The point I was trying to raise is that the quality of poetry created in the Scottish islands is disproportionately high”, he explains, before listing some of the other poets featured in the anthology: “Sorley MacLean, George Mackay Brown, Robert Alan Jamieson, Ian Chrichton Smith, Jen Hadfield, Christine De Luca, Laureen Johnson, Stella Sutherland – many, many great names – but sometimes names of poets who are under-appreciated in the wider North West European context.”

For MacNeil this as an unjust and unrepresentative situation, borne partly from the social conditions of island life: “As islanders, by nature we’re quite self deprecating. Were not good at putting ourselves forward . . . Whereas actually, some poets get on well not because they have the most eloquent voice, but because they have the loudest voice.”

As the title implies, MacNeil hopes that this book will allow the marginalised voice of the island poet to sing. He wants readers to engage with a new way of understanding the poetic landscape, both from a perspective particular to each island, and in the national conception of what Scotland’s literature is taken to be.

I ask if part of the problem might be down to a sense of elitism that hangs over all types of so called “literary poetry”, whether created by an island writer or otherwise. MacNeil smiles wryly, before replying: “Some poetry has this strange image as being something very pretentious, or abstract, or difficult”. But this need not be the case: “Poetry can either add meaning to your idea of what life is, or it can intensify your very experience of life”, he says. “Or it can simply give you a bit of enjoyment, put a smile on your face, because poetry is like life – it is very, very diverse.”

This diversity informs MacNeil’s belief that there is at least one poet out there who even the most intimidated reader will love, whether that be an Orcadian encountering Aonghas MacNeacail’s translated Gaelic verse for the first time, or a Western-Islander being introduced to Rhoda Bulter’s Shetland dialect poetry.

Furthermore, by nurturing a relationship with poetry, MacNeil feels that new readers are likely to start experimenting with their own poetic voice: “Once you start reading . . . finding the poetic voices you like, then you can start writing poetry . . . and again, there’s no magic involved – if I can be a poet, then anyone can. It just takes a little bit of learning the skills, and then you can find that it’s a very worthwhile thing to do.”

These Islands, We Sing: An Anthology of Scottish Island Poetry is published in hardback by Polygon, priced £14.99.

Read my review of the book here.

Simon Armitage Interview

2011-09-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

Click to read my interview with Simon Armitage, published in The Shetland Times 1st September 2011.

Neil Butler - The Roost

2011-08-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Published in the Shetland Times 26th August 2011

When we meet at the foot of Reform Lane on a balmy August evening, Neil Butler tells me he only woke a short time ago after a heavy online gaming session that continued well into the morning. Such entertainment has become more of an addiction than a hobby, he says, and suits his present lifestyle nicely - with an advance secured on his next book, he’s making the most of what contemporary culture has to offer a young bohemian.

Butler’s a distinctive looking young man. Thick black curls, shaggy beard and a big smile. Born in Lerwick in 1984, he attended the Anderson High School, then, like many teenagers released from their highers, went on to study in Edinburgh, mainly because it was the easiest way out of Shetland. There he enrolled on a publishing degree, but gave up after a year and a half.

“When I was twelve I decided I was going to be a writer”, he says. “I think that’s because I’d read Terry Pratchet and the Lord of the Rings. The rest of the time I was reading Goosebumps, that sort of thing.”

This early want remained, so Butler headed south again, this time to the University of Kent to study creative writing. There, one of his tutors recognised something special and recommended him to an old friend who worked for a Scottish publisher. From there the The Roost began.

The book is a series of tales about a group of teenagers who live in present-day Lerwick. No punches are pulled in their gritty representation, which is framed around themes of love, lust, drink and drugs - each story signaling the arrival of an author with an ear for dialogue and the eye of a realist.

As a teenager, Butler himself was not part of any drinking or druggy scene, preferring instead to stay at home playing computer games and mastering Radiohead songs on the guitar. Only as he got older did he hear stories about dealers at parties with bags of cocaine surrounded by adoring youngsters.

Does he care about the teenagers in The Roost representing their real counterparts? Is he giving a finger to the vanilla image of Shetland so frequently broadcast to the world by the local establishment? In one respect, yes: “A lot of people who are really into a particular place - it doesn’t matter which small town or area you’re talking about - they seem to subscribe to a false value set, this idea that their place is better than other places. That’s quite shallow. That’s not real life. I just thought something needed to be said. But I wouldn’t say it was my main motivation.”

Storytelling is what he is really trying to do; though he also wants to fill a void. “When I was younger I was bugged that there was no Shetland stories, no books written about young people. I don’t know why that should be the case in the book world when there’s plenty of young bands and young artists out there.”

With The Roost Butler certainly gives young Shetlanders a narrative and a voice that lacked when he was getting into writing. However, this does not mean he has approached his task with hubris. “Since I got the [book] deal I’ve been worried that some drunk guy’s going to come up to me on the street and punch me in the face, that I’ll never be able to go into a pub again - ‘Bouy I read dy book - boof!’”

One scene in particular might upset dyed-in-the-wool types. Here the vivacious, mean and sexy Ellie Tait, mocks what she sees as the lethargic reticence of Shetlanders en mass via Rita Wheelwright, described in the book as, ‘...one of those fiddler types. They played for the school fiddle orchestra, and spoke in a yokelly accent, even if they came from the town... They took over the lounge on a Wednesday and any fiddle session and sneered. Why? Because they loved Shetland.’

Butler seems to know what he is taking about here. Rita is partly based on a girl he knew at school who he is sure only spoke in dialect because it matched the fiddle better. They were both in the fiddle orchestra, though she hung out in one of the “cliques who wore Shetland badges as a f*** off to everyone else”.

Beyond the drugs and booze, there is much unrequited love and intense emotion in the stories, particularly between the confident Ellie Tait and a hopeless lad called Grant Sinclair. Here Butler has drawn more directly from his own experience: ‘When I was a teenager I would get totally into girls and embarrass myself, like everyone does. So part of what you learn as you grow up is how to minimise yourself. As Grant does, you confess your heart out to Ellie, she breaks your heart and humiliates you, so you learn not to do that.”

Ellie features heavily throughout. Clearly she is a girl that Butler has spent a lot of time with. But would she be the kind of girl he fancied as a teenager? ‘I think so... I don’t know what my taste was exactly, but I think I liked girls that were really lifey.’

Butler has since grown up and appears to be over Ellie. That is not to say he is done with her and the other characters for good, but for now he has taken them as far as he can and is happy to lay them to rest, at least for a while.

With The Roost now in print, Butler is mulling over ideas for the follow up. He is being careful not to rush, but thinks it might be a book of three novellas, one of which is already written. Judging by the early reaction to his debut, which has seen a favourable review in The Guardian and praise from Radio Scotland’s Tom Morton, this new Shetland author could be in line for success.

The Roost is published by Thirsty Books.

These Islands, We Sing

2011-07-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

Book review published in The Shetland Times

This landmark anthology is the first to focus solely on modern poetry from the Scottish islands. Such novelty is rather unusual, for these places have been home to a vast proportion of the nation’s greatest writers - Edwin Muir, Sorley MacLean, George Mackay Brown and Hugh MacDiarmid, are among a host of famous island poets who feature heavily in the Scottish literary canon. Yet, while these figures are rightly recognised for their authority, their counterparts in the present are too often overlooked by a publishing industry rooted in Scotland’s urban centres of influence and power.

“Scottish island poets are the sidelined of the sidelined. To the wider UK media and education system, the islander exists as an afterthought”, contends editor Kevin MacNeil in his introduction. In the collection which follows, he addresses the problem by steering a course through the landscape of Scottish islands poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries. The result is a rich and diverse anthology of old and new voices from across the margins of the nation.

In this context Shetland is a big island; one third of the book is devoted to the work of local poets, which is a great testament to the vitality of our own literary tradition.

This space allows the work of well established figures, such as T.A Robertson (Vagaland), Lollie Graham and Stella Sutherland to sit comfortably alongside that of more recent arrivals, including Jen Hadfield, Jim Mainland, Alex Cluness, Lise Sinclair and Mark Ryan Smith. Best of all, their arrangement among poets from Scotland’s other marginal places allows for new connections to be made between writers and their islands.

Themes of love, space and place run throughout. Many of these are shared between poets and their respective islands, while others are rendered according to the individual conditions and traditions that belong to each writer and place.

The Gaelic poets for example, like those who write in the Shetland dialect or standard English, are concerned with the same things: belonging, extremes of weather and geography, love and isolation. All the while, the distinctive language employed in much of the work highlights the importance of a culture being able to speak in its own tongue.

As a man born and raised on Lewis, and twice resident of Shetland, MacNeil knows his islands well. He also knows a thing or two about literature. An award-winning poet, novelist and playwright, he has held a number of prestigious writing residencies, both in the UK and abroad. Such credentials will only be strengthened as These Islands, We Sing finally allows Scottish island poetry to be seen among the best of the nation’s modern literature.

These Islands, We Sing: An Anthology of Scottish Island Poetry is published by Polygon in hardback, priced £14.99

Shetland Times Heart Your Head Feature

2011-06-04T03:07:00.000-07:00

Co:lab is the moniker used by local art troupe Jono Sandilands, Andrew Morrison and Roberto Getto (Beto). They came together in the winter of 2009 after discovering a shared love of screen printing, the medium made famous by 1960s pop art icon Andy Warhol.

To date the trio have been fairly sporadic in their output, producing and exhibiting when time allowed between work and other creative interests. Their latest collection, currently on show at the Peerie Shop Café in Lerwick, lays a promising foundation for what they hope to be a more organised mode of production in the future.

‘Heart Your Head’ features six full-colour prints, two from each artist, themed around mental health. The idea developed when someone suggested doing a fundraiser for local charity Mind Your Head. The charity responded positively, adding only one condition: the subject and content of the work was to be entirely at the artists' discretion.

Jono Sandilands 'Mind Your Head In The Clouds'

Sandilands has answered the brief with prints that play on the symbolic ambivalence of common phrases. ‘Mind Your Head in The Clouds’ uses primary colours to depict a faceless man of giant proportions stood blindsided in a blue sky, with his head literally lost among the clouds. His other work ‘Tune In’ plays on the 1960s counter-culture mantra by representing the mind as a chaotic highway of brainwaves. These are rendered in violent flashes of contrasting colour, suggesting that the human brain is anything but governable.

Beto - untitled

Beto’s prints take a more personal approach, steering an uncanny course through the neurotic dreams of their creator. The first shows the artist’s face embossed with the words, ‘In my dreams I lose my hair, in just the same way as I lose my hair in my dreams’, staring into a mirror while a hand runs through a receding fringe. In the second print, the viewer is witness to an obsessive compulsive act, told in the form a cartoon strip, where the artist repeatedly picks at specks of unseen dirt on his hands.

Andrew Morrison 'My Aching Back'

Morrison’s work shares a concern with the dark corners of the unreliable mind, but in a way that is more traditionally surreal. In ‘My Aching Tiny Crown’ a grand piano is suspended amid a pair of mustard-yellow legs and arms reaching toward a small crown on the ground. Here the artist is responding to the way that confidence can often appear as a virtue, when in reality the person seen feels like they are lugging a great weight - that of the grand piano - around on their back.

As one of the town’s more hip eateries the Peerie Shop Café is a canny choice of venue. It promises a large audience, which is good not least for the exposure it gives to Mind Your Head, but also for encouraging sales. There are twenty copies of each print available at £20 apiece, and judging by the speed they were shifting at the opening last Friday evening, you will have to be quick to lay your hands on one.

‘Heart Your Head’ continues until the 11th of June.

Buy online at http://www.etsy.com/shop/heartyourhead

Art in a Bus

2011-05-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

Scotland's only mobile art gallery is wheeling its way towards Shetland to visit ten schools across the isles next month.

Sachiko Abe

The visit is part of the Travelling Gallery's current tour 'Drawn In', which features work by several contemporary artists who each explore the possibilities of drawing across a variety of media, including film, sculpture and installation.

Three of the artists - Katy Dove, Franziska Furter and Rob Churn - have been specially commissioned to create new work for this exhibition.

Other pieces on show include recent works by the Japanese paper sculptor Sachiko Abe; Glasgwow-born Rob Churn, who includes club culture among his array of influences; and the up-and-coming Belgian duo, Sara and Wout Bomans.

With surrealism, photography and montage all in the mix, the Travelling Gallery's visit promises to give pupils across the isles the rare opportunity to engage with the most cutting edge contemporary art being shown in Scotland.

Full details are at the Travelling Gallery's website.

Shetland Times 'Brushes' Exhibition Review

2011-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, the i-pod has changed how people make and listen to music. But does this ubiquitous little device also have the potential to transform how we create and engage with art?

For local artists, Paul Bloomer and Roberto Getto (Beto), it already has. Using only an i-pod touch armed with a painting application called ‘Brushes’, they have each created an intriguing series of works that are currently being shown at the Bonhoga Touring Gallery.

The results are stunning, but it’s at the conceptual level where these pictures are at their most interesting. Brushes merges the instantaneity of photography with the expressive opportunities offered by traditional painting. It allows the artist to capture what he sees immediately, and if necessary, undo his mistakes at the flick of a touchscreen.

Paul Boomer

It’s this aspect of boundlessness that Bloomer connects with: ‘I have always resisted the use of computers as a tool for creativity because I do not like being tied to a desk. However, an i-pod offers the utmost in portability and most of these drawings were started outside in the landscape... it enables me to do full colour sketches whenever and wherever the inspiration seizes me’.

Bloomer’s painterly signature - auroral skies, starry with seabirds, rendered in bold drapes of colour - is clear in these digital works. Fans will be further encouraged by the fact that you can go home with one of these prints for a relatively modest twenty five quid.

For Beto, more usually known as an illustrator and cartoonist, the attraction toward Brushes chimes with a desire to avoid mess. Paint means disorder, and for years he has ‘avoided any technique involving the direct use of colour’. With Brushes , however, he didn’t have to worry. ‘An article and half an online tutorial later I was painting with my fingers... with an unlimited palette following me everywhere I went. Brushes has kept my hands clean and allowed me to finally have fun with colour’.

Beto

Exhibition curator and development officer with Shetland Arts, Jane Matthews, became aware of Bloomer’s i-pod paintings through his Facebook page. Then she heard that Beto was also using Brushes to create art on his device. Soon she realised that between them, Bloomer and Beto had enough material to fill a small exhibition space.

This also twinned with the Bonhoga’s interest in encouraging professional artists and local creators to develop and promote their work, with the aim of showing them collectively in a formal exhibition.

Matthew’s idea is a great success. The Touring Gallery suits the nature of the medium well; both are portable, and both are somewhat ephemeral. What’s most encouraging, however, is what can be seen when we look beyond the surface of these quirky images.

This exhibition shows two Shetland artists engaging with contemporary technology in a way which not only speaks of the progressiveness of art itself, but hints at a further aspect of local dynamism, wired to a world-wide cultural phenomenon, that is seldom seen in other areas of the arts in Shetland.

Brushes by Paul Bloomer and Beto is showing at the Peerie Shop Café until May. It then moves to the Whalsay Leisure Centre.