School Party

Along with spending all my time at Luath, my evenings working on school stuff, I also spend quite a bit of my weekend at school working on the interior page layouts of Ah Dinnae Ken. 

The last Wednesday of class we had was rather intense...

...but we got it done.

While we didn't have to have final proofs in for our books, we did need to have all our work printed out, along with our individual essays and group essay. It was a bit of a mad day, but we managed to get it all done!

Afterwards we headed to the pub for a celebratory drink - though I actually had some lemon tea, as I was still sick. Because I'm that cool (its cool though, Laura had some too - we had been talking earlier about how we both just wanted to get a cuppa after school).

Around Edinburgh

I don't have too much more to say about my placement at Luath, but I do have some more pictures from Edinburgh spanning my time there, so I thought I'd share them. 

The view from the office was amazing, especially looking back towards the ocean. 

The trees were all pink in the Meadows for about a week, which was lovely. I wish they'd last longer, but unfortunately by the time I left Edinburgh they'd already begun to disappear.

Below is the view from the kitchen at Luath, looking up towards the castle.

I definitely took the bus more those two weeks than I had ever before, which was quite nice. The Edinburgh public transit is really quite a solid system.

It was really gorgeous outside the entire time I was there, except for a day or two of rain. But the walk up from where I got off the bus to the office was really nice (except for all the tourists of course).

On the Thursday night before my last day at Luath, I went to a book launch at Blackwell's South Bridge.

Since it took me me 20 min on the bus to get from work, and I got off at 5 and the launch was at 7, there wasn't much point in me going home in between, so I hung out in Cafe Nero and read my book in between.

The launch was lovely, they had wine and juice and it was quite lovely.

Thursday, 8 May 2014, Blackwell’s South Bridge, Edinburgh

Dilys Rose’s second novel is an exploration of memory, family, and mental illness, a fragmented novel that paints a moving journey of self-discovery for the reader.

With her father’s breakdown, Gala finds herself pulled back into the toxic family dynamics she thought she had eluded. Through ripples of the past, we begin to piece together the reality of a family who has lived a lie for as long as she can remember. But what kind of truth can memory really offer?

Over the course of the launch, Rose read from various sections of her book, specifically choosing to focus on the turbulent relationship between Gala and her father – though there are of course other characters, Rose assures us that these are the central ones. However, Rose first read the book’s epigraph to the audience, a poem that she had written herself. After this somewhat unusual introduction (at least, as far as epigraphs go) she launched into the first part of her novel, a segment focusing on Gala and her father when Gala was still very young. The section tells the story of Gala and her father going to the foundry to get a bust of her head, sculpted by her father, baked before being cast in bronze. Gala, who does not think herself beautiful, no matter how many times the kind Italian man who works at the factory calls her ‘bella’, secretly hopes that the bust explodes. While Rose left off this first section at this point, she did offer a cheeky spoiler to the audience – the bust does, indeed, burst. While the second section selected by Rose did introduce the large green nude man Gala’s father has sculpted and placed in their home (tastefully draped with a towel by her mother for guests), it was in the third excerpt chosen by Rose that the audience truly began to understand the extent of the family’s dysfunction, as Gala’s father insists that it is inconsequential that he decided his painting of Gala was not beautiful enough to be his daughter, and instead painted a model, informing her that he was going to tell everyone that the model was his daughter, and it was simply artistic license anyways.

Rose captured her audience in her reading, drawing everyone there into the world of Pelmanism, a world of dysfunctional family interactions and mental illness.

“Memory plays a pretty big role in this novel, accurate and inaccurate memories.” –Rose
Dilys Rose was born and brought up in Glasgow. Previous publications include three collections of short stories, Our Lady of the Pickpockets, Red Tides and War Dolls, three of poetry - Beauty is a Dangerous Thing, Madame Doubtfire's Dilemma, and Lure, and a novel, Pest Maiden.

She has also written for stage and collaborated with musicians and visual artists. Awards include the first Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Prize, The R.L.S. Memorial Award, The Society of Authors’ Travel Award, The Canongate Prize and two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards. Red Tides was short-listed for both the McVitie’s Scottish Writer of the Year and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. Pest Maiden was nominated for the Impac Prize.

She teaches creative writing at Edinburgh University. For further information please visit www.dilysrose.com

Pelmanism is now available from luath.co.uk.

The rain just made Edinburgh even greener than it already was - spring definitely came much earlier in Scotland than it did in Alberta!

The day after it was really rainy, it was really sunny, and during lunch Emily and I walked up to the ramp ahead of the castle, and the city looked just amazing.

Beltane

Beltane is the Gaelic May Day festival. Most commonly it is held on 30 April, but sometimes on 1 May, or about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In Irish it is Bealtaine, in Scottish Gaelic Bealltainn and in Manx Gaelic Boaltinn or Boaldyn. It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals—along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh—and is similar to the Welsh Calan Mai. (x)

Since I ended up missing the Samhain fire festival in October, I was very excited to go to Beltane. I had bought my tickets, though I almost didn't end up going, as it fell on the Wednesday during my first week of interning slash doing school slash generally being crazy busy, but in the end I decided not to miss it.

Beltane is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and it is associated with important events in Irish mythology. It marked the beginning of summer and was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. Rituals were performed to protect the cattle, crops and people, and to encourage growth. Special bonfires were kindled, and their flames, smoke and ashes were deemed to have protective powers. The people and their cattle would walk around the bonfire, or between two bonfires, and sometimes leap over flames or embers. (x)

All household fires would be doused and then re-lit from the Beltane bonfire. Doors, windows, byres and the cattle themselves would be decorated with yellow May flowers, perhaps because they evoked fire. In parts of Ireland, people would make a May Bush; a thorn bush decorated with flowers, ribbons and bright shells. Holy wells were also visited, while Beltane dew was thought to bring beauty and maintain youthfulness. Many of these customs were part of May Day or Midsummer festivals in other parts of Great Britain and Europe. (x)

Since 1988, a Beltane Fire Festival has been held every year during the night of 30 April on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland. While inspired by traditional Beltane, this festival is a modern arts and cultural event which incorporates myth and drama from a variety of world cultures and diverse literary sources.(x)

The main procession started at the top of the hill with the May Queen and the Green Man, along with their attendants. They wound around the hill, stopping and performing various scenes from 9pm until 1am, when they proceeded to go down into the city itself. There were also a number of other groups dancing on the hill at various spots over the duration of the whole night.

I left around 11:30 as I needed to go into Luath the next day.

They were accompanied by drummers in black body paint, creating a really amazing atmosphere.

One of the more exciting groups were the red dancers, who were representing the beasts and wild people. Both men and women were topless and covered in red body paint. Their dances were very strange and kind of frightening as they would lunge at the surrounding audience.

It was absolutely gorgeous the day before, but foggy and freezing the day of Beltane. I had to stop taking photos both because my batteries on my phone were died, and because my hands had gotten so cold I could barely bend my fingers.

The fire got a bit alarming at various points. I was kind of worried for the performers, with their flowing dresses and robes.

It was really strange and amazing experience, quite unlike anything I'd ever been at before. The audience was also quite an interesting group, spanning every demographic, and some of them even were all dressed up or painted as well.