Around the Rowan Tree, Day 19

So many topics were up for discussion. Here, for a short while, I could forget all the things that seemed to be going wrong in my life

An aunt hearing the programme was derogatory about the poem I had written: ‘nice little pen picture’. That was, of course, all that it was, but her words and the tone they were delivered in had the effect of putting me right off writing poetry. I was growing up into the real world. Who was I to think I could be a poet? I gave up the idea altogether. A couple of years later when wondering what I was going to do with my life I did try to get into journalism.

Through the golf course, my father knew the editor of The Sunday Post. “Tell her to send me some of her work,” was the offer. I did so and went for an interview.

He was complimentary about my writing but criticised my spelling and asked me questions about day-to-day events, the names of footballers, who was Marilyn Monroe? I knew none of the answers.

“Go home, learn to spell better, read the current news every day and come back to me in a year,” was the verdict.

But I never did, life took over. I fell in love for the first time, my mother nearly died of pneumonia and she had to give up teaching.

Practical

I wanted to do something practical with my life, help people in need. The new National Health Service was crying out for nurses and with no qualifications of any kind, I was taken on.

Looking back, I think they must have been pretty desperate. Ever since then I hadn’t had an idle moment and here I was, for a short space of time, the dreamer again.

Another two small events happened about the same time as finding the jotter. I read somewhere a statement that got to me. “If there is something you have always wanted to do, why not try it now? If you’re no good, it won’t matter but if you never try you will never know.”

In another paper I saw an advertisement for a poetry competition in a writers’ magazine. I sent away for it. I was fascinated. There seemed to be a world going on that I knew nothing about.

One of the articles was written by a poet, Margaret Munro Gibson. She talked of an underworld of poetry very much alive within subscription magazines and that anyone interested could write to her for more information.

I did just that. She was most helpful and eventually I sent her some poems. She was most encouraging, gave constructive criticism and told me to start sending one or two to magazines.

She wouldn’t let me stop until I got the first one published which was a day of joy for me.

I had kept my new occupation completely secret, getting up at five in the morning to write but with the first one published I dared tentatively to tell Ronald all about it.

He seemed pleased and encouraged me to continue. “Why not join a creative writing class,” he asked? I had seen one advertised at the Perth Tech, once a week in the evenings. A new world was opening up for me.

There were about 15 of us at the creative writing class that year. For two sessions, autumn and spring, it cost us £8, not too difficult to afford.

Complaint

The man who ran it, Mr Douglas, taught us a lot. If we had any complaint it was that the class was rather geared towards writing in Scots and around folk culture. Some of us had a wider field in mind.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most was the companionship of like minds where so many topics were up for discussion.

Here, for a short while, I could forget all the things that seemed to be going wrong in my life. Plus it gave me directions and incentives about what to write.

I would stick to poetry. Poetry was my first love and poems need not be long. In my busy days I had no time to write anything long.

A year or two earlier I had been invited to a party in a caravan. Jean MacCormack is of a family now big in caravans and Jean herself was to become Perth’s Lady Provost for a number of years.

At the party Jean had a fortune teller, a well-known Dundee lady. I’m not given to fortune telling and I was told a lot of things that never happened but the main thing she said when she looked at my hand was: “You have things to say. Start now, go out and say them.”

I thought about this from time to time. But how? Now I knew.

Most of the poems were composed while walking round the fields in all weathers, in solitude, which I did whenever I could escape. A line would come into my head and that would be it started. At the end of that year’s class, several of us were very much looking forward to meeting up the following session.

However, we discovered that the fees were to shoot up to £15 and some were dissatisfied because of the emphasis on Scottish writing.

Fewer than eight registered and the class was cancelled. A few of us were unhappy about this and decided to do something about it.

“Let’s set up a writing club of our own, find a hotel room somewhere. If we get enough people to come we need not charge more than £8 a year.”

That is exactly what we did. We got a room in the Lovat House Hotel in Perth at a reasonable rate and put an advert in the local paper. We had 25 people enrolled. We were in business.

From our wee group, or steering committee as it would be grandly called today, we chose Jean Munro as president.

Experience

She was a farmer’s wife and had a great deal of experience in running various types of groups.

With her help, a really good constitution was agreed upon which stood us in good stead to this day; namely that the president would be president for one year only, when the vice-president would automatically take over, secretaries and treasurers for two years only, then a compulsory year off committee altogether.

This I see now probably kept any one clique from taking over and eventually killing the enterprise.

One of the first things we did as a group was to become affiliated to the Scottish Association of Writers, a body that was growing in membership all the time.

Once a year they held a conference in a Pitlochry hotel. These were exceedingly good, containing a vast amount of competitions often adjudicated by top writers from all over Britain.

We ourselves, in our own group, were able to get many well-known and interesting speakers.

Over the years we had many famous Scots: Ian Crichton Smith, Nigel Tranter, Norman McCaig, Tessa Ransford, Duncan Glen and many more well-known figures in the Scottish writing scene.

More tomorrow.