Bronze bards broke the mould
Statues have featured a lot in the news recently especially in relation to Black Lives Matter protests. In the Edinburgh statuescape there is a lack of many featuring women. We recently discovered four heads at Lochside Crescent celebrating Scottish Literary greats. Two of the bronze heads are of prominent women - Jackie Kay (sculpted by Michael Snowden) and Naomi Mitchison (sculpted by Archie Forrest). The other two are Norman MacCraig and William Sydney (WS) Graham.
Jackie Kay (b. 9 November 1961), is Scotland’s Makar, or national poet until 2021. Born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, she said that growing up in Scotland, she “got beaten up quite a lot” because of her mixed heritage. Adopted by a Scottish couple (Helen and John Kay) and raised in Glasgow, in her memoir Red Dust Road she refers to herself as “part fable, part porridge”.
In October 2012, before we knew of Colin Kaepernick and “taking the knee”, Kay wrote about kicking racism out of football. Hear My Pitch remembers
Arthur Wharton, the first black professional footballer to play in a UK football league. Wharton, was born in Ghana, his father was half-Scottish and half-Grenadian. He came to England in 1882. By 1894 was playing for Sheffield United. Jackie read her poem on the pitch before kick-off at a Sheffield United v Portsmouth match on 29 October 2012. The team are passionate supporters of the Kick It Out campaign, since 1993. This works with the football authorities, professional clubs, players, fans and communities to tackle all forms of racism and discrimination. Kay recently revealed that she worked for several months as a cleaner for the novelist John le Carré and that being a cleaner was great training to be an author: “You’re listening to everything. You can be a spy, but nobody thinks you’re taking anything in.”.
Naomi Mitchison née Haldane, (1 November 1897–11 January 1999) was a hugely prolific and controversial Scottish author. Perhaps her most well known work is The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) - a vast novel encompassing a mixture of history, folklore and magic.
In 1916 she married Gilbert Richard (Dick) Mitchison a lawyer and Labour MP. Following the success of The Corn King, she and her husband purchased Carradale House in Kintyre. She spent most of the years of WWII at Carradale and became deeply involved in the local community. In this period she transitioned to poetry and created The Alban Goes Out, a long narrative poem describing a night spent fishing with the Carradale fishermen. Mitchison was no stranger to controversy. Commissioned in 1932 to write a guide for children and parents to the modern world, it became An Outline for Boys and Girls and Their Parents. While critics loved it, it was criticised by conservatives and religious leaders for alleged Soviet leanings and lack of emphasis on God and religion. She also authored We Have Been Warned, published in 1935. Its depiction of rape, free love and abortion horrified and alienated many in polite society.
Mitchison traveled extensively and was a frequent visitor to Botswana, where she was made a tribal mother (Mmarona) to the Bakgatla people. Mucking Around, published in 1981, is an account of her global adventures across 50 years and five continents.