Event review: Aye Write Weekend at various venues

Woody Woodmansey, Saturday, Royal Concert Hall

What’s Next for Scotland? Gerry Hassan, Alex Massie, Lesley Riddoch, Saturday, Royal Concert Hall

The Makars: Jim Carruth, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, Saturday, Mitchell Library

I can’t remember the last time an audience displayed such a strong sense of affection for a speaker at Aye Write as it did for playwright and artist John Byrne. Best known to many perhaps for the BBC serial from the 1980s, Tutti Frutti, he was there to talk about the ‘books that had made him.’ It was perhaps surprising that poets featured more heavily than playwrights (Philip Larkin and George Barker, as versus Simon Gray), and diarist James Lees-Milne. Byrne confessed he hadn’t read a novel since 1957, didn’t watch films and still used typewriter. His audience adored it, as much as they adored The Slab Boys and Cutting a Rug, but as they wanted to know why they weren’t seeing more of his work on stage, I couldn’t help wonder if perhaps his seeming aversion to new technology and other modes of storytelling was part of the reason.

His reminiscences of times past were ever fascinating though, and chimed with drummer Woody Woodmansey, who, like Byrne, was working in a factory when art, and fame, claimed him. Byrne hailed from Paisley, Woodmansey from Hull, and both confounded the road that class had chosen for them. Woodmansey recalled the night he sat in his parents’ house, trying to decide between a factory promotion and working for then lesser-known David Bowie.  ‘But music was all I wanted,’ he said. Bowie’s ability to communicate emotion, to connect, with his songwriting was what marked him out. ‘Do you believe in it or not?’ he asked.  In those early days, it was worth sleeping on the stairs in a sleeping bag, eating bad food and earning only £7 a week.

From the past to the future, and what kind of Scotland we want to shape, was the question that came up again and again at an informed and civilised debate between those who want to save the United Kingdom and those who prefer independence.  All three panellists agreed that a second independence referendum is on the cards thanks to the Brexit result – the only question is when. But that’s about as simple as the questions get. Not just whether to leave the UK, but whether to opt for the EU, or EEA status, should independence be selected, will be further questions to consider. ‘There’s more than one club in Europe and we need to decide which one to join,’ Lesley Riddoch pointing as she did in 2014 to the Scandinavian model. Alex Massie seemed sanguine, warning of ‘two more years of grinding constitutional warfare,’ while Gerry Hassan wondered if those who feel more disadvantaged would turn out to vote in greater numbers a second time around. The audience may have been partisan, applauding Riddoch’s expression that neither side should feel an ‘entitlement’ to say their side is right, for instance, but there was an almost subdued feel to both the panel and to those listening, a sense that only a careful weighing-up of options would do.

There was nothing ‘careful’, however, about Saturday evening’s session with the three Makars, and that’s because it was almost wholly joyous, even when Lochhead was speaking about ‘absent fathers’, and Carruth was mourning the loss of a rural way of life. Kay could barely contain herself about a recent visit to Uist and even her poem, written on the day Trump was elected which also happened to be her birthday, raised a smile. All three poets, widely experienced in entertaining an audience, gave first-class, or should that be, world-class readings of their work. It was a privilege, and a great pleasure, to be in their company.