Tag Archives: Edinburgh Festival

Auld Reekie Roller Girl Role Models?

August 26, 2011 By in Guest Posts Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

My Facebook feed has been chock-a-block recently with folk getting excited about the Auld Reekie Roller Girls – Edinburgh’s flat track roller derby team. I am thrilled to have a guest post about ARRG from Mairi Campbell-Jack, a poet who lives in Edinburgh with her daughter and tweets as @lumpinthethroat. I’m also super chuffed to have been given permission by the excellent Edinburgh photographer Dan Phillips to use the accompanying shots. You can find Dan on Twitter as @dan_photo, but more importantly you can check out his website here and Flickr stream here. 

While on SlutWalk Edinburgh a few months ago I got a chance to start talking to another radical lefty Mum (where else does one meet her peers?) and we both started discussing our daughters and their understanding of femininity.  This was something on my mind following a conversation I’d had with my daughter at a bus stop a few weeks ago.

Daughter:  Mummy, why are you not beautiful today?

Me:  What makes you think I’m not beautiful?

Daughter:  Yesterday you wore a skirt.

As I discussed on a previous post on Barbie, I am reasonably relaxed now about letting my daughter choose her own toys and clothes, but her preoccupation with whether clothing make someone “beautiful” does tend to worry.  Fellow radical lefty Mum pointed me in the direction of Roller Derby, as a great example of alternative feminities.  I happened to know someone on the Edinburgh writing circuit who played and so I booked tickets to the Auld Reekie Roller Girls festival match.

I must say I was a bit sceptical as I am one of those people who have grown-up utterly hating sport.  I hate everything about it, from how incredibly boring it is to the constant unremitting whine that comes from the television whenever it is on.  The last time I was taken to see live sport it was an ice-hockey game, and I have no shame to say I found it so tedious that I read through the last third.

I watched Roller Derby and came away a complete convert.  It’s violent (secretly I’m disappointed there wasn’t a fight), fast, fun and the women in it are really enjoying playing the sport but also using it as a way to play with their own image and express their sexuality.  I wouldn’t really describe it as feminine. Feminine as a word in our culture often carries with it overtones of passivity, and Roller Derby is much more grown up than that, while maintaining a sense of playfulness I have never witnessed in other sports.  While one of the often valid criticisms of many sub-cultures is the sameness of dress and make-up choice of those within it, some of whom often claim to appear to be seeking individuality, I don’t feel that can be fairly levelled at Roller Derby.

If you look at the team dress and make-up, which appears to stem directly from the Riot Grrrl tradition, then the conclusion you would come to would be that it is a very homogenous alternative – but you know, being a team they do have to wear a uniform.  However, if you bother to turn around and look at the crowd you will see a very different story.  The crowd is predominantly female, but there are also a lot of men in there.  There are people with strange hair, tattoos and piercings.  At the same time there were people of every age range, children as young as six months, families, groups of friends, people who even looked like social workers or the sort of people who buy vegan shoes and some who looked decidedly mainstream – honestly, it was like some of them weren’t even trying to be cool.

How did it affect my daughter?  Well her behaviour that day wasn’t her best, she didn’t like the noise, was bored and desperate to get my attention as we had been apart for a week.  She did say she wanted to go again.  I went straight out and bought the t-shirt and put it on as soon as I got home.

Postcard from Potterrow

August 21, 2011 By in Family, Guest Posts, Poetry, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dear Dorky Mum,

Greetings from the Festival.  It has been wet. A lot of rain. And this year nothing is located where it used to be.  No Speigeltent pissing off the neighbors in the middle of Old Town Univille.  And not much happening in the New Town at all, really, though the Book Festival is gallantly holding up what little is left of a Fringe on that side of the tram.

The weather has not been helpful.

The real news is the BBC.  They are here, in style, and they are working hard at doing it well. For the very first time, they have their own venue. We can only imagine what they whispered to the University of Edinburgh to gain access to a central site that was, until a few weeks ago, entirely a place where something will be built between two buildings.

The subcontractors arrived early one morning a few weeks ago and snapped together sturdy grids of basic floor, then raised upon it an elegant wee village. The Big Bubble houses a stage that any artist here would love to occupy. The three pods nearby hold a bar, a stage, and a 15-second video booth. The toilets are excellent.

Somebody thought a lot about this.

I was asked to help organise a poetry slam as part of their programming, four nights featuring six writers, with one winner each evening, then the four best on the final night. Calum Barnes – the President of Edinburgh University’s Literature Society – and I got in touch with people we know and came up with 24 warriors.

It was cool, as cool as I have ever seen the Embra spoken word thing go down in my six years talking here. Every one of those four nights was good.  Every night there were people who had never seen this thing before, and were inspired and amazed.  Every night there were joys and gasps and silence, as poets cut up the roof of that white tent with their words.

Every night it rained.

Cat Brogan won.  Go look at the Beeb site for the footage, for the winning poem. She was crisp and delicious.

This is what I think.  The BBC took a chance, which I appreciate and applaud. They built a big stage for spoken word in Edinburgh and Scotland. The poets, to a person, danced on it. The audience, to a person, liked it. Some of them even fell in love with it.

See you again, same place, same time, next year. The BBC will be welcome back.

Love,

DorkyDad

Edinburgh Fringe… one week to go.

August 21, 2011 By in Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

I’ve just submitted my final review for the Kids Section of Fest. There’s still over a week of the Edinburgh Fringe to go, but the working part of my festival is over. Hurrah!

It has been a very different experience to previous years doing Fest. Last time I took on a section editor role, I was still a student with few responsibilities. I went to all the festival launch parties, stayed until 3am, and flashed my press pass at anyone who looked in my direction. If there was a party I hadn’t been invited to, I had the necessary chat and chutzpah to blag my way in. I survived on a diet of cheap wine, free beer and Boots Meal Deals, and spent most of my time in the office, without any sense of whether it was day or night.

This year I haven’t been into the office at all; I’ve done all my writing and editing from home, either in the evenings or while DorkySon naps. I’ve had no invites, no parties (gatecrashed or otherwise), and I lost my press pass in the Meadows Playpark on day three. I’m still waiting to find out if I can get a babysitter, so I can go to the staff meal on Monday night.

It has been a bit odd, to see a very different side to the festival. But, in truth, it has been the best ever. There have been so many pleasant surprises and fun moments.

Number one surprise was the guys at Fest. How nice it was to have an employer who treated the fact that I have a two year old as a selling point, rather than a hindrance. “Great!” they said. “We’ve never had anyone with a kid write for the kids section before! You’ll bring so much knowledge and experience to the role. We’ll really appreciate your perspective.”

They went on to tell me that I could sort out my own review schedule, and fit my work around DorkySon’s nursery hours. “Don’t worry about showing up to the staff meetings,” they said. “We’ll just give you a call afterwards, at a time that suits, and let you know the important stuff.”

As long as I got the job done, the captains of the good ship Fest didn’t care too much how, when or where I did it. Well hello, rest of the world. It is totally possible to be a family friendly organisation, if you choose to recognise the benefits that can come from employing a mother or father.

The second surprise was that the majority of press officers and PRs had the same attitude (although if you’re asking me for a clear winner, Kelly and the Assembly Team get the DorkySon loveliest attitude award, by a mile). They were happy to arrange interviews around childcare, recommend age-appropriate shows, and take ten minutes out of their busy working days to coo over DorkySon while I got my tickets sorted out. In Edinburgh, this August at least, the age-old stereotype of press officers suffering from collective child-hating stink-eye did not ring true.

There have been plenty other moments worthy of note, but it’s late, and I have to be up to flyer for DorkyDad’s show tomorrow morning, so I’ll do further highlights tomorrow 🙂

Life with A Poet at the Edinburgh Fringe

August 14, 2011 By in Poetry, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

This originally featured as a guest post on the excellent blog 12 Books in 12 Months. Thanks to lovely Ali for the opportunity to post there. As well as checking out her blog, you should become a fan on Facebook.

It was also, rather excitingly, published on Huffington Post UK.

It’s not always easy being married to a poet. Young and I use up a significant number of babysitting credits, not on romantic dinners, but on evenings in dingy pubs, where I sit and watch him reading to half a dozen people. He is always shouting ‘that’s a poem’ in the middle of our conversations, and rushing off to scribble down a phrase or idea. And we spend hours trekking around stationery shops looking for just the right notebooks, because no others will do (yellow Levenger – A4 – lined).

I have always consoled myself with the thought that maybe, one day, Young would write a lovely poem about what a wonderful and supportive wife I am.

In some moment of madness, earlier this year, Young agreed to do a solo show as part of the PBH Free Fringe. He may have still been on some crazy, slam-induced adrenaline high after his time at the Poetry World Cup in Paris, or he may have genuinely thought it was a good idea… I will never know.

All I know is that it has taken over our lives for the last couple of months. We had no idea what was involved (and I use ‘we’ intentionally – this has certainly been a joint venture). Doing a ten minutes slot at someone else’s show is one thing; doing a whole hour by yourself is quite another.

There is the constant emailing about organisation, the Fringe registration, and the flyers… there are Tweets, texts, and Facebook event pages… there are press releases to send, photos to resize, programme entries to write, and blog posts to pimp…there is deciding what to wear, and how to stand, and whether it’s okay to read off the page… there is showing up to every other spoken word show, in the hope that the favour is returned… there is flyering in the rain, a preview in London that you really don’t want to do… and then that awful feeling of performing to two people, one of whom is your mother-in-law.

Oh yeah, and then there’s that hour-long show to write.

So why does he do it? What makes it worthwhile? I can’t speak for Young, but I think it’s probably for the small moment of satisfaction you get; from that one person who comes up at the end of a show and says that one of your poems has touched their heart; from that one stranger who takes the time to write something nice on your Facebook page; and from that one short but sweet review (she says, hopefully) that you can cut out and stick in your son’s scrapbook.

I do not grudge a minute of the time that Young and I have spent working on his show. Putting all bias aside, I think it is wonderful, and I am incredibly proud of him. I don’t even mind that in order to hear the one poem that he finally wrote about me, I have to sit and listen to fifty minutes of poetry about the other women in his life. I just hope that after all that effort someone (other than my Mum) shows up.

Young Dawkins performs What I Know About Women So Far at The Royal Oak on the following dates:

8th-11th and 15th August at 2pm

22nd-25th August at 3.15pm

You can visit his website at www.facebook.com/YoungDawkins

He is also compering the first BBC Slam Poetry Competition at the Fringe, details of which can be found here, here, and here.

Edinburgh Fringe: The Halfway Point

August 12, 2011 By in Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

We’re halfway! Or almost. It may be only one week into the Edinburgh Fringe, but on Sunday the third issue of Fest magazine will be sent to the printers, with only two further issues to go… and by Monday afternoon DorkyDad will have done five of his solo spoken word shows, with only four more shows left in the run.

There is plenty fun left to be had, (and hopefully the sun will make an appearance at some point too), but here are some of my highlights (and a couple of lowlights) so far.

Highlight: Fest writer cuts out the middlemen

This made me laugh. We wanted to do an interview with the wonderful Neil Gaiman for the Kids section of Fest. Stevie – the writer who was assigned the job – spent several days trying to track him down – through the Book Festival Press Office, then Neil’s publishers, then his PR, then his PA…  They were all very friendly, but noncommittal because Neil was ‘travelling’. When her calls weren’t returned, she finally resorted to sending him a message on Twitter, and within an hour they’d got a time and venue set up. Seems he was in Edinburgh after all. Props to Stevie for tracking the man down, and props to Neil for responding so positively. You can read the interview here.

Lowlight: Rain

There’s really not a lot to be said about the rain, except that it is ever-present. It makes everything harder – flyering, queuing, getting DorkySon’s pram into any of the outdoor venues, finding somewhere to have lunch – and I hope it goes away soon.

Highlight: I pretend to be John Hegley, briefly

I was lucky enough to spend half an hour interviewing John Hegley, who is also in town with a show. We started chatting about social media, and I mentioned seeing that he’d joined Twitter a few days earlier, and was already up to 2500 followers. “Well yes,” he said. “But a friend set me up and I don’t really know how to use it. There’s something I want to say to all my Twitter followers today though. If I give you my password will you send it out for me?”

Umm…

So he wrote what he wanted to say in my notebook (and, amazingly, it was exactly 140 characters long….), and then he wrote down his password. And when I came home, I logged into John Hegley’s Twitter account and sent a Tweet on his behalf.

I’m still scratching my head about that one. What an amazingly trusting, lovely man. You can read the interview here.

 Lowlight: Rioting

Okay, so the riots didn’t spread this far North. You can see the full extent of the Edinburgh riots here. (You really should watch that, it’ll make you laugh…) But the city is full of Londoners at this time of year, and it wasn’t much fun for them to sit several hundred miles away, watching the news footage on TV and wondering if they were going to have homes to go back to. Nearly a week on, and most comedians have incorporated something about the rioting into their show, but it still cast a shadow over proceedings for the opening weekend.

Highlight: Fest’s Kid critics cut everyone down to size

‘How cute!’ everyone said. ‘What a nice idea’ they cried. Yes, everyone thought it was a great idea to have children – aged between 5 and 10 – reviewing children’s shows for Fest… until they started to read the submissions.

“I did get bored as it was a bit too long.”

“One of the actors sometimes forgot their lines.”

“I only give the show one star.”

Personally, I think they’re some of the best reviews I’ve ever read of the festival. Completely honest, to the point, and BS free. The kids aren’t self-conscious, they don’t dress things up with long words, and they write for themselves rather than their audience. If there’s any justice, they’ll be back again next year.

Lowlight: Celeb Spotting

I’m not doing very well with this yet. I’ve seen Mark Watson walking up some steps in George Square, and Stewart Lee pushing a pram through the rain in Marchmont. Meanwhile my friends are putting pictures of themselves with John Malkovich up on Facebook. Must do better.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts at the mo. Hopefully that gives you some idea why. Normal service will be resumed in September.