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Poems, Stories and WritingsMargaret TaitEdited by Sarah NeelyForeword by![]() 10% off all versions
Categories: 20th Century, British, Film, Scottish, Women
Imprint: Fyfield Books Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (256 pages) (Pub. Apr 2012) 9781847771599 £14.99 £13.49 eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Apr 2012) 9781847776617 £12.95 £11.65 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
Flame
One day I Lit a fire At which I Boiled eggs Made tea Dried my shoes And I sat On a stool Watching The stickes catch and flame Quite a while It seems, Until the whole pile I'd gathered had all burnt away. Flame Is a thing I Always wonder about. It seems to be made of colour only. I don't know what else it's made of. Click here to listen to Margaret Tait's reading of Flame.
Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was a pioneering filmmaker for whom words and images made the world real. In 'documentary', she wrote, real things 'lose their reality ... and there's no poetry in that. In poetry, something else happens.' If film, for Tait, was a poetic medium, her poems are works of craft and observation that are generous and independent in their vision of the world, poems that make seeing happen.
Sarah Neely, Lecturer in Film at the University of Stirling, draws on Tait's three poetry collections, her book of short stories, her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to make available for the first time a collection of the full range of Tait's writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture, and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Ali Smith Introduction A Note on the Text Poems from origins and elements (1959) Elasticity Reading about Rimbaud ‘It’s a mistake to write a poem that seems more certain’ Emily Water Carbon Reputation Storms A Fire Flood-water Sleep ‘Protected in my little house’ To Anybody at All Singularity Four or Ninety or ∞ or what Now Lezione di Recitazione ‘ “Don’t meet,” they say to me’ The Unbreakable-Up Litmus Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea Hooray, Hooray, Hoo Ray Ray Ray Sprung Sonnet Ay, Ay, Ay, Dolores from Subjects and Sequences (1960) Pomona Bowery Standing Stones of Stenness Then, Oh Then, Oh Then Edward Nairn, Poet Kulgin the Helicopter Alex Allison But why not try this method A Poem for a Morning Pavement Artist from Short Poems on Blue Paper Historical Sense The Old Lady of Loth Punishment One World, One Sun Epiphany Northerner Midwinter You Heard What the Minister Said, Pet ‘The eyebright was for you’ Bushels Mary, Queen of Scots Secrets from The Hen and the Bees (1960) Hen Dogs Family The Scale of Things Locklessness For Using Light Responsiveness Trust Spring 1958 Remains that Have Been Tampered With Queen of Fact and Story Story-telling Queen Sea-going King’s Queen The Queen and All the Children A Queen in Prison Belief Other Gods, Other Ways Loki Beside the Standing Stone Thor Freya Baldar By the Book Sound of Children Sobbing Face-kicking Uncollected and Unpublished Poems One is One Studentessa (The Little Tourist in Rome) The Window Boxes Seeing’s Believing and Believing’s Seeing Horses Word Song That’s Them off on Their Spring Forays Drawing in Pen and Ink The Sky of Your City Why Did They Go? The Raven Banner Concha Orcadensis This Now Free for All Flame from a twenty-seven-page ‘Examination into the meaning of fire’ Il Mago Materfamilias Me In Olden Days Winter Solstice What is it that’s wonderful about the photograph? The Boats at Droman Redefinition of a Lame Duck Orquil Burn Soon Grove SHORT STORIES The Incomers The Song Gatherer Sixteen Frames per Second WRITINGS ON FILM Time On Rossellini Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress Independence: Small Budget Production in Rome On Throwing a Film Festival Close-up of Rose Street Two-way Drift Colour Poems 1974 Film-poem or Poem-film: A few notes about film and poetry from Margaret Tait Video Poems for the 90s (working title) RESOURCES Works by Margaret Tait Selected Bibliography Selected Filmography Archives Index of Poem Titles Index of Poem First Lines Illustrations The title page reproduces the heartbeat emblem which Margaret Tait used in her three poetry collections. Margaret Tait at Slow Bend, Helmsdale, 1960s. Copyright © Alex Pirie Gerda Stevenson as Greta in Blue Black Permanent (1992), Courtesy of BFI Still from On the Mountain (1974), ‘Jungle Skins Rule’. Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie Still from Orquil Burn (1955). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie Stella Cartwright in Palindrome (1964). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie Robert Garioch, Edwin Morgan and Margaret Tait, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh Arts, 1972. Courtesy of The Richard Demarco Digital Archives Portrait of Margaret Tait by Gunnie Moberg. Courtesy the Orkney Archive / copyright © Tam MacPhail Still from Tailpiece (1976). Copyright © Alex Pirie Cover of origins and elements (1959). Design by Peter Hollander Cover of Subjects and Sequences (1960) Cover of The Hen and the Bees (1960). Design by Robin Philipson Still from Where I Am Is Here (1964), ‘The Bravest Boat’. Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie Cover of Lane Furniture (1959) Peter Hollander and Margaret Tait, Perugia, 1952. Copyright © Alex Pirie Still from My Room (1951). Courtesy of Scottish Screen Archive, National Library of Scotland / copyright © Alex Pirie
'Neely's book is an essential complement for anyone interested in Tait's work. For some people Margaret Tait's poems will be her finest achievement.'
Michael Romer, University of Edinburgh Journal 'A writer whose openness of mind, voice and structure all come from the Beats maybe, and Whitman crossed with MacDiarmid, but then cut their own original (and crucially female) path. A remarkable critical forerunner, a unique and underrated filmmaker, there's nobody like her.' Ali Smith 'The best 20th century Scottish female experimental poet and film-maker that we have probably never heard about.' The Literateur
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