Diary of a Shopkeeper, 27th July
In last week’s column I wondered how visitors to the Island Games viewed Orkney, and whether the ways they run their islands could suggest improvements for the way we run ours. I argued it was always useful, ‘To see oursels as ithers see us.’ This week, three separate publications came through the letterbox to remind me that it’s also essential to take a good hard look at our own circumstances: ‘To see oursels as we see us.’
The most substantial is the latest issue of a bi-annual journal, Irish Pages, published in Belfast. It’s a special issue, put together by guest editors Don Paterson and Niall Campbell, and regular contributing editor Kathleen Jamie. It consists of essays about every aspect of Scottish culture and (small p) politics. Well, almost every aspect… It’s a shame there’s no northern isles representation in the journal. Neither Orkney nor Shetland is dealt with in any significant way.
One of the 18 ‘New Scottish Poets’ does mention us. Tim Tim Cheng’s ‘Salvaging’ begins, ‘In sunshowered Orkney, rainbows sprouted after I failed/to withdraw cash.’ I’m not 100% sure what that means, if it does mean anything beyond what it literally says. But I did immediately understand and enjoy an image a few lines further on, where she calls the stones of the Ring of Brodgar, ‘wind-bitten moss sandwiches.’ There’s also one poem by Siún Carden, originally from County Down but now living in Shetland, and a passing reference to George Mackay Brown, but – unless I’ve missed it in the 212 packed pages – nothing else about our literature, history or specific island circumstances.
This is my only quibble about what is otherwise a wide-ranging and ambitious analysis of the current ‘state of Scotland.’ There are, for instance, excellent essays on history and politics from Neal Ascherson and Margaret Elphinstone; on theatre from David Greig and live poetry from Jenny Lindsay; on fiction from Stuart Kelly and Gaelic literature from Peter Mackay. Both in his own essay and in the introduction he shares with Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson pulls no punches and hits many deserving targets.
One essay underlines the importance of this edition of Irish Pages without even naming it. Rosemary Goring’s ‘The Critical State of Scottish Book Reviewing’ laments the shrinking space giving to cultural coverage in all the national newspapers, as well as the demise of specialist journals like the Scottish Review of Books. Irish Pages is uniquely valuable because there is now no Scottish publication capable of producing such a symposium. The last one that could match that ambition was Edinburgh Review, which closed in 2014.
How could a country of five million people support the quarterly Edinburgh Review for 30 years, at the same time as other serious cultural publications like Cencrastus, Chapman and West Coast Magazine thrived, but now find it impossible to maintain even one comparable generalist journal? In short, why does it take a Belfast magazine to give a proper assessment of the state of our culture and politics?
I don’t know the answer. I suspect it’s a complex mixture of the economics of print, the shift online, and post-Referendum ennui. But it does make me doubly grateful for the magazines that do exist. The two others I received this week were Northwords Now, a newspaper-style journal based in the Black Isle, and Lallans, based in Fife.
Northwords Now focuses on poetry, prose and reviews from the Highlands and Islands, and should be a natural home for Orcadian writers. The current issue features poems by Ingrid Leonard and Ãine King; quite a few others have been featured in the past. It has an excellent website, with extensive archives of past issues as well as the current one. Otherwise, paper copies are free from, according to their website, the Pier Arts Centre, Visit Scotland and Roberston’s in the Hope. We have copies in Kirkness & Gorie too.
Like Northwords Now, Lallans doesn’t attempt to be a general cultural journal. Rather, it has a specific focus: the Scots language, in all its rich and varied forms. The current issue contains no contributions in Orcadian, but it does feature a detailed and thoughtful five-page review of recent Orkney publications. Writers getting a namecheck include Morag MacInnes, Alison Miller, Kevin Cormack, Amy Liptrot, Ingrid Leonard, the Orkney Voices group and myself as editor of the Abersee Press booklets under review.
The editor of Lallans, Willie Hershaw, is, like Kathleen Jamie, a frequent visitor to Orkney. It’s great to have this recognition of island writing in one of the country’s longest-established literary magazines.
Closer to home, The Orcadian deserves plaudits for its thorough coverage of books, music, art and theatre. It’s one of the crucial roles of a local newspaper to reflect on the culture of its community, and we’re lucky that The Orcadian and its many contributors do so with such energy. But those reviews are necessarily short and ephemeral. It would be a boon to have something with the space and ambition of a Lallans or Northwords Now. The Orkney Arts Review fulfilled this function quarter of a century ago. The Orkney View included writing in Orcadian and much else from 1985 to about 2001. Even Living Orkney, a general interest magazine, gave more in-depth coverage to our culture than any current publication.
Might someone produce an Orkney-based cultural journal, or do we have to beg the Irish Pages to give us our own special issue?
The Irish Pages website is here: https://irishpages.org/?v=7885444af42e
The recently revamped Northwords Now site can be found here: https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/ It’s a great resource, as it has (currently) 15 years of issues online, as well as much other material. An object lesson in how to present an online version of a paper publication!
Lallans has less of an online presence, though there is at least some background and a contact address here: https://www.scotslanguage.com/Scots_Culture/Scots_writing/Lallans_Journal
A few years ago Stirling University’s Scott Hames set up the Scottish Magazines Network, which recorded and studied many political and literary magazines. It seems to have ceased activity, but the online material still available is invaluable: https://campuspress.stir.ac.uk/scotmagsnet/
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 31st July 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.