Loving language

by kb

From England, it often seems as though there's a dialect called "Scots" with a couple of regional variations: Edinburgh (posh), Glasgow (rough) and Up North (romantic). That's nonsense, of course. Scots is a language - it even has its own wikipedia - and anyone who starts listening to Scots speech will come across a variety of accents and dialects. Schools may tend to smooth out children's speech - even Englishing the speech of the Scots - but writers like Liz Lochhead revel in the distinctness of Scots with its capacity to convey feelings and experiences which are muted or inexpressible in English.

Liz Lochhead is the current poet laureate of Glasgow but her accent isn't even the same as other great writers associated with Glasgow. (These include Tom Leonard, James Kelman, Edwin Morgan, Alasdair Gray to name just a few). She plainly loves language itself in all its variety and urges people to speak and write in their own voices. This stems from the playfulness that is part of poetry but also relates to her evident love for human beings in all their quirky varieties.

I was tired after a busy day but couldn't miss the opportunity to hear Liz Lochhead read and perform a wide range of work, adopting characters from Medea to a young miner in the early days of his marriage. There were old favourites such as "Bairnsang/Kid's Song" and newer works written after a long dry period which came to an end when she accepted the Glasgow laureateship.

Many of the poems addressed serious subjects - love, hate, violence and poetry itself - but laughter was never far away. Liz Lochhead ended her reading with the hilarity of "Song for a Dirty Diva" and her own "My Way," warming an audience about to face the chill dark of a Leicester evening.