6 minute read

Creature Comforts

Body Politics

Scotland’s newest and coolest poetry festival Push The Boat Out is back for a second year. Among its many enticing events at Edinburgh’s Summerhall is a verse-shaped exploration of this nation’s many mythical beasts. Seven poets pick a legendary being and explain how their choice relates to the modern world

KELPIE: Dave Hook

‘The Kelpie’ is a rap that asks what would happen if a nuclear submarine on the west coast of Scotland became sentient and decided to be something else. An old Scottish myth becoming a new myth. A creature, born of war and violence choosing to be something different, interweaving Scottish past, present and future.

When I first met the Kelpie

This is what he said:

I used to be a harbinger of death And swim in these black waters with a bell around my neck And take men from the land on which they stepped …

SHELLYCOAT: Julie Rea

The Shellycoat is a strange, misunderstood creature, very rarely sighted, haunting rivers and streams. A type of bogeyman who people fear or ignore. He reminded me, instantly, of my brother James. We grew up on a council estate where everything was ugly, playing in a dank sewer drain or beside the canal. A kid nearly drowned one year, and my brother got the blame for it. Of course he did. Blame the shellycoat, with his skinhead and his sovvy rings and his oxblood Doc Martens. From the age of 17, my brother was in and out of jail. Does the shellycoat have a voice? Because James didn’t. There are many shellycoats, misunderstood, hidden, forced to live on the periphery of a society that doesn’t understand them. Doesn’t want to. I’m going to bring their story (and my brother’s) to life.

SELKIE: Anita Mackenzie

The Selkie’s skin drives the narrative, causing her abduction and eventual separation from her children. She cannot own her skin until to do so has a terrible cost. This resonates with my mixed-race experience of otherness, growing up in a small community. When faced with racism at a formative age, what journey do you take to own and love your skin? I am fascinated by the inherent tensions in the tale, and what belonging means after a profound sense of alienation. The Selkie speaks through song, where field recordings and fiddle with loops build a soundscape around the spoken word. The sea, in a thread of words and sound pulls the listeners towards the Selkie’s inevitable return to the ocean, and a reflection on how they can truly be in their skin.

SÌTHICHEAN: Ceitidh Campbell

I am a bilingual (Scottish Gaelic and English) poet; all my work is produced in both languages. Gaelic is an essential part of Scotland’s past, present and future and I believe it is important that this project include all of Scotland’s languages. I’m showcasing the stories of the sìthichean from a lesser-known island (Raasay). The notion of a changeling, when a child has been exchanged for a fairy child, is a common one in Gaelic folklore. Recently there has been research which connects this traditional tale to autism and autistic traits in children. This would not have been understood at the time and was a way of explaining why children were exhibiting behaviour that was different to the norm. I am approaching the topic sensitively and with compassion, bringing this traditional story into the modern era with new understanding.

BEAN NIGHE: Katie Ailes

The bean nighe (Gaelic for ‘washerwoman’), Scotland’s wailing harbinger of death, is feared for what her presence portends. She haunts the banks of streams and pools, singing and washing the clothing of people who are soon to die. Laundry is traditionally considered ‘women’s work’, quotidian and mundane. The bean nighe, however, performs priest-like blessings through this most ‘female’ chore; she is also the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth and as a consequence is cursed to her grim task for what would have been the remainder of her natural life.

In today’s political context where women’s reproductive rights are being threatened globally, this narrative of cosmic punishment for the ‘failure’ to be a mother is deeply resonant and deserves re-imagining. In a performance incorporating spoken word poetry, dance, music and textile work, I’m (re-) embodying the bean nighe as the spirit of a contemporary woman who dies after being refused abortion care.

LINTON WORM: Calum Rodger

According to myth, ‘the Linton Worm would roam the land and take its share of local livestock and anything else that fell into its path. The area became a virtual wasteland.’ I found a contemporary echo of this worm in the all-consuming appetite of corporate technology and the surveillance capitalism of social media, encapsulated in technologist Marc Andreessen’s soundbite, ‘software is eating the world’.

Like the Linton Worm, these technologies chew up and spit out the human-driven cultures they pretend to support; a ‘virtual wasteland’ indeed (and ‘worm’ in computing parlance refers to a self-replicating and destructive virus). I’m creating a dual poem, in part from the point of view of a computer role-playing game group tasked with defeating the worm, and in part an AI-generated ‘voice of the worm’.

NESSIE: Hollie McNish

The most silent I ever was as a child was looking out for Nessie with my grandma on the shores of Loch Ness, once she’d assured me I just needed to watch the water as carefully as I could, in silence, because ‘blink and you’ll miss it’. I realise now it was maybe a good way to make me shut up for a minute, but no bother. Watching out for every ripple or change of patterns on the surface of a loch in which I imagined a huge and friendly tartan-hatted monster to appear from sums up the wonder of childhood to me.

As an adult, I thought feelings like these would dissipate completely as I stopped believing so easily in childhood stories: Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas, Nessie. But each time I look up and every star is a sun of another whole solar system, I still cling to the belief that anything we can imagine might just, possibly, be. It is still the patch of water I stare out over most excitedly. I know it’s probably not true, I know photographs have been disproved, but shhh. Just in case.