Piping and Drumming Support – Thank you!

In a recent edition of the SEJ, EIS Head of Communications Brian Cooper told how he was planning to raise funds to support Piping and Drumming in Scottish state schools by running the Loch Ness Marathon.

The SEJ is happy to report that, despite being laid low for a month mid-training with a bout of Covid, Brian successfully completed his first ever Marathon at Loch Ness at the end of September.

His efforts raised over £800, to be split between Falkirk Schools Pipe Band and the Scottish Schools Pipes & Drums trust.

Commenting, Brian said, “Thank you to everyone who supported me, with sponsorship and encouragement, during my training for my first ever marathon. I was delighted to complete the run in 4 hours, 48 minutes – just a little slower than originally hoped – and to raise over £800 to support Piping and Drumming in Scottish state schools.”

He added, “Extra special thanks to teacher and piper Fiona, who I have never met, who sought out my sponsorship page, after reading the story about my fundraising efforts in the SEJ, and gave a very kind donation.

All funds will be put to good use supporting this important part of Scottish culture and heritage in schools across the country.”

More infocan be found at: www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/FSPB

Living on an Island, Expressing the Earth

What do EIS Area Officers do when they retire? Well, in my case, I’ve written three books. My poetry book Slate, Sea and Sky, a Journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing and my novel Barnhill about George Orwell’s last years on the Isle of Jura where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four were published by Luath Press in hardback and paperback.

My latest book from Alba Editions is Living on an Island Expressing the Earth, a memoir about growing up in Glasgow, moving to the Isle of Luing in Argyll when I retired, the struggle of its people to sustain and grow our community by raising £1.3 million to build an Atlantic Islands Centre and to survive Covid-19 lockdown.

My involvement in the successful campaign by islanders to save Luing Primary School from permanent closure also features. We now have a further five years to attract more families to come to live on the island so that it can be reopened. You can take the man out of Glasgow and the EIS, but you can’t take Glasgow and the EIS out of the man!

It also tells the story of how, as a young student at the University of Glasgow, the Scottish poet and thinker Kenneth White inspired me to be creative. I lost touch with him for twenty years then tracked him down at the Sorbonne and reconnected with him in Brittany. He lived most of his life there and was a major international literary and cultural figure until his death last year. He gave well attended lectures and readings at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for many years.

Tony McManus, an Edinburgh teacher and musician, and I founded the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics in 1995 and I’ve written in my new book about how it has developed and grown since then. Geopoetics, the creative expression of the Earth, is a trans-disciplinary approach to culture which celebrates the natural world of which we are part.

In the course of my journeys to Ireland, to the American West and East Coasts, and in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, I reveal how women like Joan Eardley, Rachel Carson, Katharine Stewart and Nan Shepherd were forerunners of geopoetics as well as men like Robert Burns, Hugh Miller and George Orwell. It’s a book that ranges widely in place and time and it has been well received.

Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow says, “Norman Bissell’s Living on an Island is an extraordinary compendium of a book, a wonderfully readable autobiographical account of a poet’s accommodation with the ecology of life on a small island, a growing understanding of a community of care and concern, but also an intellectual enquiry into what has come to be termed ‘geopoetics’…This is a quest narrative of ultimate discovery. Bissell takes us into his confidence, and locates Kenneth White, and himself, in the company of a wide range of other writers whose priorities are shared, exchanged and endorsed. It is an affirmation of a world where truths can be accurately valued.”

And Máiréad Nic Craith, Professor of Public Folklore at the Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands, writes, “Norman Bissell is an accomplished and prolific writer, and long-time champion of geopoetics in Scotland. His autobiographical reflections presented here provide a frank and personal look behind the scenes of the geopoetics movement, offering sometimes challenging insights into its leading personalities.”

You can read more about my book at www.normanbissell.com and about geopoetics at www.geopoetics.org.uk.

If you order a signed copy you will also receive a free print copy of the 56 page journal Stravaig#14. It contains poems, stories and artwork from the islands of Lismore, Kerrera and Seil as well as Luing!