Not Just Moonshine
Alice + Mark at the Traverse Theatre Bar, Saturday 17th October
Reviewing her poetry collection Not Just Moonshine in The Scottish Review of Books, Dorothy McMillan described Tessa Ransford (1938 – 2015) as “an eclectic and a committed poet”. McMillan opened her review by stating that no one has done more for the cause of poetry in Scotland than Tessa Ransford.
Of that there can be no doubt: Tessa was the prime mover behind establishing the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. She saw it grow from its original premises in Tweeddale Court to its current home, an award-winning building in Crichton’s Close which has been described as “a poem in glass and stone”. It now contains 30,000 poetry books written in Scotland’s three indigenous languages: Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and English.
Tessa Ransford, image TSPL
Throughout her life Tessa was writing poetry constantly and produced over 20 collections. Published in 2008 by Luath Press, Not Just Moonshine was a retrospective, celebrating Tessa’s work over the previous four decades. It contains three of the poems that we read at Typewronger Books last month: The Wall and The Tree, How Things Happen & Medusa Eleven. Those were all in collections previously published by the original Ramsay Head Press.
This week we’ve been at the National Library of Scotland looking at some of Tessa’s notebooks. There are about 80 of these covering a period of 50 years from the mid-1950s. Wonderfully they are in no particular order, and randomly titled eg “containing diary entries from a trip to Spain and drafts of poems, 1986”. Fascinating to see how poems develop over the pages, a treasure trove.
On page 2 of the Medusa drafts there is this:
Artistic activity is a work of collaboration between author / artist etc, performers and audience
Extract from one of Tessa Ransford’s notebooks
No truer example of that than last Saturday at the Traverse Theatre Bar for the launch of Alice’s debut poetry collection The Warm Universe. Without our friends Natalie Elizabeth, IRiD CROW & Dr Zee and every single one of you who came out to see us, it would have been half the success it was. We loved doing it, we hoped you loved being a part of it.
And Mark said we’re doing a Christmas show…🌀