Going Into Winter Like…

In this missive—

• Gratitude & wonder
• What I’m reading
• What I’m musing on
• What I’m listening to
• What I’m planning

Gratitude and Wonder: The Creel of Remembrance

This year’s Samhain Fire Festival in Edinburgh included a “Creel of Remembrance” ceremony.  I wasn’t there and can’t find any documentation of this ritual; a reader told me about it. The Fire Society invited the public to send in names of accused witches in preparation for Samhain. A woman playing the Cailleach carried the creel full of notes and tokens to a byre where the contents were burned in a ritual of remembrance at Holyrood Park. In the words of the organisers: “It is in memory of the alleged witches and other nonconformists who were murdered by the establishment centuries ago.” Read about the Beltane Society  invitation here.

This ritual resonates with Ashes & Stones in many ways. I imagined carrying the memories of Gellis and Agnes in a creel up the Law of North Berwick, and this imagery of the Cailleach in Edinburgh is in the epilogue’s invocation. I dreamed this as I wrote the first draft of Ashes and Stones, years ago. Now it is manifest.

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I’ll read the excerpt from the epilogue of Ashes & Stones :

What I’m reading: 

I’m revisiting books I read as a young woman, relishing in their escapist promise. Last month it was Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith and Anne Rice’s Pandora. I’m reading The Vampire Lestat, a beat up 80s hardback from the Orkney Library. 

What are your comfort reads? Books you return to not to find your way but to perhaps lose it?

I visit disability writing for affirmation, but I don’t always find it: I’m also reading Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through illness and Disability edited by Louise Kenward. So far Sally Huband’s piece “Field Notes” is the standout. Because I’m disabled, some disability nature writing is claustrophobic rather than affirming. I’m restless; this is how I deal with my own pain. Only recently have I learned rest-full-ness, but I dream of stravaiging—wandering aimlessly—both physically and intellectually.

Speaking of wandering, during my recent trip to London I went to the Fantasy show at the British Library. The show’s emphasis on RPGs, video games and telly frustrated me. Second world fantasy began in books, their worlds amplified by the reader’s inner visioning—this alchemy can’t be replicated in other mediums. Can we celebrate that? Yet, there were fascinating objects in the show and the atmosphere was transportive. 

Being in the presence of Bernard Sleigh’s An anciente mappe of Fairyland : newly discovered and set forth from 1917 absorbed me. The map is a collection of imagined locations from the Brothers Grimm to Homer. It made me think about the maps I make as I write about accused witches—something I’ve continued to do in Orkney. I hope this mapping will make a next non-fiction book, though being immersed in the BL show made me long to write speculative fiction again.  

See the entire enormity of the map at the Library of Congress here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g9930.ct001818/?r=0.629,0.069,0.169,0.078,0

What I’m listening to:

Probably the perfect song set to accompany wistful longing for the Cailleach—THE old woman—Unwoman’s new cover songs LP—Music to Pine for Your Old Lady To

What I’m Planning:

This year I’ll be teaching several writing workshops, starting with Writing as Ritual in January. A set number of discounted places are reserved for paid subscribers. What kind of writing workshop are you most interested in right now? Watch this Space!

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