Tuesday, February 24

I bump into... ROD BURNS

age: 36
nationality: English
type of visitor: rare
eating: pain au chocolat
drinking: two black coffees, one Irish coffee

I seldom see Rod, and then only at night, in bars, when we fail to resist ending up in the slightly louche cocktail bar Rick's on Frederick Street (a couple of doors from the slightly sleazy Fingers Piano Bar), so I'm surprised to see him striding through the cafe. He looks different in daylight - like a newly washed car edged out of a dark garage.

Rod was one of the poets to get into the first edition of the poetry magazine I founded, Anon. Subsequently he wrote to me, and we've been good friends since. His visionary swearing is always impressive.

Sometimes publishers ask me to write back-cover blurbs. I've only agreed twice: once for an American poet called Rose Kelleher, and once for Rod's book The Salesman's Shoes. It comprises tanka (poems with five lines and a strict syllable count on each line in the pattern 5-7-5-7-7), and I find many of them brilliant. They use shifts of perspective and unusually striking imagery to make the ordinary extraordinary. Here are a few of my favourites...

Seeing traffic lights
sequencing through green, amber
red for nobody
the nightwatchman's heart blows out
like a torn bicycle tyre.

*

Savour of hotdog
and overhanging bosom
and raw woody ink --
circles in the inferno
of this bookless passenger.

*

Ah, broken wiper
dragging smears across the glass
of the driver's side --
won't you now illuminate
the sound of one blade flapping?


Rod's writing name is James Roderick Burns. His latest book Greetings from Luna Park uses the Japanese verse form sedoka -- a form so neglected and obscure that it draws a blank on Wikipedia. Maybe Rod could rectify that...

Tuesday, February 10

I see... THE MOON

The middle of the day; there's the last of the snow below me, and a quilt of blue sky above me. A couple of minutes from the cafe I see the full moon hanging in front of a whacking great statue (who is it? Queen Victoria?) on top of the Royal Scottish Academy. Is this beauty (moon, sky, grandeur), or comedy (who threw that snowball at the Queen)? For one or both of these reasons, my camera emerges.

The Royal Scottish Academy is part of the National Galleries of Scotland, situated on The Mound (google map here). The galleries open daily 10 till 5 (Thursday till 7). The permanent exhibitions are free to view, and some temporary exhibitions are free too. From February 14th you can view 25 Years of Photography, which shows the best Scottish photography (old and new) purchased for the national collection during the last quarter century.

Friday, February 6

I attend... MAKI HAMADA'S EXHIBITION

where: Peter Potter Gallery, 10 The Sands, Haddington, EH41 3EY
when: until March 28, 10 till 5 Monday to Saturday


Maki works at the cafe now and again. She takes care to make a really good cup of coffee, and she often asks me how my writing is going. I'm aware she's an artist (makihamada.com) who's won prizes and awards - and she was a finalist in the Nationwide Mercury Prize Art Competition, which is the sister competition to the pop music awards. I've already missed a previous exhibition in the Owl and Lion Gallery in the Grassmarket, so when I hear she has a new exhibition in the Peter Potter Gallery in Haddington 20 miles away (google map here) I attend the launch.

Her work is stunning.

Viewing from a distance, I find that the composition and the storytelling are compelling; viewing close up, I lose myself in the meticulous technique and detail, the whimsical narratives of myth, nature and mischief, and the variety of materials she utilises (mushroom prints, hole-punch circles, felt, although her painting and drawing craft is always in charge). Every square inch is packed with further pictures. Like an optical illusion, each work bamboozles your brain into seeing first one thing, then another - and in Maki's work the alternatives are not binary but numerous.


The exhibition runs till March 28th 2009. Go see. Make a day of it - Haddington is a pretty town with lots of good walking around it. Take your cheque book, and arrange a large overdraft facility; this work is not cheap, nor should it be!