Gladstone’s Library

Back in the late spring and very-much-feeling-like-summer of 2023 I travelled down to North Wales to spend a fortnight reading, writing, rewriting my play about Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. I had been awarded a scholarship by the library to work on a redrafting of the play, and to read more into the theology of the two women. You can read about the play itself, and the year before going to Gladstone’s here. Because of my daughters understandabe four-year-old needs, we were, as ever, a travelling circus. The library made a beautiful effort to make my husband and daughter feel welcome, the kitchen staff were all delighted to have a wee yin in aboot the place – not many bairnies in a theological and political residental library. Some fantastic support from Creative Scotland meant that we could pay for my time, for the extra accommodation and even pay my husband to take time off his work so he could look after the wee one as I worked. It would not have happened without this two-prongs of funding.

And boy did I work. I worked and walked and accidentally found myself reading feminist theology, body theology, an early 19th century book about the visit of George IV to Edinburgh. I read prayer books, books on how teen girls do theology, books about Margery and Julian themselves. I dipped, and wrote, and swam, and wrote – all in books. All in the most beautiful room you could ever imagine working in.

And outside that room I went to daily services, I walked around the graveyard of the church next door, I walked to a farm shop along a busy dual carriageway and thought and thought and thought about life and the arts and the play. At one point I had a total crisis with it all and took an afternoon to take a bus to see the new Little Mermaid with my daughter. I spoke to my dramaturg on the phone, I disagreed with her, and I agreed. It was, simply, heaven.

The next stage for the play, the literal stage-stage will be very much more earthly. It’s a mystery how or if that will happen, but I will always be grateful for the thirteen days of sun and space in Hawarden, given to me by the library, and the Creative Scotland funding which let me know my daughter was safe and happy, that I was safe and happy, and that I could dive down, dip and swim in safety. That is the only way I can do it.

Julian and Margery

I wrote a play! With support!

Over 2022-2023 I was supported with a Play Development Bursary from the excellent Playwrights’ Studio Scotland. I was given funds to give me time and space to complete a first draft over twelve months – as well as the chance to attend excellent workshops, as well as sessions with a wonderful mentor in the form of Catherine Grosvenor.

The play is about a number of things – motherhood, madness, illness, history, faith. At the centre of it are two real women, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. They were two of the earliest writers in the English language, and they met in Norwich in 1413. Their stories, their conversation, and how their books made their way to us today are all fascinating to me, and I was so pleased to spend a year obsessing about it all. I intend to spend many more years of tasty obsession whether for the play or not. They’re in my life now, and like so many people over the last 600 years or so, I firmly believe them to be mine.

As part of my year I took two different trips to East Anglia to visit the places the women lived, and worked, and travelled, and wrote*. I pilgrimaged with them, sat with them, worshiped with them. And I also wrote out conversations happening around me live, in 21st century Norwich and King’s Lynn, because once you go somewhere with your writer ears on, it’s hard not to listen in and it turns out the world is hilarious. I also had to take my kid with me because of her tiny person needs, and that meant also my husband. I had to rely on my in-laws for childcare too at points. I say this because Julian and Margery had to wall themselves in a room, or travel across the known world to have the space to write and think. I took a day trip to King’s Lynn, and had some afternoons in libraries, but the work of getting to a place where you can do the work, is a massive part of the work. And that is gendered.

The process of the year was incredibly hard, incredibly rewarding. Particularly valuable was building a relationship and trust with Catherine Grosvenor, my mentor. Louise from PSS had paired me with Catherine, using her amazing spidey-sense about such things (she did a great job on the director for the development day as well) even though she hadn’t known that seeing Catherine’s play, Cherry Blossom, in 2009, was a turning point for my life – in the light, and incidental way that those things often happen. There was a wee moment in Cherry Blossom when one of the actors leant against an imaginary door frame and something about it made my brain explode. I wanted to learn how to do that. I decided in that seat in Trav 2 that I would leave academia behind (temporarily, I thought – lol) and go somewhere to learn how to lean against imaginary doors like that.

And so a decade and odd change later I was sitting in a room in the CCA with a director and four amazing actors reading my words, making me laugh in an uncool way at my own words (and actually cry at one point, don’t tell anyone). The draft is so rough, and the form is not there yet, but I am very proud of what I managed to achieve on the 1/3rd of a brain I am working with, three years into motherhood. I think it has the potential to have wee moments that might make a 22 year old Ishbel’s head fizz, or maybe even explode. I would like that. She would like that.

Next for the play is a week or two in Wales to write up a second draft. I have a scholarship from Gladstone’s Library to continue working on it and to use their amazing theology collection to deep dive even further into the ideas of Margery and Julian. And also to be fed very well three times a day and sit in a fantasy library reading, thinking and writing. So. That’s not ALL bad.

In fact, maybe – maybe – in the words of Julian of Norwich, all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.

*Margery didn’t write, she was most likely illiterate, she dictated. Stay back, imaginary Margery Kempe scholar I envisage reading this.

Julian and Margery – researching for writing

I was awarded a Play Development Bursary from the excellent organisation Playwrights’ Studio Scotland in order to write a play over the course of 2022. I will be writing that play about two excellent Medieval women – Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, who met in 1413 and who were both smart, varying degrees of wise and also, to us, straight up kookie-dooks.

Julian of Norwich was an anchorite, which means she lived walled up in a room attached to a church. She wrote, she prayed, she listened to the complaints and worries of the people who came to ask for her prayer. Margery Kempe was a pilgrim and Not A Preacher (it was illegal for women to preach) who chastised those around her and taught them about God’s love. They both had visions of God, they both lived in accepted modes of their society, at the same time as being almost entirely outwith the norms of their society, and they both authored books. In fact, they are two of the first women to author books in the English language.

I have one million things to say about these two women and the world that they lived in. In the play I think I’ll be able to say six to eight things. For now I am at the one-million-and-growing stage in my process. I am sookin up aw hing. I love this part – I read, I take notes, I’m even doing an evening class looking at The Book of Margery Kempe. For this project I also have been to King’s Lynn and Norwich, and I will be going back there. I have been attending all sorts of church services, I am going on a pilgrimage that Margery did. There are words on the page in the future, but for now there is my favourite state in the world – travelling undergrad. What joy.

Publication of O is for Hoolet

You can hold a Hoolet in your hand! Salamander Street are an excellent new independent publisher of theatre, performance and live art and they have published O is for Hoolet! Also included in the book are some of my answers to audience questions and also a second short performance which I made for the launch of the second edition of the Concise Scots Dictionary.

Putting the script together with George Spender from Salamander Street has been an incredible experience. The text as it stood was very vague, only a document for my line learning and for my lovely techs (Elena, Marisa, Sarah and Tommy over the years!). Getting it to the stage where it could be together in a codex of tidiness took surprisingly long but was totally worth it.

As George says, if you want to know if it’s jobbie or jobby, this is the book for you.