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Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings (Paperback)

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by Margaret Tait, edited and with foreword by Sarah Neely

 

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Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was a pioneering filmmaker for whom words and images made the world real. In 'documentary', she wrote, real things 'lose their reality ... and there's no poetry in that. In poetry, something else happens.' If film, for Tait, was a poetic medium, her poems are works of craft and observation that are generous and independent in their vision of the world, poems that make seeing happen.

Sarah Neely, Lecturer in Film at the University of Stirling, draws on Tait's three poetry collections, her book of short stories, her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to make available for the first time a collection of the full range of Tait's writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture, and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.

Author Biography: Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was born in Orkney in 1918. After qualifying in Medicine from Edinburgh University in 1941, she joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in India, Sri Lanka and Malaya, before returning to Orkney in 1946. She studied filmmaking in Rome from 1950-52, at the height of Neorealism. Returning to the UK, Tait established her own film company, Ancona films, working first in Edinburgh before returning to her native Orkney where she continued to make films until her death in 1999.

Neely's book is an essential complement for anyone interested in Tait's work. For some people Margaret Tait's poems will be her finest achievement. - Michael Romer,University of Edinburgh Journal

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword by Ali Smith
Introduction
A Note on the Text


Poems 
from origins and elements (1959)
Elasticity
Reading about Rimbaud
‘It’s a mistake to write a poem that seems more certain’
Emily
Water
Carbon
Reputation
Storms
A Fire
Flood-water
Sleep
‘Protected in my little house’
To Anybody at All
Singularity
Four or Ninety or ∞ or what
Now
Lezione di Recitazione
‘ “Don’t meet,” they say to me’
The Unbreakable-Up
Litmus
Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea
Hooray, Hooray, Hoo Ray Ray Ray
Sprung Sonnet
Ay, Ay, Ay, Dolores

from Subjects and Sequences (1960)
Pomona 
Bowery
Standing Stones of Stenness
Then, Oh Then, Oh Then
Edward Nairn, Poet
Kulgin the Helicopter
Alex
Allison
But why not try this method
A Poem for a Morning 
Pavement Artist 
from Short Poems on Blue Paper 
Historical Sense 
The Old Lady of Loth 
Punishment 
One World, One Sun 
Epiphany 
Northerner 
Midwinter 
You Heard What the Minister Said, Pet 
‘The eyebright was for you’ 
Bushels 
Mary, Queen of Scots 
Secrets 

from The Hen and the Bees (1960)
Hen 
Dogs 
Family 
The Scale of Things 
Locklessness 
For Using 
Light
Responsiveness 
Trust 
Spring 1958
Remains that Have Been Tampered With 
Queen of Fact and Story 
Story-telling Queen
Sea-going King’s Queen 
The Queen and All the Children 
A Queen in Prison 
Belief 
Other Gods, Other Ways 
Loki Beside the Standing Stone 
Thor 
Freya 
Baldar 
By the Book 
Sound of Children Sobbing 
Face-kicking 

Uncollected and Unpublished Poems
One is One 
Studentessa (The Little Tourist in Rome)
The Window Boxes 
Seeing’s Believing and Believing’s Seeing 
Horses 
Word Song 
That’s Them off on Their Spring Forays 
Drawing in Pen and Ink 
The Sky of Your City 
Why Did They Go? 
The Raven Banner 
Concha Orcadensis 
This Now 
Free for All 
Flame 
from a twenty-seven-page ‘Examination into the meaning of fire’
Il Mago 
Materfamilias 
Me 
In Olden Days 
Winter Solstice 
What is it that’s wonderful about the photograph? 
The Boats at Droman 
Redefinition of a Lame Duck 
Orquil Burn 
Soon 
Grove 

SHORT STORIES
The Incomers 
The Song Gatherer 
Sixteen Frames per Second 

WRITINGS ON FILM 
Time 
On Rossellini 
Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress 
Independence: Small Budget Production in Rome 
On Throwing a Film Festival 
Close-up of Rose Street 
Two-way Drift 
Colour Poems 1974 
Film-poem or Poem-film: A few notes about film and poetry
from Margaret Tait 
Video Poems for the 90s (working title) 

RESOURCES
Works by Margaret Tait 
Selected Bibliography
Selected Filmography 
Archives 
Index of Poem Titles 
Index of Poem First Lines 

Additional Information
More Information
SKU 9781847771599
Author(s) Tait, Margaret Caroline
Publisher(s) Carcanet Press Ltd
Editor(s) Neely, Sarah
Format Paperback
Original publication date 30 Apr 2012
Number of pages 185 pages with illustrations
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