Noted

Christie Williamson

Noted

Sandy, here’s the rub
this silliness haes goat tae stoap
yer guid wey yer hauns
an yit ye’d raither be idle
than tae say yer piece
raither lash oot
than buckle doon

d’ye hink these inky scratchins ae mine
ur blinn tae yer fumblin an foolin aroon?
think again
think on this
there’s a grain in the wid
jist waitin
fur ye tae gang wey it
no agin
no acroass

is yer wirin firin straight?
argue the toss if ye will
it’s naebdy’s loss bit yer ain
truth is a’m nae lover
ae seein a sowl suffer
wioot end
yer no sae daft
as tae wind up here o’er lang

behave yersel
gie yersel peace
recover

paradise

below the malty sone
a green darkening

springing in to the edges
brown witherings

through a glass
dark interiors

red propulsions
fling lens opening

petals as far
as my grey iris

and beyond
into matter bettering

berry heavy harvests
bushing out the fall

of golden leaves
gone to ground

half the earth
has turned around

half the sky
is glowering

sprung

a borrowfu
o michalemas daisy
dances hit’s lazy madrigal
i da shadoo
o a spring moarneen

On Damage

The human brain is formed of 86 billion cells, which between themselves form around a hundred trillion connections. The sheer scale of bioelectrical energy required for even one of these processing machines is, to put it mildly, mind boggling. Add in the self-charging electric blood pump located a foot and a bit beneath and the fact that any of us are walking around breathing air could very reasonably be described as miraculous.

As anyone who has ever written a poem or a tune; played a game of chess; wired a house or serviced a car can attest, the more complex something is the higher the chances of something going wrong. Furthermore, your chances of rectifying any ensuing fankle become correspondingly scanter.

All of which makes the question ‘what happens when something goes wrong with our brains’ at once salient and fascinating. In Glasgow, prior to 1814, exclusively (and still depressingly often today) the answer or answers would be found amongst penury, destitution, incarceration and violence.

In 1814, funded by her citizens, a better option arose for the insane of Glasgow. The city’s first asylum was erected on Dobbie’s Loan, which was at the time an important thoroughfare stretching from the Cathedral to Charing Cross. Today, Wikipedia describes the road precisely as I know it – a tributary to the great motor river of the M8. Whether a useful eastbound option from Maryhill, or a blessed escape from the near inevitable shitness westbound after junction fifteen, the road is held in a curious but real affection by at least on Glasgow motorist.

The visible evidence on Dobbie’s Loan of an asylum is identical to that of so many historical buildings in Glasgow, and so many of her most notable citizens – absolutely nothing. In its place, new and used motor cars and Chinese groceries are bought and sold by day, with the tide of commerce receding at night to free the space for more nocturnal trades in the hinterland between urban territories.

In 1843, the year of the great schism in the Scottish Kirk, this first asylum was succeeded by facilities in the Gartnavel Royal Hospital – a site then beyond the edge of town and which to this day keeps the birse of the city at bay.

The location offers views across Glasgow, and beyond to the western foothills of the Campsies. Whilst it is no longer used for therapeutic or clinical work the stones which housed over a century of mental health care in the city still stand.

My relationship with the building began in 2021, before the Writing the Asylum project had entered my awareness. I’d been approached by Larry Butler of Lapidus Scotland about the possibility of me running a series of outdoor workshops with them. The following exchange ensued by email –

LARRY – Let’s meet up. Do you know the Walled Gardens in Gartnavel Hospital?
ME – No, I don’t
LARRY – Let’s meet at the Walled Gardens in Gartnavel Hospital

When arriving onto the hospital campus from Hyndland Railway Station, the original Gartnavel Royal Building holds an imposing centrality; high above its relatively recent companions of the Gartnavel General Hospital and the Beatson Centre.

The walled gardens are nestled adjacent to what was the Physician Superintendent’s office, right in the heart of the complex. After more wrong turns than right ones, I found Larry who then took me on a magical tour of the various sites and people. The workshops were scheduled, and small groups appeared – variously made up of local writers, current and former staff members and a former patient.

Whilst no clinical or therapeutic activities currently take place inside the old building, half of it, West House, is still used for meetings and administration. The other half, East House, is in grave disrepair.  I can’t help but be fascinated by the capacity of old buildings to sprout flowering shrubs and bushes from four floors up – a symbol of the persistence of life, and also perhaps of the fragility of what we perceive and believe to be stone clad. What seems impervious to us is often in fact a facade in every sense of the word, and inherently pervious.

It may indeed be instructive to note that the walled garden remains in the rudest health of all the elements of the 1843 site. It was from the beginning planted and maintained as part of the therapeutic regime, with three elements – physic, cottage and wild. At some point it was enclosed with a wall to become the private domain of the Physician Superintendent.

Psychiatric care continues on the site today, in a modern low-rise campus further down the hill. Its nature and philosophy, like that of the buildings it is conducted in, has radically advanced since the Victorian era. The gardens remain a key resource for that practice.

The original building and the archive generously supported by the Wellcome Trust share a quality of damage. The patient journeys recorded day by day over the years are about care, about believing there is value in broken people.

This collaborative writing project creatively and imaginatively nurtured by Gillean McDougall is a way of celebrating that care, and of applying it not only to the memory of those journeys, but also the continued value and beauty of the site, even (or perhaps especially) in its dilapidation.

On Writing

The Oxford English Dictionary contains around 600,000 words, and if like me you are a purveyor of dense, lyrical minoritised language poetry there are a good few more at your disposal. The job of writing is to find the best words in the best order to say something that needs to be heard.

Sometimes knowing what needs to be said is advantageous in this process, and sometimes it puts added pressure on language to live up to experiences, sensations and consciences which exist at an intensity beyond that which language can sustainably convey.

In many ways, my submission reflects a profound indecision. For years, my involvement with literature was purely and puristly through the lens of poetry – in the absence of any enrolment on any Creative Writing program I have found the greatest excitement, energy and stimulation through very poetry exclusive experience – St Mungo’s Mirrorball, Glasgow Network of Poets and Poetry Lovers; StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival; Tell it Slant Books, Scotland’s Only Bookshop Dedicated to Poetry – these cultural phenomena between them are my Alma Mater as a writer.

A couple of years ago now, I was approached by a friend from the University of Pennsylvania requesting an essay for a book which will be published this year. A close reading of a Tom Leonard poem, it was close enough to those aforementioned cultural loci that I could hardly (and indeed did not) refuse. Since then, I have found prose in the form of the essay to be a strangely rewarding and even useful medium through which to pursue creative expression.

Poems, however, will I suspect always be what I do best – years of habit becomes an instinct, and I have a long poetry habit which I have no intention of conquering. For this reason, I was delighted when my erstwhile editor accepted the proposition of essay/poem hybrid.

In constructing my essay and poem I drew on two main poles of energy – the site, and the archives. I have a longer and deeper connection with the site than with the archive. I am also very interested in how places develop energies through life happening in them. So, I’ve found both the specific archive selection I was directed to, and the archive as a whole invaluable to finding my way into and through those energies.