Jackie Kay

Presenter0:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:13

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:36

My castaway this week is the writer Jackie Kaye, Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle and Chancellor of Salford University. This spring, she also became Scotland's Macker or Poet Laureate. If the page is another place to take difficult things, then it's no wonder she's so productive. Her life, from its very beginnings, has given her plenty to draw on. Brought up in a Glasgow suburb, in a home full of love and words and ideas, she nonetheless understood the notion of difference from a very young age. Her mum and dad are white. She isn't.

Presenter1:08

For a time in her teenage years she says she was simply an angry young black lesbian who lost her sense of humour.

Presenter1:16

Lucky for all of us she got it back. Much of the power in her work comes from writing about heavyweight subjects with a deft lightness of touch. She says poetry is important because it manages to say in words things you can't otherwise say. It manages to express people's love, people's grief, people's loss. Poetry gives voice to the voiceless. So welcome, Jackie Kay. You talk there about love and grief and loss, and I wonder why it is you think that we as people turn

Presenter1:46

To the words of strangers at the most difficult times in her life, the most uh vigorous times in her life.

Jackie Kay1:54

I think when we have really difficult things happen to us, we are literally lost for words often, and we look for somebody else to have the words to put in for us. And as soon as we hear those words, we recognise them. They hold up a mirror to our experience, and we say, That's it, that's it exactly. And we feel a kind of a gratitude, and we feel beyond that a kind of sense of that a writer knows us. We feel known by a poem because it expresses exactly how we feel, and sometimes how we feel is complex and difficult. And even in a very short poem, that kind of complexity of emotion can come across really, really strongly.

Presenter2:36

There are plenty people who think poetry's not for them. They're like, you know what?

Presenter2:40

I don't get it. I don't get that stuff that these people love. What would you.

Presenter2:45

I find a way of converting them.

Jackie Kay2:48

I've become all evangelical.

Presenter2:48

Yeah.

Jackie Kay2:52

I think there's lots of people that will come to a poetry reading and they'll come up to me and say, I've never been to a reading before and I didn't think I would like this um but but they they tell me they do. I remember being in in Orkney one time and sitting next to this woman and she said to me, Do you think this is going to be any good? and I said, Well, I hope so and then I got up and was introduced to this woman like very fast But afterwards she she said that she'd just just come and I love it if people would just just come and just just take a risk.

Presenter3:19

You said in your memoirs that some of your happiest memories are of people singing to you throughout your life. So um it is a varied list and is it a hard won list? Did it that take a lot of time to to batter out into shape?

Jackie Kay3:32

Oh, I found it agony just because when you really, really love music you you you actually feel that you're hurting some of the people that you love, why not? Which is of course nonsense because your this is your choice on a particular day and perhaps another day your choice would be different.

Presenter3:45

So let's hear some of the ones that you have. Tell us about your first track. What disc are we going to hear?

Jackie Kay3:51

Well, this is um Bessie Smith singing Kitchen Ran. My my dad bought me my first ever double album was Bessie Smith and I've just always loved that raw, unplugged, saucy voice. And Kitchen Man I used to listen to and I didn't have a clue, um I didn't have a clue the meanings I just imagined a man that made her nice things to eat in the kitchen, wearing a big white hat and uh and then sort of years later I understood what the the the the double entendres of the song so I love it for that.

Speaker 44:19

Madam Box was quite beloved.

Speaker 44:23

Sermon father's score

Speaker 44:27

Put ones at each door, butlers and maze alone But one day Dan, a kitchen man Gave in his notices

Speaker 44:44

She cried, Oh, Dan, don't go. It'll grieve me if you

Speaker 44:50

Uh

Speaker 44:52

I love his cabbage, cream, his hait, tappy about his sucker taste. I can't do without my kitchen maid.

Speaker 45:08

While about his turnip top

Speaker 45:12

Likes the way he warms my chop. I can't do without my kitchen man.

Presenter5:22

Quite the appetite. That was Bessie Smith singing Kitchen Man with Clarence Williams on piano and Eddie Lang on guitar. It was recorded in 1929. So, Jackie Kate, tell me about your parents.

Jackie Kay5:33

Well, my my parents, um, are

Jackie Kay5:36

91 and 85 now. They're really, really wonderful people. They're lively. They're a lot of fun to be with. I really enjoy their company. My mum said to me recently, I'm closer to you, Jackie, than if I'd given birth to you myself. And that's the way that I feel about them. I almost feel like I was kind of meant to be with them. And they've both been politically engaged really all their lives. They were members of the Communist Party. My dad was the industrial organiser of the Communist Party. My mum was a primary school teacher. They were both locked up for protesting against Polaris.

Presenter6:15

Laris was the those were the nuclear wars.

Jackie Kay6:17

Has submarines that they were bringing up the Clyde at the time. That's right, at the Holy Loch, yes, and there was that song Och, Och Getoot to Holy Loch. So they've been sort of.

Presenter6:20

That's right.

Jackie Kay6:26

actively involved in the in the world and encourage me to be all of their their lives. It was spent in bishop.

Presenter6:33

Briggs. And Bishop Briggs is a this sort of respectable, fairly sedate suburban uh place just on the outskirts of Glasgow. Um

Presenter6:42

Your house, though, sounds anything but sedate and suburban. I mean, you had visitors from all over the world coming to see your you and your parents.

Jackie Kay6:50

We did. I mean, I'd often come down in the morning and there'd be somebody lying on the floor or lying on the couch and you'd sort of step over them and it'd be, you know, somebody from Vietnam or from Nigeria or from Kenya or Uganda or from England. And it was a great atmosphere, often big sing songs.

Presenter7:06

You have uh written about, I mean heart-sinking but not surprising, sadly to say, the racism that you experienced from other kids in the playground.

Presenter7:15

What is

Presenter7:16

Even more shocking, as I understand it, was you experienced racism from teachers in the classroom. Um did you did you talk to your parents about that?

Jackie Kay7:25

I talked to my parents one time when there was a a particularly a teacher that actually called me a darkie and they went right into the school and my dad spoke to her. I was first conscious that I wasn't the same colour as my mum and dad when I was seven. I remember I was watching a Cowboy and Indian film and I was really shocked at the treatment of the Indians and I realised that they were the same colour as me and that my mum wasn't. So I just said to her, Why aren't you the same colour as me? And she said, because you're adopted. And I said, what does adopted mean? And she said, it means I'm no really your mummy. And that really distressed me, the idea that she wasn't really my mummy. I thought it meant that she wasn't real for a second and something was going to happen to her. And I remember finding it profoundly upsetting at seven.

Presenter8:11

More to come, Jackie Key. Tell me about your second disc. What's this?

Jackie Kay8:15

This is my dad's party face. He sang it all my life, the Throughout My Life, Brush Up Your Shakespeare Co-Porter. I love the lyrics of this. It's just so much fun. It always makes me laugh. And it's really there's a line that Kiker writes in the Coriolanus that when my dad used to sing it years ago, he'd jump and do a flying kick and now he just does a little movement with his walking stick. And it's quite amazing to think that the songs that you really, really love will grow and change with you.

Speaker 48:42

Rush your shit.

Speaker 18:44

Shakespeare. Stop quoting him now.

Speaker 18:48

Brush up your Shakespeare and the women you will wow With the wife of the British ambassador Try a crack out at Troilus and Crassida If she said

Speaker 49:01

Uh Buy it or take it. Make a take it. What's more as you like?

Speaker 19:06

Like it. If she says your behavior is heinous, Kick her right in the Coriolanus, Brush up your Shakespeare.

Speaker 49:15

And they'll all cow tow.

Presenter9:19

From the new Broadway cast recording of Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, that was Lee Wilcoff and Michael Mulheron singing Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Um, Jackie Kay, is it true that even as a kid then you were I mean, that song is is full of words and of course is about Shakespeare, w you connected with with words and and the written words.

Jackie Kay9:36

Early, did you? I did. I absolutely was a voracious reader as a kid and I absolutely loved reading. And I kind of loved the idea of finding a character that you felt was your soulmate. And reading from a really early age, you would find these kindred spirits, you would find characters or people or phrases that felt like they belonged to you and you find a way of attaching themselves to you. So, whether it was poetry or plays or novels, I just loved the

Presenter10:07

And your first published poem was you were twelve, I think, and it was in the Morning Star newspa the Communist newspaper. What was it about?

Jackie Kay10:15

It was um it was about poverty in Glasgow tenements. We lived in a tenement which was somewhat dreech, it was damp and dirty and much too small, and then it went on. But despite all these things we managed to live and trusted in yin another, for love was the biggest factor of all, and it kept us all together.

Presenter10:31

Not a dry eye

Jackie Kay10:32

In the house at the end of that one. My dad used to stand as the Communist Party candidate, and so I used to go around to him and

Presenter10:38

With him. Your first published collection of poetry uh was in nineteen ninety one. It was called The Adoption Papers. It got a lot of attention. It won prizes. It was your story, but it was also their story too. What was your parents' reaction to having their lives written about and read about?

Jackie Kay10:54

Well, I remember when I first told my Dad I was writing the adoption papers, he said Have you now got a wee bit of a tip for yourself?

Jackie Kay11:00

And he thought that the book might be a massive indulgence, which I worried about too. But then when it was published, it a lot of people responded to it and people took it on as their story too. And then I think you could see that it was just everybody's story. I think that it it it's it's interesting if you're adopted you already come as a story and the story is the thing that's handed down. You come with your story in a basket really and instead of passing down D N A, blood and biology, what is passed down are stories and they then you you bond over the story.

Presenter11:32

Is it true that every birthday your mother would not just celebrate our daughter's birthday, but also talk about your birth mother to you on your birthday?

Jackie Kay11:42

She would. She was what did she say? My mum was so generous in that way. She'd say, S somewhere, Jackie, there's a woman out there thinking that child I had will be nine today. Somewhere somebody's remembering your birthday.

Presenter11:42

What is

Jackie Kay11:56

That's a that's uh

Presenter11:58

Well, it's an extraordinary thing to do, because you're a mother too, I'm a mother.

Presenter12:04

We feel probably ridiculously possessive about our children, and the idea that you open your child's heart to the possibility of this other parallel mother is a remarkable feat of warmth.

Jackie Kay12:20

I agree. I think it's just so generous. I think my mum was just so generous. My mum used to imagine my birth father too and she used to say, I'm pictured in a Paul Robeson figure jacket, maybe with a bit of Nelson Mandela mixed in. So she actually um encouraged me to imagine them and so that was that that that meant that it was all it was okay and it meant that I didn't have to feel like an adulterer. I think that when you're adopted and you're very happy and then you trace your original family, you can feel a bit like you're betraying them or disloyal or like an adulterer.

Presenter12:52

Some more music, Jackie Kay. You're third. What are we gonna hear?

Jackie Kay12:57

This is Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie, Honeysuckle Rose. I went to hear Ella when I was 14. It was my 14th birthday present with my pal, with my pal Jillian Innes, and it just blew my mind being able to hear her. I could have reached out and touched her. And I just absolutely loved her. And Jillian loved jazz in the same way as me. So whilst everybody else was listening to Donnie Osmond and David Cassidy, Jillian and I were listening to Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald and Diana Washington and Sarah Vaughan. And she used to come round and my dad would play the living room and my dad and her would dance up and down. So I loved Ella's sort of zest for life.

Jackie Kay13:38

Uh

Speaker 413:38

Go and buy true girls.

Speaker 413:41

You just have to touch my cup. You're my sugar. Cause you can show what's weaker when you sugar bit her up. Say the honey drips from your tasty lips. And I know the reason why. You're a much sweeter, goodness knows. You're my honey sugar.

Speaker 414:13

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 414:36

Yeah.

Speaker 414:39

Got

Speaker 414:42

Ray railroad, ray roll, railroad

Presenter14:46

That was Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie with Honeysuckle Rose. Um, it was a serious accident, I think, when you were around about seventeen, uh, a moped, a motorbike accident, that really began your writing in earnest. Was that to do with the fact that you just had to spend time on your own, recuperating?

Jackie Kay15:01

I just laid up. I couldn't walk g properly for a year and a half and one leg is shorter than the other. So I went from being a runner and training five days a week, competing in the Scottish School Girl Championships, um, to having this walking stick at seventeen, which made me feel very self-conscious, but it gave me a different way of of seeing. And I think sometimes things that happen to you that that um make you empathetic, I suppose, to see yourself in other people's shoes is is is a is a good thing.

Presenter15:30

Tell me about this and I should tell listeners that I'm quoting directly here tell me more about this angry young black lesbian who lost our sense of humour. Those are I should stress your words and not mine.

Jackie Kay15:40

Yeah, I remember I went to university and then I became very feminist. Um I joined this uh consciousness raising women's group called called the Women's Collective. And then I bec I I would come home and I'd be furious at adverts and furious at people saying doll, you all right doll and say I'm not your doll.

Jackie Kay15:59

And then I'd suddenly realise that I was black properly. I hadn't realised before I went to university properly. And so I'd be kind of I'd think, goodness, what how didn't I properly know about this? It was like a you I only knew about it in a I suppose a negative way and being called names, but I didn't know about it in a conscious political way. So that became part of my identity. And then I remember meeting the African-American poet Audrey Lord, and she said, Jackie, you don't have to choose. You can be black and Scottish.

Jackie Kay16:31

And the and was a very long and I thought, Oh, that's great and that really changed things for me. It kind of gave me back my sense of humour meeting Audrey Lard.

Presenter16:38

You met her in your early 20s, around about 22. As a student, you were a student at Sterling University in the early 80s.

Jackie Kay16:40

Two strong by twenty two.

Presenter16:47

I've read that you were subjected to this really extraordinary.

Presenter16:51

It was homophobic, it was racist, it was a poster campaign targeted particularly at you, with you named on the posters.

Presenter16:59

You're a you're a professor now, you're a a chancellor at university.

Presenter17:04

You know, we hear a lot of discussion. Indeed, our Prime Minister herself has involved her herself in the discussion about safe spaces in university campuses stifling free speech and that people have the right to say what they think and to offend. Where are you on that?

Presenter17:20

Yeah.

Jackie Kay17:20

I really, really believe in freedom of speech and I I find it very worrying what's happening in universities. I came from a particular time in the seventies where political debate, even if people were completely against you, was very, very important. I think when things are violent and aggressive, I mean these posters were violent, they put razors behind them so as if anybody ripped them down they would get their fingers shredded and that was pretty um distressing and that was very very far right you know that that was kind of British movement, BNP, that kind of fascism. I fear that we might return to that. It feels like we're returning to a a period of time where things have become

Jackie Kay18:00

Very charged.

Presenter18:02

Time for some music, Jackie Kay. Tell me about your force.

Jackie Kay18:05

My fourth track is Nina Simone, Mississippi God Damn. It's a protest song. She wrote it herself, Outraged at the Death of the Schoolgirls in the Church in Alabama. There's something about protest songs themselves that I love too. I used to be in the Socialist Sunday School Choir and we used to sing songs like If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning and down by the riverside I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield. I love the idea that people collect together about something they feel strongly about and make a song about it.

Speaker 418:36

Hound dogs on my trail, school children sitting in jail, black cat cross my path, I think every day's gonna be my last.

Speaker 418:53

Lord have mercy on this land of mine. We all gonna get it in due time. I don't belong here. I don't belong there. I've even stopped believing in prayer.

Speaker 419:12

Don't tell me, I'll tell you.

Speaker 419:15

Me and my people just about do. I've been there so I know. Keep on saying, go slow.

Speaker 419:30

But that's just the trouble.

Speaker 419:32

Washing the window

Speaker 419:36

In the cotton.

Speaker 419:39

You just plain ride

Presenter19:40

That was Nina Simone and Mississippi. Goddamn, you said during that, Jackie Kaye, that again she was one of the people that you you went to see, you saw her live in in concert, where was that?

Jackie Kay19:49

I went to see her at Ronnie Scott's, it was fantastic. You know, she was wearing a white, long white flur coat, she was led onto the stage and she asked people to shout out requests and I tried to sing sugar in my bowl and she looked straight at me and she pointed and she said, Sugar in my bowl I'll be doing later and I nearly passed it. You know, so won't talk to me.

Presenter20:10

Let's talk for a moment about your son, Matthew. He's twenty eight now, and his father is your good friend, fellow poet, and also academic, Fred Degard. Did he offer to father a child for you? That's what I read.

Jackie Kay20:22

Yeah. Yes, he did. He saw me one day and we were in a cafe and he could see me sort of looking groodily at these kids and he said, Do you want to be a mother?'Cause I'd be happy to be the dad. So that was fantastic. And Matthew is is miraculous to me to have him in my life.

Presenter20:36

Did you live as a were you a single m mother when you were looking after Matthew when he was small?

Jackie Kay20:41

No, I wasn't a single mum. He grew up initially with my partner at the time, Louise, and he was very close to her, still is very close to her. And Fred was involved in his way, so I wasn't I didn't ever feel completely alone. And then after that, we lived with Carol Ann, and she had a daughter too, and became a family together. I think what was unusual at the time was that there weren't that many lesbian mums. I remember saying to him one time, It's quite cool, you know, having a lesbian mum. This is when he was about 16, and he said, No, he said, It's not cool at all. It'd be cool to have a lesbian gran.

Jackie Kay21:17

He'd always come out with things that I wasn't expecting. I remember when he was three, I thought, well, he's not got a man in his life properly all the time. And so my dad was down and I said, Go and watch Grandpa Shave. So he went after and I said, Did you watch Grandpa Shave? and he said yes. But he didn't do it properly. He only went like this and he kind of motioned under his chin. He said, He didn't do his legs. And I told this to my dad and my dad said, You need to be careful. You're no bringing up that boy in too esoteric a household. And so I guess I thought.

Jackie Kay21:46

I was thinking the esoteric household would be a great great title for for something.

Presenter21:51

And it was just a few days before his birth, before your son's birth, that that you made proper contact with your your birth mother, is that right? You did you get a letter?

Jackie Kay22:00

Absolutely right. Um, I you know, when you are pregnant you just become really curious about th the p the person who ha who carried you.

Presenter22:08

Let's have some more music, Jackie Kay. It's time for your fifth. Tell me about this.

Jackie Kay22:13

This is um Ali Farkaturi Hegana. I just love this. If I was on my desert island it would lift my heart and I'd be singing along with it, I'll just play him all of the time. And often I'm found dancing around my kitchen to him with my partner, Denise.

Speaker 422:31

May hey, good night.

Speaker 422:41

Tegana Negana

Speaker 422:45

Ekoi Meldakata.

Speaker 422:49

My leg of free

Speaker 422:53

Blessed Ma.

Speaker 422:56

Bang it.

Presenter23:02

Ali Farpaturi and Hey Gana. It was three years later then, Jackie Kaye, that you did. We were talking just a moment ago about this letter that came a few days before you gave birth from your mother replying to your inquiry about her giving you up for adoption. Three years later that you met face to face, and it sounds in anything that I've read like an awkward first encounter. Is that fair?

Jackie Kay23:25

Yes, it was. It was tricky. Um one strange thing was that I'd bought her a bunch of orchids and she'd bought me a bunch of orchids. So that was um a strange uh

Jackie Kay23:38

coincidence, um, but she was very nervous.

Jackie Kay23:42

What did you ask her?

Jackie Kay23:44

I didn't really get a chance to ask her the things that I wanted to ask her because she was so nervous and she was just talking all the time about her neighbours and this and it just seemed an it seemed an intrusion. It seemed rude almost to ask her uh too many things. So I didn't really get a chance. I asked her a bit about my father though, and but she c she didn't really remember too much about him.

Presenter24:01

Yeah. And then you did meet your father. You you've written about it most famously in your memoir Red Dust Road. You open the book with this.

Presenter24:12

Well, I'm going to call it tragic comic encounter, because bits of it do make one laugh out loud, and bits of it make one almost cry. How would you describe it?

Jackie Kay24:22

Yes, I think that's pretty close to the mark, Kirsty. I think I only saw the c comedy in that meeting afterwards. So when I was actually in the the moment I didn't find it funny at all because my birth father, the first and only meeting with him, was he sort of sang and danced and clapped around me. We welcome Jackie Kid to Nigeria. Thank you, God Almighty, for bringing her here safely. Oh, God Almighty and he sang and he danced around the room and he clapped and and that went on for two and a half hours and uh and he said the most amazing things. But at one point in the middle of this I realized that he saw me as his past sin and that I needed to be cleansed and so that was then became quite

Jackie Kay24:59

Er, disturbing. And he didn't want to tell any of his family about me. He said if people were to know about you, they would lose their faith in God.

Jackie Kay25:07

And I thought, goodness, I didn't realize it was that p

Jackie Kay25:10

But um I was really, really happy that I met him. But also I realized that my father was a stranger, a complete stranger, a relative stranger, and I felt all churned up by it. Um but at the end of the day I felt not properly known um and I that I didn't properly know him either.

Presenter25:31

And how did you settle with yourself?

Presenter25:34

Those feelings of being all churned up. Where did they go?

Jackie Kay25:38

Into writing, I think. I think you're lucky if you can write, if you can find some way of.

Jackie Kay25:47

Of crafting an experience because you can't just splurge onto the page, you have to actually construct and structure the experience so as it will let other people in, so as people can open the door and walk into your experience and then call it theirs. And in that business of doing that, that in itself gives you somewhere to go with it. And it means that you then kind of can it's almost like telling a story back to yourself. Often, the more traumatized by something we are as people, the more we'll tell the story, or else we'll be completely silent and not be able to talk at all. But I think that writing is one of the ways of expressing the inexpressible, of giving voice to things that are difficult.

Presenter26:30

Your birth mother died earlier this year.

Presenter26:33

Was there a sense of anything when that happened? And and indeed, did you go to her funeral? Did you feel the need to mark that moment?

Jackie Kay26:41

Yeah. I did go to her funeral, yes. Uh I read a poem at her funeral. Um I wasn't introduced as her daughter, so people didn't know that I was her daughter. I was just put down as friend of the family, um, so I found that quite difficult, and I found the whole thing

Jackie Kay26:59

Upsetting.

Jackie Kay27:01

And I found that I didn't really quite know what to do about at the funeral, whether to you know, I had these fantasies that I would just get up and say, I'm her daughter, you know, like you like that and then I thought, No, I'll just upset everybody if I do that, so I just I just read the poem for her.

Presenter27:16

Let's have some more music, Jackie Kay. We're going to listen to your sixth piece this morning. Tell me about this, Joyce.

Jackie Kay27:23

This is Chopin. I really love the way that the cello and the piano talk to each other. Um I was really lucky in that one of my ex lovers was a a viola player and she introduced me to all sorts of pieces of music that I wouldn't have otherwise had.

Presenter28:35

That was Chopin's cello sonata in G minor with Marta Agaric on piano and Mrs Lavrostropovich on cello. Jackie Kay, by my reckoning, I think you've won about twenty-one separate awards. Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Prize, you got an MBE, you got Soltire, the Somerset Mm Award for uh Poetry. The life of a poet is surely

Presenter28:59

Pretty sort of financially precarious one. Wouldn't you rather just have had a very nice regular income as a writer, rather than sort of having to find space in the house for all these various gongs and awards?

Jackie Kay29:10

Well, I don't really have them in the house, the gongs and the awards. But I

Jackie Kay29:17

I think awards are really wonderful because they say to you that this book has meant something, but I think the thing that really matters is the writing. And it feels like a huge privilege to be a poet. My son used to say to me when he was very wee, Mum, why are you always going to poetry? And he thought poetry was a place. You got on a train or a plane or a bus and you got off at this place called poetry. If only.

Jackie Kay29:40

It's kind of like that in some ways, some of the places you go to.

Presenter29:43

Tell me about your next piece of music, Jackie Kay. It's your seventh.

Jackie Kay29:47

Well, Ray Charles, I absolutely love. Hit the road, Jack. All my friends call me Jack. I like just being on the road travelling, and I do an awful lot of that, being a peripatetic poet. Also, it came on the radio in Nigeria when I was travelling to try and find my birthfather's ancestral village. And it makes me think about my son because we play Ray Charles all the time and that thing of having kids and trying to pass on to them some of your musical enthusiasms. And he loves Ray Charles. I remember we went to settle him in to university and we played Ray Charles all the way down the motorway, Matthew and I in the car with all his stuff. And then on the way back, I played Ray Charles again all the way up, and the rain was going. I was just in floods of tears.

Speaker 430:30

Hit the road, Jack. Don't you come back no more, no more, no more

Speaker 430:36

And don't you come back no more?

Speaker 430:40

What you say And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more, hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more.

Speaker 430:52

Whoa woman, oh woman, don't treat me so mean You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen I guess if you say show I'd have to pack my things and go That's right, get the road jack

Presenter31:06

That was Ray Charles and Hit the Road, Jack. Jackie Kaye. Jack Kaye, as your friends call you. You grew up then, of course, listening to poetry at Burns Nights, at Pint and Poetry Nights in Suckey Hall Street. You went to those. You once said we write to understand the things that are missing in our lives. You've got a son, you've got at least three jobs, you've got a long-term partner. What is still missing? What keeps you writing?

Jackie Kay31:33

Oh god, that's such a brilliant question. I think, you know, we're often I do have, I mean, I have so much in my life and I feel very loved. And I think that that love is the thing that defines us more than anything else. Love is what gives us our identity and love is what makes us strong. But I think we're we also are often shadowed in our life by losses. We'll have lost people in different ways. And so I think that kind of strange loss becomes actually a presence. Absence becomes a presence in our life. And I think often writers write to try and grapple with the presence that absence makes.

Presenter32:16

Um your life is is so much dominated b by words.

Presenter32:22

Alone on the islands

Presenter32:24

How do you think you would be? Oh my goodness.

Jackie Kay32:27

I I uh I think the funny thing about writers is that we have to be loners in lots of ways. I like being alone. I I I don't

Jackie Kay32:35

ever feel lonely. But I'm very, very sociable. So I would have to make company of what was there. I'd have to make my imaginary friends, trees, vegetation, plants. I'd have to have week conversations with them. I probably I think it would drive me a little bit mad. Yeah, I would be scatting. I'd be singing Mississippi God Damn and I'd be roaring at the shore and at the sea waves and probably turn into just an exaggerated version of what I am already.

Presenter33:03

It's time for your final disc, Jackie K. Tell us about this, your eighths.

Jackie Kay33:07

Well this is uh Jean Redpath singing the Burns song, Green Grow the Rashizo. I think she's just got one of the most amazing voices. And this makes me think about all the Burns suppers that I used to attend as a kid in Partic Borough Leicester Hall. I used to go to these these Burns suppers and my dad would do the Immortal Memory. Maisie Hill or somebody like that would address the Haggis and it was all fantastically dramatic and I realised that there could be great drama.

Jackie Kay33:33

in Puychi and in song.

Speaker 433:36

There's nought but care on every hand, In every o' that passes o'er, For it signifies the life of man, And'tweren't the losses o'er.

Speaker 133:45

Hey.

Speaker 433:51

Green around the rush of all

Speaker 133:51

Bring the

Speaker 433:55

Green grow the rushes on The sweetest hours that ever I spend Are spent upon the losses o'er.

Presenter34:07

That was Jean Redpath singing the Robbie Burns song Green Grow the Rashes. Oh, both of us rather dabbing the corners of our moist eyes there, I think, Jackie Kay. Um I'm going to give you the books now. The Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and of course you get to take along another book to this lonely island. What will your book be?

Jackie Kay34:24

I have to take my old copy of the complete works of Burns, because Burns would make me laugh, would make me cry, would remind me of my some of my favourite songs, and it w it would remind me of all the different Burns suppers and the times that I had with my mum and dad and all the different glinting knives addressing the haggis.

Jackie Kay34:42

And, um, it would be great company for me.

Presenter34:45

That's your book, then. Of course you get a luxury, too. What will your luxury be?

Jackie Kay34:50

Well, um, my my my luxury would have to be a wee self filling hip flask of a good malt, an eily malt, um, peppery, nippy. And the the wee hip flask would just keep filling it and it would be very hip. And for the one time I'd bet get to be cool.

Presenter34:57

Uh

Speaker 134:57

Nice.

Presenter35:06

Yeah.

Jackie Kay35:06

Ha ha ha.

Presenter35:07

Uh what about one disc? If you had to save one of these from the waves, which which disk would it be?

Jackie Kay35:14

I'd have to take Chopin with me. I'd have to take a piece of music that kept on changing and shifting and changing with the weather in the Desert Island and changing with my mood, and I think that that piece would probably do it for me. Jackie Kay, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been a huge pleasure, Kirsty. Thank you.

Presenter36:12

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.