Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer, Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle, Chancellor of Salford University, and Scotland's Makar (Poet Laureate).
On the island
Eight records
I just imagined a man that made her nice things to eat in the kitchen
Lee Wilkof and Michael Mulheren
I love the lyrics of this. It's just so much fun.
Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie
It just blew my mind being able to hear her. I could have reached out and touched her.
It's a protest song. She wrote it herself, outraged at the death of the schoolgirls in the church in Alabama.
If I was on my desert island it would lift my heart and I'd be singing along with it
Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65Favourite
Martha Argerich and Mstislav Rostropovich
I really love the way that the cello and the piano talk to each other.
I like just being on the road travelling, and I do an awful lot of that, being a peripatetic poet.
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 conversation
Presenter asks
1:46Why do you think we turn to the words of strangers at the most difficult times in our lives?
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.
Presenter asks
2:36What would you say to people who think poetry is not for them?
I've become all evangelical. 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 love it if people would just just come and just just take a risk.
Presenter asks
7:15Did you talk to your parents about the racism you experienced from teachers?
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... And I remember finding it profoundly upsetting at seven.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
because Burns would make me laugh, would make me cry, would remind me of [some of] my favourite songs … and it would remind me of all the different Burns suppers and the times that I had with my mum and dad.
The luxury
a wee self filling hip flask of a good malt whisky
a wee self filling hip flask of a good malt … and for the one time I'd bet get to be cool.
Presenter asks
11:32Is it true that every birthday your mother would not just celebrate your birthday, but also talk about your birth mother to you on your birthday?
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.
Presenter asks
15:30Tell me more about this angry young black lesbian who lost her sense of humour.
Yeah, I remember I went to university and then I became very feminist... 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. ... it gave me back my sense of humour meeting Audrey Lard.
Presenter asks
24:12You open the book with this tragicomic encounter with your birth father. How would you describe it?
Yes, I think that's pretty close to the mark, Kirsty. ... 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 that went on for two and a half hours... at the end of the day I felt not properly known.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I think we're we also are often shadowed in our life by losses. ... Absence becomes a presence in our life. And I think often writers write to try and grapple with the presence that absence makes.”