A lot has happened since my last blog post. I’ve been to North Carolina, Germany, the Western Isles, Jura and Abriachan, Geopoetics has been flourishing worldwide, there have been significant changes in the Isle of Luing Community Trading Company and Community Trust and we’re in the middle of the longest heatwave anyone on the island anyone can remember.

I’m grateful to Argyll & Bute Councillor Julie McKenzie, two former Councillors and others for their expressions of support about the concerns I raised about bullying and harassment in some social enterprises in my last blog. The good news is that those directly responsible for this unacceptable behaviour have since resigned and a new Development Manager began work in March 2018. As a result, many members of the Luing community have started to use the Atlantic Islands Centre again and to attend its events, and some volunteers have become involved again. A varied events programme is being developed once more, a new cook has joined the Centre staff and improved lunch and Saturday evening menus are being offered. Those who have brought about these changes fully deserve the support of the Luing community and visitors.

However, there is a lot of work to be done for the Centre to become the kind of successful community hub it was in its first year of operation when two national and one Argyll and Bute awards were won. Some of those who went along with the damaging behaviour in the past are still involved and unfortunately there has been no real discussion with Trust members of what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future. Of course, discussing these matters openly isn’t easy in a small community, but unless some way is found to do so, I can’t see how confidence in the Trust will be fully restored and the Centre will become the success story it deserves to be.

I won’t consider devoting anything like the volunteer time and effort I previously gave to the Trust and the Centre so long as these matters remain unresolved. I’ve found it much more beneficial to focus my attention on my own writing and the work of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics. The Expressing the Earth Geopoetics Conference held at Seil Island Hall and elsewhere in Argyll last June was a watershed in the development of geopoetics in Scotland and has led to many new members joining and becoming active in its work.

The first Tony McManus Geopoetics Lecture and our AGM in Edinburgh in November were well attended and a Stravaig online journal editorial group of 5 members was elected. Its next issue will soon be available online.

The Argyll Geopoetics Conference also led to an invitation to me to give a keynote address on Geopoetics, Land and Cultural Renewal at the annual Wordfest literary festival in Asheville, North Carolina along with Alastair McIntosh, the well-known community land activist. Our talks in April were well attended and led to a lively discussion on setting up an American Geopoetics network at a meeting attended by 30 people at 9 am on a Sunday morning which you can watch here.
Geopoetics Appalachia has now been established and is developing a wide-ranging programme of indoor and outdoor activities in USA. You can follow it on and on its website.

Much closer to home was our Highland Stravaig at the end of May which was organised by our Assistant Director Mairi McFadyen along with the Moniack Mhor Writers Centre and the Abriachan Forest Trust. A guided walk round part of the Forest Trail celebrated its 20 years of community ownership and more outdoor learning took place when we visited the places where writers Jessie Kesson and Katharine Stewart lived and were inspired. See more here.

The following week I gave a talk on Kenneth White and the Development of Geopoetics in Scotland at the Kenneth White Conference held in Glasgow and Edinburgh which was organised by the Existentialist Philosophy and Literature Network based at the University of Glasgow. It was good to meet up with Kenneth and Marie-Claude White again and to make new connections with some of those actively involved in geopoetics in France and Switzerland. Some videos and images from the event are here.

This extended period of warm, sunny weather on Luing has coincided with some very positive feedback I’ve had on the manuscript of my novel I Want to Live and I’m looking forward to receiving word back from publishers about its publication. In June I enjoyed a memorable visit to Barnhill on Jura with George Orwell’s son Richard Blair and other members of the Orwell Society and learnt more about the place where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I even helped bring out the skeletal remains of his motorbike from the byre where it lay after being abandoned for some seventy years when he went into hospital never to return.

It was a marvellous weekend in great company and has convinced me even more that Orwell’s last years are a story that must be told.