As we celebrate forty years, 40 ÷ 40 is a retrospective exhibition of artwork by forty artists who have been significant to An Lanntair. Ian Stephen’s artwork ‘The more the echoes’, is a language based piece based on conversations with the inshore fishing communities of Mull and Iona.
In this workshop, Ian will speak about the process involved in the development of this artwork, and invite the group to build poetry or prose from objects, memories and remembered conversations. Bring with you an object or photograph, or a resonant phrase from a remembered conversation, which has significance in your life.
The workshop will be held in An Lanntair’s gallery.
‘All-together good lifting signals being transmitted’ wrote Seamus Heaney in a letter to Dangaroo Press, the international publisher of Ian Stephen’s first (1983) collection of poems ‘Malin, Hebrides, Minches’ – a collaboration with photographer and film-maker Sam Maynard. An Lanntair’s 40 . 40 show has Maynard and Stephen side by side again.
Since then Ian has been publishing poems, fiction and nonfiction and engaged in multi-arts project in many countries. ‘Adrift – new and selected poems’ was published by Periplum, Olomouc with parallel text translations in Czech by Bob Hysek, funded by The British Council, in 2007. Stephen represented the Hebrides in the Edinburgh Book Festival reading ‘Poems from Small Islands’, following a week’s retreat when poets from Cyprus to Lewis translated each other’s work. He went on to represent Scotland in Canada as part of the Scottish Poetry Library’s 2014 ‘Commonwealth Poets United’ project. A residency in Tasmania and friendship with poet and comparer of islands, Pete Hay, widened his range of comparisons of landscape and culture to that of his home territory.
His travels across art-forms include his film-poetry being included in ‘Running Time’ –Scottish Art Film, in the Dean Gallery Edinburgh, 2011, as well as being the first artist in residence at StAnza Poetry Festival. He was also one of the three main partners in the ‘Green Waters’ exhibition and pocketbook project, curated by Alec Finlay, linking with Ian Hamilton Finlay and Graeme Rich and a contributor to the 50th Venice Biennale. Many of his explorations in poetry were first published in the eclectic range of collaborations of Alec Finlay’s Morning Star Publications.
He is a regular contributor to the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. His extended meditation of the forms of vessels and stories, ‘Waypoints’ (Bloomsbury, 2016) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish nonfiction book of the year. A study of the vessels of Scotland, ‘Boatlines, Birlinn March 2023 also discusses the maritime culture bound up with generations of boatbuilding.
Stephen is the author of the work described as ‘an anti-novel’ by poet Marius Kociejowski. ‘A Book of Death and Fish’ (Saraband, 2014) was a book of the year in The Guardian (Robert Macfarlane), The Herald (Candia McWiliam) and Glasgow Review of Books (Graeme Macrae Burnet).
“A book of scope and heart – each nuance, each story woven in to clear, native integrity. A spell-binder coast to coast.”
Alexander Hutchison, Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year for ‘Bones and Breath’, Salt Publishing, 2013
But Stephen’s writing and artworks have always been as concerned with the land and its peoples as with the sea, as was shown in his contribution to Carcanet’s 2013 ‘Oxford Poets’ anthology. ‘Where the stories lie’ – accepted by Acair – is part travelogue, part memoir. It argues that weird but unchanging world stories have proven more reliable than many borders, many treaties.
Ian has always enjoyed delivering workshops linked to projects. This one will give some of the background story behind the work on show and encourage writing prompted by objects which hold memories.