Last month, we reported the death, far too soon, of our secretary Gail Riekie, and we promised ourselves a longer tribute would follow.The plain facts of Gail’s membership of the Pushing Out the Boat team are simple. She became our secretary in 2016 and served us diligently until pancreatic cancer was discovered in Autumn 2024 and took cruel and rapid control of her body. She was also a trustee of our charity. In a small group of volunteers, which is what we are, you can give someone a job title. But the truth is that the effective colleague turns their hand to many things, and Gail did, with goodwill and only the occasional wry smile at the shortcomings of others.

One of Gail’s tasks was giving the good news to contributors who had their submissions to the magazine accepted. She asked them to provide a 30-word biography to include in the magazine. If they complied with the brief, and on time, collating their contributions was easy enough. Alas, a minority not only needed chasing to deliver, but would offer up 45, 70 or more words with the glib advice ‘Feel free to edit’, or worse, ‘You can find my biography on my website’. Undaunted, Gail distilled the essence from these offerings, cutting the words, though never the authors and artists, down to size.

Gail’s brother Max and his family organised a celebration of Gail’s life on 24 January in Aberdeen that brought home to us how wide-ranging her talents and interests were. She was not only a scientist and a geologist with a long career in the oil industry, but also a lover of nature, a keen walker and even keener lifelong cyclist, a speaker of German, a former chair of an Amnesty group, a family historian (Nottingham-born, she described how she’d found family graves in Fife’s St Monans kirkyard), and a dog owner, latterly of her fox terriers Bertie and then Nobby. Nobby joined our last meeting that Gail was able to attend in October, via Zoom, sitting patiently and poignantly with her on the sofa as she watched our proceedings at a distance.

And so we come full circle to Pushing Out the Boat’s purpose – giving a platform to fine writing and art, especially from but not confined to North East Scotland. It was through first Bertie’s and then Nobby’s blog (Nice Nobby, Naughty Nobby) that we came to know Gail was also a photographer and writer, albeit in the furry guises of Bertie and Nobby.

What her many friends from those other parts of her life may not know is that Gail also wrote poetry. She submitted (anonymously, as everyone does) a poem for the next issue of our magazine. It is a fine and touching piece, and we’re pleased to say it will be published along with much other fine writing and art, in May.

We feel privileged to have known and worked with Gail and count her as a friend. She was a kind and gentle person, perceptive and calmly efficient, and always interesting to talk to. She will be sorely missed by us all.

In the meantime, we cannot do much better than quote words read by Gail’s friend Yvonne Millman at the celebration of her life, from the poem I, may I rest in peace by Yehuda Amichai:

I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair.

A workshop ‘Writing Creatively about the Sea’

This workshop was delivered on 25 July at Fittie Community Hall as a collaboration between Pushing out the Boat and Shane Strachan in Aberdeen’s Festival of the Sea. Pushing Out the Boat prose panellist Blair Center reflects on the evening.

The first thing coming to you when you step inside from a bright summer’s night is Fittie Community Hall’s fresh smell. Situated in the narrow, picturesque streets of the former fishing community on Aberdeen’s shore, the hall was the perfect spot for two and a half hours of creative fun, sharing and discussing experiences, art, and writing in response to aquatic themes.

It was in this tranquil setting that we approached our workshop leader’s challenge: ‘When was the time the sea first erupted into your life?’—a dramatic question.

The moment which immediately came to my mind was my first trip to the Bullers of Buchan in 2011. My parents had taken me to see that part of the coast, which I had recently read about. I remember being stirred by the bleak unforgiving wind and the dark, deep blotches on waves spitting roughly against walls of rock. Even now, on railway journeys south looking at the sea through a crowd of steep rock bodies which echo with gulls perched on each rib, I feel that same awe and sunken feeling resurface.

Shane in his element

Shane’s question led us to delve inwards for reflective discussion. He had already told us of his own connection to the sea as a Buchan loon whose forebears and contemporaries have continuously sought sustenance beyond the land. We learned  that our own connections to the sea were diverse — local, regional, and international, secular and religious, consistent and changing. The point was even raised that those experiences mirror the world’s seas: spread across the globe!

Attendees deep in thought

Relationships surrounding locality and generational changes arose in the work we discussed and shared, from Shane himself, from participants, and from writers invoked from beyond the workshop. Shane referenced George Bruce’s  ‘Kinnaird Head’, which ends with the powerful, reverential line ‘You yield to history nothing.’ Strachan meditated on that line and Bruce’s later work and the relationship between intoxicating self-belief in youth, as though one were indestructible, and, by contrast, erosions that can come with the climate of age and the tide of time.

Shane also treated us to a reading from ‘Dreepin’, one of the oil-oriented spoken-word staples from his latest collection Dwams, and his short story, ‘Ketea’. In ‘Ketea’, a juvenile minke whale, disoriented in a harbour, finds sympathy from some locals. But then they ponder the cold sentiment that ‘in the aul days when whaling was the done thing round the coast at Peterheid, [their] ancestors would’ve been happy enough to harpoon the beast so why should anybody be greeting and girning now?’ The thought brings an abrupt quiet and grim contemplation.

Shane’s careful selection of literary and artistic works threaded throughout the workshop was both pleasurable and enriching; He provided a humble homage to North-East poetic predecessors while also shining a light on contemporary creations and concerns, all achieved while illuminating his own creative processes.

After rich conversations, Shane invited us to select an image from a number he provided and to write something prompted by it, which we later shared with each other. We delved into images in various media and styles with subjects depicting different themes, industries, landscapes, and landmarks.

I found myself inspired by Survival Suit Figure — Front Pose, a drawing by Sue Jane Taylor in Aberdeen Art Gallery.  Contemplating it, I realised topics we had discussed earlier mirrored or ran parallel to those most often placed at the centre of my own work – the relationship between humanity and environment, region, and what identity might mean for an individual in these contexts. The workshop inspired me to pivot my creative attention not only to the implications of experiences in North-East industrial cultures which evoke longevity and heritage  such as farming, fishing, and paper manufacturing, but also the contemporary context which I had only occasionally touched upon without much focus in my work – oil, energy, and the tide of transition.

Thanks to Shane for working with us and for delivering such a wonderful workshop, and to the attendees and Aberdeen City Council, Fittie Community Development Trust, and Open Road for making the workshop possible.

The faces behind the decision making: meet the Pushing Out the Boat panellists

As you (hopefully) know, Pushing Out the Boat are in the midst of taking in submissions for our 18th Issue, set for publication in Spring 2025. The team are excited to see your poetry, prose and art contributions rolling in, and thought we’d take the opportunity to introduce some of the people who will be judging them.

With just over a month until submissions to Pushing Out the Boat Issue 18 close, our panellists are beginning the meticulous process of selecting pieces for publication. Perhaps you’ve already submitted some work, or you’re in the process of refining it before sending it our way – or maybe this blog post will be the motivation you need to get started!

Five of our panellists have kindly answered some questions about themselves and their roles, as well as providing some hearty encouragement for those considering submitting.

Susie Hunt, Art panellist

Founder of North East Open Studios, Susie Hunt is firmly grounded in the Aberdeen and Shire art scene. Now an Honorary Member of the Aberdeen Artists Society, she has served on their council for twenty years. She speaks of a “lifelong dedication to creativity for herself and others” – something which spurs her involvement with organisations such as Pushing Out the Boat.

A Festival of the Sea and a magazine called Pushing Out the Boat. A match made in heaven, no?
 
Regular readers will know our magazine’s name is a play on the English language idiom for generosity or extravagance [very appropriate – ed.].

But located where we are on North-East Scotland’s coast, we can’t avoid featuring a lot of great writing and art that relates one way or another to matters maritime. The cover of our latest issue, Harbour by Orla Stevens, makes the point.

So we couldn’t resist volunteering for a slot in the community programme at Aberdeen’s 2024 Festival of the Sea, a precursor to the return of the Tall Ships’ Race to the city in 2025. Which is why a near-capacity audience gathered in the Footdee* community hall on a balmy July Saturday evening to hear a selection of our contributors read poems and short stories about ‘The Power of the Sea’.

We’d identified contributors whose work in Pushing Out the Boat related one way or another to the sea and invited them to read their work at the event. In an act of rough justice essential when multiple readers are involved, we asked prose authors to limit themselves to a five-minute slot each (thanks for complying, people), but invited poets to read a second poem that was marine-related, if they had one on the stocks.

The result was a rich mix of words, from work brought to vivid life by a mere glimpse of distant sea, through poignant humour, to deep thoughts about the state of the world and full-blown horror. It would be invidious to highlight individual contributions at the expense of others. Suffice it to say that the whole was blended into a perfectly balanced programme by our MC for the evening, Peter Burnett. You can see a full list of readers, everything they read, and its availability at the end of this post.

Thanks to those attending who gave us feedback on the evening:

a lovely event, really enjoyed it

a great evening and I very much enjoyed participating. It’s not often that we get such a good crowd for events like this

 an excellent event which I thoroughly enjoyed. Well organised, well compered, well attended and an interesting variety of powerful writing

a very supportive atmosphere, and

I love Fittie … what a fine community hall.

And of course, our thanks to everyone who joined us for a great event, and to Lesley Anne of Open Road Ltd who invited us to take part in the Festival of the Sea community programme.

Dorothy Baird, Alistair Lawrie, Peter Burnett (MC), Nicola Furrie Murphy, Don Taylor, Morag Smith, Heather Reid, Bernard Briggs, Martin Walsh and David Ewen (left-right)

* Note for non-Aberdonians. Footdee is the posh Sunday name for the 19^th century planned village originally built for fishing families and tucked between Aberdeen beach, the entrance to our city’s harbour, and the oil-related quays and docks that surround it. Universally known as ‘Fittie’, how we say it is a perfect example of our own Scots’ dialect, the Doric.

Everything read at the event.

Dorothy Baird

The Complexity of Simplicity. Pettiwick Bay, August 19^th 2022 (poem from Issue 17)
Barra Ferry (poem from Dorothy’s collection ‘Mind the Gap’ published by Indigo Dreams Publishing).

Bernard Briggs

Darcie (poem from Issue 17)
Mother’s Lace (poem from Issue 9)

David Ewen

Backwater (extract from a short story in Issue 15)

Alistair Lawrie

Switherin (Harbour of Refuge) (poem from Issue 16)
Uncle Jim (the first  part of a two part poem of that name in Alistair’s collection Caal Cries, available from the Drunk Muse Press)

Nicola Furrie Murphy

Blue Egg (poem from Issue 17)
True Colours (poem written for this event. As yet unpublished but subsequently read by Nicola at Stonehaven’s Wee Gaitherin 2024)

Heather F Reid

Whatever the Sea Brings (short story from Issue 8)

Morag Smith

Swim (poem published in Issue 16 and later included in Morag’s anthology ‘Daughters, Wives, Resilient Lives’, available by messaging her via her Facebook page)
This Summer (poem published in Issue 17)

Don J Taylor

The Sneck (condensed version of Don’s short story published in Issue 17)

Martin Walsh

Martin read from his short story Walrus on the pushing Out the Boat website, kindly donated by him as part of our 2022 fundraiser (donations still welcome).

He also brought copies for sale of the Lemon Ttree Writers’ latest anthology, Peeling Back the Years, in which a chapter from a novella of his appears. Copies available here.