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.