Top Left Corner Celebrates Norman MacCaig's Centenary

A new initiative to support creativity in Assynt, in the north-west highlands of Scotland, will kick start with a poetry competition to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Norman MacCaig this year. The celebration, run by the new community company Top Left Corner, will be launched at 10.30am on Friday 7 May 2010 at the Ullapool Book Festival.

Mandy Haggith, founding director of Top Left Corner, said, “Top Left Corner has been set up to encourage people, near and far, to be inspired by the glorious landscape of this remote area and to celebrate the creativity of people here. Norman MacCaig’s poems about Assynt are vibrant, and often funny, helping us look afresh at what he called ‘this most beautiful corner of the land’. We hope lots of people will take him as an inspiration, write a new poem and send it in to the competition.” 

The poetry competition is sponsored by Hi-Arts and will be judged by Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and a notable poet, with Sandy Moffat, former head of the Glasgow Arts School and co-author of ‘Arts of Resistance’. As well as cash prizes, the overall winner of the poetry competition will be invited to join the judges and the community of Assynt in a week-long celebration of the centenary, which will be held from 6-13 November 2010.

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) was one of Scotland’s best-loved poets. He wrote much of his most popular poems in and about Assynt, where he spent many of his summers. As well as the poetry competition, the centenary of his birth will be marked by a week of walks and talks in Assynt, a ceilidh in Lochinver Hall on Friday 12 November, workshops for school children and teachers, a new selection of his poems to be published by Birlinn Books, a BBC documentary, a poetry-map and an exhibition of art at An Talla Solais, in Ullapool, responding to his poems.

Top Left Corner is a new community interest company, formed in March 2010. It is a local arts enterprise that aims to bring people together in Assynt to create written and other artworks. It has evolved from writing retreat weeks that have been run at Glencanisp Lodge, near Lochinver, over the past four years. The new company will continue to run retreat weeks for writers and other creative people, and has a programme of six weeks over the coming year (26 June – 3 July, 11-18 September, 30 October – 6 November, 6-13 November, 8-15 January, 26 March-2 April).  Top Left Corner also organises weekend writing, arts and crafts workshops in Assynt.

Mandy Haggith said, “Top Left Corner is a new enterprise and we have lots of ideas and great ambitions. We are determined to find ways for local people to get real benefits from the arts. We have some exciting ideas for helping visitors to Assynt to discover the cultural riches of this wonderful place, including artistic interpretations of the natural and social history and using new technology to entertain and intrigue. Above all we want to encourage creativity.”

Details of the poetry competition and other Top Left Corner activities can be found at www.topleftcorner.org
For more information contact Mandy Haggith
hag@topleftcorner.org
Phone: 01571 844020
Mobile: 07734 235704