The 'Great Edinburgh poem': a makar's search for the heart of a city
The first firecracker in my inbox was a commission to write what could be termed my 'Great Edinburgh Poem'. A daunting task at the best of times. Season into that, this commission coming from Edinburgh City of Lit to mark their 20 year anniversary as the world's first UNESCO City of Literature. Lurking in the undertow, an even more grandiose celebration that called for some poetic cap-doffing – that being Edinburgh's turning 900-years-old as a city full stop. Having grown up in the Portobello area of Edinburgh, and also serving as the Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University, the stakes were immediately set high.
Read more in our series The Future of Edinburgh:
Edinburgh is a complex beast, abstruse and arcane, hidden Closes and summer rain. I love it, it hurts me, I'm so, so grateful to have been wombed and raised here. All the same, it's a risky pursuit, there's no way of my poem ever being everything to everyone. My idea was to quest off on a safari to track down where the Edinburgh's heart might be cooring down – places that chimed and chirruped for me came reeking in younger years nostalgia, alongside them sat some of the more trophistic symbols of the city. My list includes: The Portobello Bookshop, The Mosque Kitchen, Sampson's Ribs, The Sheep Heid Inn Skittle Alley, Jack Kane Sport Centre, National Library of Scotland, and, yup, Edina Castle.
In the end, it came back to people, that is Edinburgh for me – the denizens who dwell here: whether generations deep or in their city-living infancy. I'd always wanted to write a poem that dissolved into a list of names of many people I love. And so I did.
In order to amplify that multi-authored, multi-perspective, global vibe, we enlisted a gaggle of Edinburgh College of Art animators, from 12 plus different countries, to respond to sections of the poem. Together they brewed a stunning fandango of a film, widening the narration and the lens.
Upon its grand unveiling, amongst the deluge of soppy sentiments, applause, and zealous plaudits there was, of course, a few cries of 'drivel' and 'talentless to compared to X', but perhaps that's as it should be (another canny demonstration of Edina's rich vagaries). I should say, all the more gnarly comments were on Twitter/X, and I've since left.
Michael Pedersen (Image: Shaun Murawki)
For Edinburgh International Book Festival moving into his new home at Edinburgh Futures Institute – the former Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion and Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh – I wrote a piece entitled Wards on the Wards. This was a tribute to my lovely mum, who had trained as a maternity nurse on these very corridors in her late teens/early twenties. In order to assist, she rushed off to retrieve her nurse's notebooks containing the names of all the babies she cared for during her last few shifts there – annotations of jaundice, broken hips, mucus-filled lungs, and blue babies, haunting the healthier crop of younglings she helped into the word. The poem issues a sizeable swoon at her doing so much so young, nerves wringing and left alone to save these baby lives. Wow. It ends with a meditation on my mum growing older and the hefty task of keeping up the work the garden takes to reach full bloom; this becoming more gruelling as her body ages. It meant a lot to her, I'm so chuffed to have been able to conjure it.
Shortly after this my mum was diagnosed with cancer, it became a lot very fast, all-consuming, and though she's now recovering well there's still hurdles ahead, and we had to have those life-altering chats about the worse-case scenario. I am carrying these sentiments with me into a forthcoming commission for Edinburgh University's Medical School turning 300-years-old next year, paying tribute to all the young doctors and nurses they've propelled off into the world, especially those that volley towards our NHS. What a gift.
Another commission that reverberated through me when approached was to sculpt something for the Samaritans. I was privileged to write a poem about reaching out for hope in times of despair – flares of light cast into the gathering dark. I think of lighthouses flinging out their beams to offer courage and safety to rope the way home. Edinburgh bridges are as robust and beautiful as they are eerie and dangerous. This commission would help catapult their new tartan range, SamariTartan, out into the world. Of course, I think of the cherished friend I lost, Scott Hutchison, in crafting these words. The gargantuan absence his leaving flings across this city in which our friendship was born and burgeoned.
Edinburgh is full of ghosts, we carry the anchors of our greatest losses into even the happiest of moments. Yet, trilling above the loss, this city feels thronging with the spectres of magical memories, the splendour of the past – that's what Scott really is to me (warm and wonderous).
Reflecting on Edinburgh, Neu! Reekie! comes fast to mind, the lustre we fomented here, over ten plus years of unfurling literary events upon the city. I co-founded Neu! Reekie! with Rebel Inc's Kevin Williamson, and down the line we were joined by photographer, Kat Gollock, and music-maker/FiniTribe diva, Davie Miller. Together we hosted hundreds of arts extravaganzas curating take-overs for the likes National Museums of Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, EIF, EIFF, EIBF, & more. Yet at the core of it was our grassroots shows in Summerhall, Pilrig Church, Limited Ink, Leith Theatre, Leith St Andrew's, and the Scottish Books Trust.
Scotland's premiere avant-garden noisemakers, Neu! Reekie! left a gap, a gulf, a lacuna, that I don't think has been fully filled, despite a truly sublime number of new nights and festivals upping their game. We're always jostled by punters in pubs that it's time to bring it back, but I doubt that will ever happen. Neu! Reekie! answered a clarion call for something as artistically enriching as it was rambunctious, but so much of the momentum came from growing, evolving, and outdoing ourselves, taking new challenge by the horns. A comeback, having climbed so high, seems to lack the gonzo spirit of it all, expectations would already be soaring, it'd need to be something jaw-dropping.
I turn instead to the artists inhabiting the city now, ploughing their own furrow, and hope to be one of this clan. Those makars striving to make the city a more vibrant, progressive, powerful, intriguing, kinder, and fairer place, some simply by doing what they do so brilliantly. To name a few choice denizens: Young Fathers, Nadine Shah, Mark Cousins, Val McDermid, Emun Elliott, Withered Hand, Irvine Welsh, Sarah Muirhead, Kevin Harman, and Jonathan Freemantle.
Whereas I arrived into the Edinburgh Makar role a tad worried about the carousel of commissions I might be riding in on, it's been quite the opposite. These commissions have been creative enzymes, gusto giving galvanisers. My poem for Edinburgh is called Be More, Edinburgh. It's an encouragement, nay prod in the ribs, that as well as celebrating this city, that holds my heart so dearly, I have to ensure that I'm one of those insisting it doesn't waiver in doling out its precious succour – at home and afar! That it supports our charities and protesters, and casts out its own muckle beam – a luminous bolt of welcome kilted into the sky. Some might say I didn't push hard enough, I'll be thinking on that, there's time yet.
Michael Pedersen is a Scottish poet, author and spoken word performer. Alongside his writing, he co-founded the Edinburgh arts collective Neu! Reekie! which existed from 2010 to 2022. He is the current Edinburgh Makar and writer-in-residence at The University of Edinburgh
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