This is the heart of it – a storyteller with something to talk about, people and wildlife at one with their place. Both the otter on Argyll’s Isle of Luing and storyteller Patsy Dyer in their own way express where they are. That’s the job of a storyteller, of course, because when you are is another form of where you are.

The inaugural Atlantic Islands Festival on the slate Isle of Luing – from 4th-11th July – explores the visual arts, writing, the natural environment, language and music through the prism of geopoetics – defined as being ‘concerned, fundamentally, with a relationship to the earth and with the opening of a world’.

A place like the slate islands, a place of absolute specificity side by side with timelessness could hardly have more to offer geopoetics. Worlds open endlessly here.

The programme for the festival underlines the links between the Argyll islands, with the film, Argyll’s Atlantic Islands by Isle of Kerrera director Andy Crabb setting the theme for the event on its opening day – 4th July. Then there is Jan Sutch Pickard from the Ross of Mull with writers’ night on 5th July; and the nearby Isle of Seil’s Natural History Group leading a guided walk at Ballachuan Nature Reserve on 6th July and a talk and walk on Atlantic birds and birdsong on 8th July.

Lynchpin of the festival, Normal Bissell of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, discusses the Poetics of Place in a session on 7th July and, with composer Mark Sheridan premieres their joint work, Atlantic islands Suite, a composition of music and poetry that features Gaelic singer, Margaret Bennett, fiddler Aidan O’Rourke and Lori Watson.

Many of the events make the nature of the festival manifest by weaving activity, thought and perception with the environments of the place. In their different ways two events express this very clearly – the slate sculpture competition on 8th July and the boat trip either to Belnahua or Eileach a Naoimh on either 9th or 11th, depending on the weather.

Starting a new event with an 8 day programme featuring more than 40 sessions could be described as ambitious or certifiable. In its exploratory and unhurried pace it is certainly confident of the depths that are in all of us, given the chance to release them.

Being at this festival will introduce you to a place in a wide variety of creative and expressive ways. It may also introduce you to yourself.

The photographs above are from the Atlantic Islands Festival website and are reproduced here by permission. They show storyteller, Patsy Dyer (top), with Jamie Whittle from Findhorn (left) and Richard Wesley from Seil (right).

• Jamie Whittle is taking a session marrying his first book White River with geopoetics.
• Richard Wesley is Chair of the Seil Natural History Group which has recently completed a Community Wildlife Garden at Seil Island Hall. This will feature in the Beechgrove Garden television programme on Wednesday 8th July on BBC1.

Related Posts

• Luing’s first Atlantic Islands Festival already a serious success (1)
• Argyll’s Atlantic Islands on the move (2)
• Luing’s Atlantic Islands Festival – connecting people to place (1)
• BBC Beechgrove Garden features Seil Community’s Drill Hall Garden tonight (2)
• The (Homecoming) Flight of the Arctic Tern (1)

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