Burns the Radical; Exploration
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From Ecuador to the Scottish borders: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough meets Maren Meinhardt and Graham Robb who explore the land on their doorsteps and also follow in the footsteps of others from Humboldt the naturalist and explorer to the forgotten territory of the Debatable Land. They'll be joined by novelist Natasha Pulley whose fascination with Victorian exploration and empire building is reflected in her latest novel The Bedlam Stacks which took her to Peru.
Another Burns night and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough discusses the new radical ways in which Scotlands artists and writers are approaching and getting inspired by the man who almost invented the term National Bard. Burns Unbroke is a festival designed to showcase how Robert Burns speaks to Scotland's creators today and two of the featured artists are David Mach, sculptor, installation artist and poet, and Kevin Williamson of Neu! Reekie! Williamson has been exploring how Robert Burns might have performed his own poetry while David Mach reflects on why he's still in two minds about a poet who was also a tax collector who still speaks powerfully to a Scottish present.
Graham Robb's book The Debatable Land is out in February. Maren Meinhardt's book A Longing For Wide and Unknown Things: The Life of Alexander Humboldt is published in January. Natasha Pulley The Bedlam Stacks is out now.
Burns Unbroke CONTEMPORARY ARTS INSPIRED BY ROBERT BURNS 25 JANUARY - 10 MARCH 2018 @ SUMMERHALL, EDINBURGH
Kevin Williamson Independent Minds: New Poetry from HMP Kilmarnock;
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Eleanor Rosamond Barracloff. |
| 0:34.5 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Discussion Program, which brings together |
| 0:38.9 | leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversations and debate. If you enjoy what you hear, |
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| 0:55.8 | This is the BBC. |
| 1:01.9 | Now, who wouldn't want to put their name to poetry like this? |
| 1:05.8 | You see yon burke, car de lord, |
| 1:09.7 | where struts and stares and all that. |
| 1:16.6 | Though hundreds worship at his word, he's but a coof for all that. For all that and all that, his riband star and all that. The man, o independent mind, he looks and laughs at all that. The man, oh, independent mind, he looks and laughs at all that. |
| 1:32.0 | A man's a man, rendered there by Kevin Williamson, who is fascinated by the double life |
| 1:37.7 | lived by Scotland's first national bard, more shortly. In this free thinking, we're also going |
| 1:43.6 | exploring, courtesy of three different |
| 1:46.5 | authors and their very different books. Marne Meinhardt has been following in the footsteps of the |
| 1:51.9 | great German thinker Alexander von Humboldt. Literary historian Graham Robb has been cycling |
| 1:57.6 | and walking a strange historical relic right on his own doorstep, |
| 2:02.0 | while novelist Natasha Pully brings us a magical, fantastical and not entirely a historic account |
| 2:09.6 | of two 19th century Englishmen in Catholic Inca, Peru. But first, tis burns night and just getting started in Edinburgh and continuing until |
| 2:21.2 | March the 10th, a festival of contemporary arts inspired by Robert Burns. It's called Burns |
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