Day 19 of 18

Yesterday was RBS Schools Gala Day: the very last day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The gardens were full of balloons and bunting, the blue sky was full of sunlight, and the kids themselves were full of… good behaviour, surprisingly!

When the final happy class of tiny Book Festival fans left the gardens, the site was closed for 2010, and it was time to break out the ice cream. One more exciting August of literary dedication over with; and what an August it’s been.

Audiences at the Book Festival were captivated by…

• Over 750 Book Festival participants from 50 countries
• Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Seamus Heaney
• Poets Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Keorapetse ‘Willie’ Kgositsile from South Africa
• 10 of the 13 authors long-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize
• Exclusive pre-publication readings from Seamus Heaney, Will Self and Michael Frayn
• The first appearance in Edinburgh of A S Byatt,
• The delivery of the Donald Dewar Memorial Lecture by ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling
• Launches of memoirs from Candia McWilliam, Vidal Sassoon and Nicholas Parsons
• Unbound, our innovate and electrifying ‘mini-festival’
• The unique debut authors up for our Readers’ First Book Award
• A variety of stimulating themes, including our absorbing Elsewhere theme
• Sell out events and record signing queues for children’s writers Robert Muchamore, Cressida Cowell and Julia Donaldson
• The closing of the public programme with a moving tribute to recently-deceased Scottish Makar Edwin Morgan
  

Staff at the Book Festival…

• Built a Book Festival
• Got ducks. But then they were ab-duck-ted!
• Dove into action as protestors gatecrashed the Joseph Stiglitz event
• Was infiltrated by Kate Silverton from BBC Radio 5 Live
• Was clamped for standing still for too long!
• Had our faces painted
• Dodged Jeanette Winterson’s flying oranges
• Welcomed Directors of years gone by
• Got trapped in a big orange box (er, I’ll explain later)
• On the count of “three” charged wildly in a mad stampede towards shelves of free books
• Completed a Book Festival

To sum up, one of our lovely sponsors reported to us that as she left Charlotte Square gardens on the final day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she overheard somebody say wistfully: “twelve whole months to wait”.

Wrapped Up

The final prize in our txt2win competition, an Edinburgh International Book Festival goodie bag, has been won by a lucky Bookfest Flirt.

Thanks to everyone who entered! We'll stay in touch via email.

See you again next year!

"It's that poetry again"

From Li Po, to Battlestar Gallactica, from two trees to evidence against intelligent design (his back and male genitals), Don Paterson was in sterling form on a wide variety of topics at his reading this morning. Introduced by Nick Barley, director and fan of guest poetry selector Paterson, Don started his hour long set with the lovely 'Two Trees', of Don Miguel's idea to fuse a lemon and an orange tree together, and of how those trees were split asunder. 'And trees are all this poem is about.' he ends, though it took writer and friend Will Fiennes to dissect the meaning for him, as sometimes the meaning isn't apparent to the poet till after. As with the series of elegies written after the death of his good friend the poet Michael Donaghy, as if his sub-conscious were forcing him to address his passing. He read another for the passing of Peter Porter - in a session which found itself ruminating upon death and ageing and change - glad Faber managed to complete Porter's Selected Works just in time to bike it over on the day he died. "Managed to get a smile out of him".

The whole reading was built of these meandering glimpses of insight - to a poem, to a poet, to a friend, a son, to the process - making it a hugely entertaining and revealing session. He dipped into a few aphorisms, causing much hilarity with 'Aphorism, a brief waste of time. Poetry a complete waste of time. Novel a monumental waste of time', explaining that the aphorism invites bitchiness, often about other aphorists. He wheeled back to read from the multi-award winning Landing Light, poems for his twin sons - a balanced number for each, re that contractual obligation that is the problem with twins. Told of receiving an email from Amazon, suggesting he'd like to pre-order a forthcoming book on Shakespeare's Sonnets, not yet written by himself. The paperback cover of Rain, a Rebus novella lookalike? "Here's hoping." An epithalamium for friends rewritten featuring aliens, having been inspired by the box set of Battlestar Gallactica (I refused to watch this show, so my better half's glee at Don's approbation was exaggerated). A translation of Li Po, remarking on his friend Du Fu's failed health, skinny as a nail, wan as the moon, saying 'it's that poetry again'.

So it was that poetry again, to which we turn, as Nick Barley said in his intro, to hear our experiences articulated. Stellar stuff.

Ab-duck-tion!!!

Book Festival staff - always eager for volunteers!

We were wandering along, minding our own business, when suddenly we noticed an intruder in our midst!! Here comedian and radio presenter Fred Macaulay alerts us to (the very lovely and very welcome) Kate Silverton, from BBC Radio 5 Live, who were broadcasting live from Charlotte Square gardens this morning, masquarading as one of our own!

Let's hope she's keen to man the Box Office and do some ticket-selling.

Curdle your coffee

Death, madness, suicide and cats. Dying ones. Robin Robertson's Wake up to Words session in the Highland Park Spiegeltent was, as he said himself, likely to curdle the delicious free coffee. Fellow poet, guest selector and friend Don Paterson introduced with as many flourishing words as he dared - among which the lovely 'Robin's poems translate the world into sound' - we were told the format of the event was that 'Robin will read and then he will stop.' No questions, just an hour of poetry. Heaven.

However, Robertson's poetry often revels in a vision of hell. That poor cat, his moment in the sun teed off with 'I'll read one about cats. Normally I say I don't like cats and 6 or 7 people leave the room. So I'll not do that this time.' In 'Cat, Failing', the cat is dying, with the 'shame/ of being found out'. Robertson's dreams - "another uncomfortable dream for you" - transmuted into poetry, of sexual encounters with hairy-chested witches, among other nightmares. He read one he'd written for Sean O'Brien, that he revealed - drily - O'Brien had deemed obscene. He mixed old and new; 'Donegal', a tender one for his daughter from his first collection, then a long, new sequence on Strindberg, who Robertson admires, "less for his work and more for the catastrophe of his life."

In attempting to find something cheerier, he plumped "far from it!" with a poem about a chest haemorrhage, written in haste before his friend the novelist Alan Warner (as it happened, in the same booth with us) could use the real-life episode in his next book. "It [the chest] was all open. Did you get that? Wouldn't want to send you away dissatisfied." He did read a little funny called 'The Tweed' about giving Hugh MacDiarmid a back rub, before finishing with the exquisite 'At Roane Head'; with such staggering musicality and Robertson's wonderful, sonorous voice, this was an hour filled with amazed fixed grimaces and curdled coffee, but also those fizzy head moments poetry can bring; a sensation I'm led to understand the music world calls an eargasm.

The Adventures of Petunia

Petunia. A lovely name for a lovely... trolley.

She was born in the Valley and rescued from a garden centre that had so callously deemed her “surplus to requirements”. A shadow of her former glory, Petunia left for the city to seek her fortune. Upon arrival in Scotland’s bustling capital, she was nursed back to health, spray painted gold, strewn with flowers, and welcomed with open arms into the Sponsorship Team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

There she thrived. She carried all manner of wonderous things, from wine (with which she filled herself heartily) to newspapers – and even the occasional Site Manager...

At the end of each day Petunia was parked for a well-earned rest. But this happy-go-lucky existence was not to last. One evening Petunia parked herself for the night and awoke to find herself...

... clamped!!

We explained to the dear Sponsorship trolley that anything staying still for too long at the Book Festival will eventually get clamped. Anything and anyone.

So really, Petunia shouldn't feel too bad.