A Day Out at Wigtown Book Festival 2024, with a Spotlight on New Authors,  Regenerative Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence

Together  with John Atkinson and Glen Stanfield, I was a guest at  the Spotlight on New Authors, hosted by Open Book, as part of the Wigtown Book Festival 2024. It was a small event, the venue by no means overwhelmed, but the readings, ten minutes each, and the subsequent discussion, made for a very enjoyable hour. Contributory to this was the mix of genres, John, a poet, a lover of  Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas; and Glen, a writer of crime fiction, his hero, or greatest influence perhaps, Terry  Pratchett and not —  as I hinted in my question to him later, Lee Child, who he doesn’t really like. Then there was my own offering, an extract from my memoir, Remembered Fragments, recalling a night out with a gang of Irish navvies to celebrate the end of my short spell labouring on the construction of a link from the M4 to the town of Reading. Much drink was taken. “When a mug full of vodka was handed to me, I realised the evening had just begun.”

John will shortly publish a book of poems with Drunk Muse Press, edited by Hugh McMillan. Glen is on his fifth novel and obviously has a loyal fan base. The discussion at the conclusion of the readings, which could easily have fallen flat, somehow took off and became diverse and interesting. Everything from Obliquity — the title of one of John’s poems, concerning the tilt of the earth, so vital to our seasonal variations — to desperate stories of human trafficking, the raw material for Glen’s most recent book, Out of Darkness. And then there was my own turn to field questions; “What would my next book be?”  A reflection, perhaps, — I extemporised — on  the divisive character of our education system: how it works so well for some but is an unfulfilling trial for others.  I argued that these distinct experiences have marked us all deeply and fed the political polarisation which is abroad in our culture. As Glen put it succinctly at the conclusion of my ramblings: “One size does not fit all.”

I thank the organisers of the Wigtown Book Festival for providing this opportunity for locally based writers and the two ladies from the United States, airbnb proprietors of Open Book for just a week, for being such welcoming hosts. 

While the event itself was a rewarding experience, my attempts to gain visibility for my book in local bookshops were less successful. I tried several and explained that I had been a participant in the Spotlight event.  Would they be willing to take a few copies of my book on a sale-or-return basis?  The answer in each case was a polite refusal. I am aware that new writing is a very mixed bag, not in general a great commercial proposition and much of it will be forgotten before the year is out. But surely the organisers of the Festival could organise some bookshop space for the display and, who knows, even the sale of the work of our local aspirant writers. At the very least those featured in the Spotlight event deserve this opportunity.

To be fair, my investigation into the matter did generate a number of sympathetic conversations, and I was not so cast down by my refusals as to be unable to enjoy the rest of the day.  This, for me,  involved first of all, a coffee with Brian, who really ought to be blogging about his former life amongst the Inuit in the Hudson Bay area of Canada; his life long love of nature and the hills of Galloway and Scotland; his expeditions to Nepal to help with the building of a school and his more recent incarnation as a tour guide in the Himalayas, Sri Lanka and other places of which I only dream. He had chosen to defer his walk on the Merrick to hear me read.  

And then it was off to the County Buildings to hear Tom Heap being interviewed, intelligently I thought, by Andy Cassell, about his book Landsmart. This  champions the idea of regenerative agriculture. Inevitably, the subject of the proposed National Parks came up. “They’re a bit of red herring,” he said. “Unlike US national parks, they are not very good for nature as the land is still in private ownership.” He moved on to wind farms: “They don’t really take up a lot of space, unless you include the visual impact!”  He’s clear: we need major investment in the electricity grid and will just have to accept more pylons. He thought the money spent by the Tory Government on HS2 was squandered and should have been invested in our renewable infrastructure. As he signed my copy of his book I asked him about George Monbiot’s Regenesis, a more full on challenge to agriculture and, indeed, a challenge to our entire culture. “I’m not a polemicist,” said Tom Heap. “I’m a pragmatist.”  He paused to return my copy of his book and added, wanly: “But he sells more books than me.”

 At the same venue,  next up was Nigel Toon, to talk about his book How AI Thinks. His presentation, to a full house, was distinguished by both humour and clarity. There is a choice, he  suggested: “Are we going to make eight billionaires richer or are we going to make eight billion people richer?…We are the humans in charge of this stuff!” At question time, someone asked him when AI would make it possible to have a conversation with dolphins — apparently AI is helping to decode the communication which takes place between female dolphins and their calves.  Nigel smiled and opined that dolphins would probably not have much interest in communication with us. But then he dropped in a statistic that might have pleased George Monbiot.  “90% of all biology on earth is driven by us. Only 10% are dolphins.”  It was a slightly cryptic observation in which I think, the 10% of dolphins stands for all the surviving  species left living wild while the other 90% represents the  species displacement which has taken place in order to feed us all a meat based diet.  

Both events were brilliant, by the way, but daunting. I just don’t know when I’m going to find the time to read all these books that I have bought.

Notes and References

• 1] John Atkinson   https://www.wigtownbookfestival.com/library/hello-stranger-poems-7 
• 2] Glen Stansfield  https://www.glenrstansfield.co.uk/ 
• 3] Tom Heap talking about his book Landsmart on the Guardian farmers podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02xYQiJ0eBI 
• 4] Nigel Toon, talking about his book on Macro Hive  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02xYQiJ0eBI 
• 5] Open Book  – A bookshop holiday  
• 6] Proofreading assistance from CHATGPT