Poets Fixing the World, A Graphic Novelist, A Pioneering  Musician with Roots in the Scottish Folk Tradition; and a Path of Slime

Just the other day, I was talking with a friend about the challenges of appreciating poetry.  

I think it’s fair to say that we both come into a category that can struggle with the medium. The prompt for this discussion was my attendance at an event in  the 2026 Kirkcudbright Book Festival showcasing the work of Hexameter, a collective of six poets based in Dumfries and Galloway.  They have just published a collection of their work, 6 by Six. 

On the cover of this volume, Hugh McMillan, a poet of significance in his own right, reviews the work and says: “It’s an important collection; not just for Galloway.” 

I was suggesting to my friend that sometimes hearing poets read their work can be a more reliable way of making a connection with it than encountering it on the page. But then, I recalled a story from the event which makes it clear that even poets may find the appreciation of poetry a challenge.  

Peter Roberts, introducing his poem Oranienberg, described how he had attended a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  “As usual” he said, “when in attendance at a Shakespeare play, I fell asleep.”  

He went on to tell us, however, that when he awoke, the first line he heard was: “The night is long which never finds the day.”  That line was to become the epigraph to the poem he then read us. It is a response to a visit to Oranienberg, a town inextricably bound up with the presence, in one of its sub-districts, of a Nazi Concentration Camp, Sachsenhausen. “I’m caught by a thought,” says Peter Roberts in his poem: 

                          where might people 

plant their pride in a place, so normal,

yet eclipsed by another name, test bed

of mass murder’s technologies, HQ

of its bureaucracy: Sachsenhausen.

Enough, perhaps to be ordinary,

living in light spreading beyond the dark.

I have to say, my own appreciation of Shakespeare – and indeed, poetry in general – very much fits the model as set out by Peter Roberts. 

Following the event, I spoke briefly to Alex Monlaur, one of the founding members of the collective. She told me that in previous poetry groups she had experienced, members were apt to shy away from critical comment on the work of others. Encouragement is all very well but Hexameter, she said, was a project designed to facilitate more critical feedback, which might improve, not just the work, but the poet. The evidence of this event and this publication, I’d say, is that the method is working. 

But then poetry is not just about product. It’s also about the process of writing and the impact this may have on the way the individual caught up in it thinks and  experiences the world.  Only a tiny fraction of the poetry written will end up being anthologised, read widely and be an inspiration  to more than just a few. Indeed this  was central to the most recent edition of the BBC Radio programme People Fixing the World, in an episode titled  The Power of Poetry.[1]  It looked at how, in Singapore, writing poetry has been incorporated into the training of physicians to help them become more empathetic in their practice; and also how, at climate change conferences, poetry is being used to summarise complex ideas and make them available to a wider audience. 

The programme, incidentally, finishes with a challenge which might be of interest to anyone with an inclination to write poetry. But before you go off and  listen, let me tell you about two other events which I was fortunate to attend at the Kirkcudbright Book Festival this year. 

The first of these involved Gerry Hassan interviewing Darryl Cunningham, who was promoting his graphic novel, Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World

I’d have to admit that I had gone to this event with no knowledge that Darryl Cunningham was a graphic artist and that his book was a graphic novel. I was expecting, and looking forward to, a more conventional biographical portrait of Musk. I soon realised this was seriously in error, but I was not disappointed. Darryl Cunningham is a creative force whose work I will look forward to discovering in the future. There is quite a lot of it by the way.  His first book, Psychiatric Tales,  draws on his time working on an acute psychiatric ward. He went on to explore  fascinations with a range of other topics. For example Billionaires describes the lives and influence of Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, and the Koch brothers.  With each new book, as Darryl explained, he becomes completely immersed in the subject, his aim always to use his extraordinary graphic creativity to complement rather than interrupt the flow of the central narrative. 

My final outing in the festival was  framed by the title:  From the revival of folk music to the new music of Martyn Bennett.  In truth, on arrival at the venue, my awareness of the musical and creative phenomenon that was Martyn Bennett, was vestigial.   Dr  Gary West,  author of  Brave New Music: The Martyn Bennett Story,   was in conversation with locally based poet, musician and children’s author, Alan McClure.   

Bennett’s story, I discovered, is more extraordinary than I could have imagined. He was a musical prodigy, steeped in the tradition of Scottish folk heritage as he was growing up.  He was a piper who busked on the streets of Glasgow to support his passage through a classical music education. He excelled in his studies to the point that he was invited to pursue a career as a classical violinist. That was not to be his future. During the  1990s he was a regular participant in the dance music scene. This experience profoundly influenced his musical development and composition. When he was not creating and playing music he developed his  love of mountains  and his passion for an outdoor life.

His final album, Grit, is a fusion of “samples of unaccompanied traditional Scottish folk singers, his own bagpipe and fiddle playing, and electronic drum beats.” [2] He was ill at the time the album was being recorded, indeed so ill that he was unable to play live in the studio.

Grit, was released in October 2003. Martyn Bennett died as a result of his illness on 30th January 2005, aged 33 years old. 

Gary West had known Martyn Bennett and admired his talent over many years and there was a focus on Bennett’s achievements at every stage of his life and on the evolution of his creativity.  But there was also, inevitably, a wistful nod to what might have been. 

Whatever your musical interests; folk, rock, dance, classical, if you are not already a fan, the music of Martyn Bennett deserves your attention. 

Before concluding, I feel the need to return briefly to Gerry Hassan’s interview with Darryl Cunningham. Right at the conclusion of the conversation, Gerry asked Darryl whether he thought Elon Musk was “evil”.  Darryl paused for a moment and thought about the question but then answered without qualification: “Yes!”  And what about Donald Trump, persisted Gerry.  “Is Donald Trump evil?” This time, no pause. “Yes!”  

Hannah Arendt spoke of “the banality of evil.” It is a phrase which evokes the footsoldiers and the lower ranks of those implicated in such malign projects as Sachsenhausen; those who were to plead: “I was just following orders” and who might rightly be designated as “so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring.” [3]  

Donald Trump, though, is in a different category. He is conspicuously absent from the fallout arising from his fantastical conceits;  he clearly has no stomach for direct observation of anything approaching suffering or deprivation – that’s just for losers.  

Yet when, in the 2024 Presidential debate, Joe Biden accused Trump of having “the morals of an alley cat,” it was a rhetorical blow that fell very far short of describing the true moral vacuum at the centre of this wannabe despot.

It is visible to all that Trump is a stranger to the truth; that he is a bully; that he is a terminally narcissistic kleptocrat; that he seeks to  befriend other kleptocrats and bullies; that he has colluded with the Netanyahu Government in the destruction of Gaza and, before the dust had even begun to settle on the tragedy, started to size up the rubble for its real estate value; that, on a whim, he toys with the future security of the world. 

This “trail of slime,” as the aforementioned Alan McClure puts it in his recent song Slug, builds a strong case that Donald Trump is  the very epitome of evil. I thank Gerry Hassan, Darryl Cunningham and the Kirkcudbright Book Festival for giving me a clearer perspective on the matter.  

Endnotes 

Hexameter will be reading from their collection 6 by Six at the Coach and Horses, Dumfries on 26th March.

Many thanks to Alan McClure for the “trail of slime,”  a phrase I have good reason to believe came to him in a dream.

Endnotes 

Hexameter will be reading from 6 by Six at the Coach and Horses, Dumfries on 26th March.

Many thanks to Alan McClure for the “trail of slime,”  a phrase I have good reason to believe came to him in a dream.

Featured image cropped from the Kirkcudbright Book Festival Facebook page – Darryl Cunningham in the Dark Arts Studio awaiting the start of his interview.

Books

A collection of poems from Hexameter Hexameter

Darryl Cunningham Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World

Gary West  Brave New Music: The Martyn Bennett Story

References

[1] People Fixing the World:  The Power of Poetry

[2] Wikipedia, Grit (Martyn Bennett Album)

[3]  [3]  Dictionary definition of “banal” sourced via Google.