Letters to the Editor

Birdsong

Apropos Lesley Harrison’s ‘Do Birds Sing?’ (PNR 284), the poet Douglas Oliver, in his novel The Harmless Building, has the seagulls overhead screaming ‘Jacques Lacan! Jacques Lacan!’ I mentioned this to a poetry researcher who was living in Brighton who retorted that the seagulls above her house were screaming ‘Melanie Klein! Melanie Klein!’

Anthony Barnett

*
A Silly Voice

Dear Sir, I drink whisky every day; I eat grouse and wild salmon; I’ve a Harris tweed coat; I admire the martial tone of the pipes and drums, nemo me impune lacessit and all that.

I’ve gorged on Tartan Noir romans policiers. Old William Wallace Robson supervised my Master’s thesis. W.S. Graham is a poet I especially like. But… Unlike the writer of PNR 283’s editorial column, Graham did not feel the need to put on a silly voice. All this ‘Scots’ cobblers? It is just English in a stage accent.

Nanetheless.
Come off it!
And accoontit…
In ither wards…
Scots winna thole deconstruction…
Do me a favour!

The idea that speaking English like Rob Roy as well as in a more normal way makes you bilingual is just a bogus excuse for jocks not to learn another language to achieve bilingual status.

I park it in the same bucket as many other forms of nonsense to which we are all bid bow down.

To be discussed.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Garnett

Zounds! If I wer Christopher Garnett, I widnae wad tae mak ‘mortal foes’ o’ sik a poke o’ ‘open pussies’. He may wak wan mornin’ wi’ Gerard Carruthers sittin’ awn his chest singin’ the ‘Jeely Piece Song’!

Yowres trewly,

Sir Hairy Larder