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A new objection sent to Paul Smith today (10 January)
GM
Dear Sir,
As a lecturer in English literature, specialising in 20th century poetry, I am concerned about the proposed wind farm on the Isle of Lewis.
I have not yet visited Lewis but have some knowledge of it from the poetry of Iain Crichton Smith, an important voice in European literature, writing in both English and his native Gaelic. Iain Crichton Smith grew up on Lewis as a Gaelic speaker. I had the good fortune to meet him in the 1980s and hear from him about his life and writing; this personal contact further heightens my concern.
As you may know, the geography and history of Lewis are vital to his poetry and his memories of Lewis feed into the international concerns of his writing. For instance, his Gaelic poem, "Callanish", which I have read only in English translation, takes as its starting point the Stones of Callanish and moves swiftly to a contemplation of Nagasaki. Meanwhile, his late, long English poem "The Village", which deals with his long exile from Lewis with some complexity, looks at his need to move away to become a writer but also draws parallels between landscape and art drawing powerfully on his memories of Lewis (for instance, in section 12, "How clear/the mountains are,/and these rooms in which symmetry was humanised.")
I am aware of and sympathetic to the concerns of those who wish to guard the megalithic heritage. But the concern I am advancing is slightly different and concerns the more recent cultural heritage of Scotland, which frequently looks back to the remnants of pre-history (especially standing stones) and the landscapes in which they are situated. (For another instance of this role of the megalithic past, you need only look at Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song, recently voted the favourite book of MSPs). The literary importance of Callanish and the mountains above is one that feeds in to both English and Gaelic literary traditions and through them into European and world literature.. Losing the landscape - or changing it in the manner proposed - always means losing some sense of what works of literature mean.
I should add that Iain Crichton Smith is not the only poet to have written on this landscape, although he is the one with whom I am most familiar. If you or any of your committee read Gaelic, you may be familiar with the work of the poet Derick Thomson. And for anyone reading this objection whose first language is Gaelic, I should add that Iain Crichton Smith's Gaelic name is Iain MacGhobhainn.
As pictures reach us of the devastating effects of the tsunami on Asia, I think we should be aware of the fragility of our heritage and do out best to preserve it.
I should add that I am broadly in favour of wind farms in general but the siting of this particular one seems unwise.
Yours faithfully
Dr Kathleen Bell, M.A., Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in English
De Montfort University
Leicester
LE1 9BH
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road