In The Green Room: Don Paterson

A pleasure to photograph Scottish poet Don Paterson in The Pavilion's 'Green Room'. He was getting ready to read with Vona Groarke, but there was enough time to exchange a few words. I told him I liked his aphorisms (I should have told him I also like many of his poems). I asked him his thoughts on the coming referendum (I'll keep schtum on his voting, as he may not wish his opinions broadcast). Vona raised the issue of nationalism/tribalism, which we all agreed was ugly, but Don thinks it's more complex than that and, from what I've read, I think so too. In fact the Yes vote, for many, appears to be a rejection of the jingoistic Great British nationalism of the UK/Westminster Tories (and 'New' Labour). As I said to Don, I am finding the referendum more and more exciting, the possibility of a very new form of politics emerging in these islands. Utopian perhaps, but one can hope (indeed one must).

One of my favourite aphorisms by Paterson is the following:
Almost everything in the room will survive you. To the room, you are already a ghost, a pathetic soft thing, coming and going. .
It seems to fit this (rather pensive) portrait, though more likely his mind was on other things, or hovering mothily in that pre-performance emptiness.

Later, after processing some of the pictures in the cool, dark, flickery recesses of the brand-new Lexicon/library, I stepped out and saw this remarkable piece of sky architecture: a plane erecting its vapour-trail cross. Jet trails are common as, well, jet trails. But the sunset and hazy clouds lit this one in a way I hadn't seen before, the shadow of the trail extending way beyond it, making the sky into a kind of four-paned window: new architecture meeting and reflecting on itself. Or, as Kendall suggested, a saltire.